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Nintendo - NES Classics, Metroid Prime 2 Movies 58

Posted by simoniker from the metroid-and-metroid dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Game Informer has broken the news that there will be four new NES Classic titles released for Game Boy Advancein the States this October 25th: 'The four titles will include Dr. Mario, Metroid, Castlevania, and Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link. Each title will retail for a suggested price of $19.99.' [We've previously covered the Japanese re-release of some of these.] Also, Game Informer has put up 15 movies from the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes demo disc that ships with the new Metroid Prime GameCube bundle. The movies cover every single second of the disc, from beginning to end."
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Nintendo - NES Classics, Metroid Prime 2 Movies

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  • Two of these already on GBA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by R2P2 ( 193577 ) on Tuesday August 10, 2004 @08:13PM (#9935494)
    Metroid is an unlockable on Metroid: Zero Mission (and Metroid Prime on the Cube), and Dr. Mario is unlockable on WarioWare, Inc. as "Dr. Wario". And Nintendo expects people to pay $19.99 for the old games on their own? They really ought to be releasing these "classics" in compilations, not one game to a cartrige.
    • Or at a reduced cost. I'm sorry but although I agree these games are 'classic' (even though Zelda 2 is perhaps the worst of the entire series) $10 is more than enough to milk out of me for them.

      • Re:Two of these already on GBA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 10, 2004 @08:26PM (#9935572)
        Every time these classics come up, the same sentiments are repeated.

        If it's too much, why do you care? Do you sit around fuming at how an airplane costs millions of dollars more than it could be sold for? What is the problem? If someone asked for two thousand dollars to buy a piece of tissue paper, you'd just walk by.

        The problem is that you want them just enough for the fact that you can't reasonably justify them to be painful. That's what you mean by "milk"... it IS worth it, and you just might buy it. IT's touch and go.

        • Re:Two of these already on GBA (Score:4, Informative)

          by 10101001 10101001 ( 732688 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @02:31AM (#9937261) Journal
          I care because I care about economics. In a free market (which capitalism is something like), airplanes aren't supposed to cost millions of dollars more than it could be sold for. For a given good, there's a whole array of prices people are willing to pay for the good. With enough competition, the actual company selling the good is forced (from an economic standpoint) to keep the price low which causes a good deal of consumer surplus (the whole "Dutch Auction" which Google's IPO is supposed to do behaves in the same way).

          Given that little actual work is done to create these classics, the perceived value by most is less than the $20 charged. However, given there's no one to compete against Nintendo, Nintendo will set the price at $20 to maximize its own profit. This almost certainly isn't maximizing consumer surplus which is a sign that the market is neither as efficient nor as healthy as it could be. Every time the free market fails for whatever reason, it's a time I want to know about. For airplanes, it's a question of barrier to entry, government subsidies (lucrative contracts, mostly), and the general lack of demand to approach the efficiency possible. For NES classics, it's a question of the artificial monopoly of copyright. It's not feasible to fix the airplane problem (well, the contracts could be removed, which would help), but such long copyrights *are* something that can be completely resolved.
          • Another common feature of the free market is variable pricing. Sell an item for $20. Everyone who is willing to pay $20 for that item will buy it. Then, lower the price to $15. A whole new group of people will express interest in the item and buy it. Eventually, you'll see the carts used as pack ins and premiums, or being sold at the low low price of 2 for $20.

            Nintendo has every right to use their intellectual property in any way they wish. You also have every right not to pay $20 dollars for it.
            • Over time, a good can lose value because of spoilage. Yes, that's a feature of the free market. A free market means all members are allowed to freely produce a good. The rights Nintendo has over the NES games it created are those which society artificially created to compensate for what who otherwise be a less motivating, free market situation. By analogy, filling a balloon clearly is within scope of the laws of physics, but it is not an example of the law of entropy.
              • I don't understand your point, exactly. I mean, I get your argument that the extension of copyright laws to near perpetuity may be artificially stifling the market. I don't have a strong opinion one way or another on copyright law - I can see that indefinite extensions and restriction on fair use could certainly stifle the creative community, but on the other hand, Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong are Nintendo inventions and that should be respected. Anyway, that's not really my point.

                Nintendo is simply cha
                • Nintendo is simply charging the maximum price that the market will bear, for maximum profit. It's what any company would do - it's certainly not immoral in any way. Once they get everyone who is willing to pay the $20, they'll drop the price by a few more dollars and pick up more customers. That's not spoilage, that's simply stimulating demand through price cuts.

                  No, not really. You're overlooking the whole point. If Metroid or Legend of Zelda was in the public domain, then *anyone* could stuff Metroid +
                  • OK, thanks for the clarification. I really wasn't thinking about the possibility of the works being in the public domain. That's very much a "what if" scenario; it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.

                    I'm familliar with laissez-faire, but I'm not sure about the rationale behind your position. Would you consider any kind of copyright term, or are all works immediately considered public domain? What kind of financial support is provided to artists? Is this a society where everything is provided by
                    • Well, the "what if" is founded on the problem of the current system: while artists are generally well rewarded for their works, the actual "newness" is the main reason why people can rationalize the cost of a good, especially as things like detail, design, etc can improve with each generation of console; the same holds true for newspaper in the news-ness of it which is new daily, even if the detail and design is the same. The same is harder to say of books and to some extent music (well, all that's not fad
                  • You're overlooking the whole point. If Metroid or Legend of Zelda was in the public domain, then *anyone* could stuff Metroid + an emulator onto a gba cart and sell it.

                    While I happily agree that copyright terms are way too long right now, any copyright length that would have Zelda & Metroid in the public domain would be way too short. It's not fair to the author to go under about 25 years, and I'd argue that somewhere from 30 - 40 years is the sweet spot.

                    Unless you wanted to carve out a shorter lengt

      • Re:Two of these already on GBA (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        They also released that Zelda Collection as a promotion through Nintendo Power, which included, Zelda, Zelda 2, Ocarina and Majora's Mask ... whic was about 19.99 dollars less than 19.99. Well minus the cost of the magazine subscription.
        • Those who missed it then can shell out $40 for it at their local Gamestop if it has it in stock. Still better price/stuff ratio, though that doesn't include the value of portability.
          • The collection is well worth the $40 bucks. I was unlucky enough to miss Ocarina of Time as my N64 was swiped by my brothers when I went to college. What a great game!

            Including Link to the Past would have been nice, as that's my favorite 2D Zelda game. I have it for GBA, but haven't sprung for the Game Boy Player yet.
          • You can get them on ebay and other auction sites for $30-$35. And with an auction you don't have to worry about it being in stock.
      • I played through the first 2 Zeldas, and for whatever reason, never got into the 3rd one, and none of the others have looked interesting enough to buy a Nintendo console.
        • I've played and finished Link to the Past, and I finished Zelda II as well. No, you're not the only person in the world/on slashdot that liked Zelda II. I like it, I enjoy its combat system, hah.

          These GBA "rereleases" are kind of overpriced at $19.99, but there are always people who've never seen or experienced the games before, and they would be "new" to them.

    • Think from Nintendo's POV (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Toxygen ( 738180 ) on Tuesday August 10, 2004 @08:33PM (#9935613) Journal
      I'll agree with you that I, as a gamer, would very much like to see these classic games be made available on an all-in-one disc or set, but if I were running Nintendo's marketing center I'd be patting myself on the back right about now. They've proven to themselves, and consumers have supported, that classic games will sell in their current format and price point. Nintendo sure may LOOK all cute and cuddly when you sit them next to Microsoft and Sony, but make no mistake, they're a corperation whose main priority is to make money.

      If they released those classic games on a single pack or disc, they'd have to accept less money per title for them since there sure isn't triple the number of people who would spend 60$ on a set of classics than there are people who would impulse buy 1 single bit of nostalgia for a 20 sheet.
      • I wonder if Nintendo is going to start coming down hard on emulation now that their classic games are selling.

        I saw a NES emulator for GBA that actually worked pretty well. Of course you need a flash RAM cart to actually use it, but it was spiffy nonetheless.

        ROM download sites will probably be getting cease-and-desist orders soon, in any case...

    • Re:Two of these already on GBA (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday August 10, 2004 @08:33PM (#9935614) Homepage Journal
      they know people will go for it.. ..and people will buy those things.

      and who are we to judge if they're ripped off.

    • I think Nintendo found a great way to get people more incentive to buy their games. It comes with the classics as an added feature! After realizing how popular things like MAME are, they probably got some guys to write an emulator which could be used for any GameCube game.

      As far as why they won't just put all the roms onto one disc is the same reason why they didn't put all of the NES games in Animal Crossing. They put a lot of the lesser-known ones there and let the classics like Metriod, Mario, etc. b

    • Metroid is an unlockable on Metroid: Zero Mission (and Metroid Prime on the Cube), and Dr. Mario is unlockable on WarioWare, Inc. as "Dr. Wario". And Nintendo expects people to pay $19.99 for the old games on their own?

      Some people bought the classic NES Pac-Man, even though they could have gotten Namco's Pac-Man Collection, which includes it and 3 other pac-games, for $10-$15.

      It's possible that some people like these for the retro value. It's also possible that some people (impulse buyers, gift buyers, e
    • How do you unlock Metroid in Metroid Prime?

  • Expensive, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hardwyred ( 71704 ) on Tuesday August 10, 2004 @08:30PM (#9935598) Homepage
    Without trying to sound too much like a fanboy, The classics are the whole reason why I even still own a GBA. I have to admit though, I like what they did with Super Mario Advanced. Rerelease a classic, but give it a few extra tricks to make it shine on the newer hardware.
    • There's another way [flash2advance.com], you know. How many of us owned these 'classic' games when they were released for the NES? I still have the carts sitting in my basement, so I feel absolutely no remorse about downloading [romnation.net] the ROMs, and either playing them through an emulator [jabosoft.com] or burning them to a flash cartridge. You can fit around 100 or more classic games on the GBA carts and use PocketNES [pocketnes.org] to run them.

      --trb
  • I have to admit that I bought Super Mario World (Super Mario Advance 2) for GBA, even though it was $30 and it was a rerelease. It had a couple nifty extra features, and I really liked the game on Super Nintendo, which I never owned - I perpetually borrowed it from friends.

    It's the kind of thing I'd only do for games that I really liked, and that looked and played pretty well on GBA. Also, actual play time is a plus. The classic Super Nintendo games tend to last longer than the classic NES games (now, if o

    • if only Square would rerelease FF6, I'd be all set

      you mean for GBA right? because they did already release it for playstation [gamespot.com]. however i couldnt recommend it because the loading times were outrageous. there is a translated rom floating around if you want to play it on an emulator though

  • I just wish they'd get to a USA release of that Puzzle Collection for GC, with four player Panel de Pon! (Rather it be the less fairyriffic Tetris Attack, but whatever), not to mention Yoshi's Cookie and Dr. Mario.

    Seriously, I wonder what the hell the hold up is.

  • Ah, Castlevania... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bluemeep ( 669505 ) <bluemeepNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday August 10, 2004 @11:12PM (#9936378) Homepage
    Now it all becomes clear. Playing it on the NES, the worst you could do was fling the controller. That was only a couple bucks to replace if it broke. So now when today's generation gets to the Grim Reaper and suffers a frustrating defeat, they'll have to shell out for a whole new GBA after their old one shatters against the wall.

    Now that's what I call marketing.

    • Well, let me spoil Nintendo's hopes to make more money on extra GBAs. To all the Castlevania newbies, before you get to the Grim reaper make sure you have the Cross and the double shot, stand on the right ledge (with Simon's right foot in the air), and pound the s*cker to death!!!!! Oh, BTW, the medusa patter is very easy to figure out. Practice on level II.
      • Frickin medusas!!!

        I hope they come out with Castlevania 3 on GBA at some point. That was one of the first few games I played on the NES .. I have fond memories of playing it at a demo station at EB or someplace, and don't think I ever beat it. I remember renting it a ton, and getting each of the different guys at different points, and being really awed at the fact that I could get those different guys. (Let me try and remember - grant could climb walls and shit but had a tiny little knife, the mage dude co

  • I just went to that site where they have the 15 movies from the Metroid 2 Echos disc, and they total over 260MB. I hope they have some crazy bandwidth over there after this has now been mentioned on Slashdot.
  • Surely this is just so Nintendo can say that the old games still have commercial value, and hence emulators should be illegal?
    • They are illegal even if they don't have "commecial value". If they truely have no commecial value, then in civil court you couldn't be sued for much damages (since you claim it's worth $0). But copyright infringement is going to be tens of thousands of dollars and that's the route a company like this would take if they wanted to get at you for running a ROM site for example.
  • ... then I could see the justification for a 19.99 price point. This is probably the most frustrating part about re-releases, emulated re-releases or 'ports'. Is that they don't try to enhance the game or add to it to update it for the modern era. This where all game companies could learn from squaresoft. When they released Final Fantasy Origns with the original final fantasy 'updated' and also with the Japanese Final fantasy II /w SNES graphics. FF1 may have been a port of the wondersawn version (I do

  • Ooh! That's my birthday! And metroid and Castlevania are two of my favorites.

    I might decide to dust off my shoddily afterburner'd GBA ( I performed the operation while half-drunk and watching the absolutely god-awful Dungeons & Dragons "film" )

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