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Classic Games (Games)

Console Downloads Retro Roundup 67

Posted by Zonk from the somewhat-recently-old-school dept.
Via GameSetWatch, 1up's look at recent virtual console releases on the Wii. The hub site's weekly retro roundup is going to make it a point to talk about Wii, 360, and PS3 downloadable games, with a focus on the old skool become new. They also will touch on old games rereleased on handheld systems, such as the fantastic FFIII. From the article: "Ecco the Dolphin - A curiously tranquil game that sees a normal dolphin embark on a quest to save his pod pals from a giant space vacuum, Ecco's nevertheless challenging -- besides oceanic hazards, our hero constantly faces the threat of suffocation should he stay underwater for too long. The idiosyncratic (read: sort of awkward) controls certainly don't make things any easier. All told, they make Ecco an acquired taste, and at the eight dollar standard rate for Genesis games this might be a tough sell. But we'll go ahead and give it the nod just for its boldness in straying from the beaten path. "
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Console Downloads Retro Roundup More

Console Downloads Retro Roundup

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  • Tides of Time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfr ... om.net minus bsd> on Saturday December 02, 2006 @03:59PM (#17083198) Homepage Journal
    Tides of Time kicked Ecco 1's ass. I freely admit spending many memorable hours on my knees weeping like a child in front of of the screen while that wretched globe holding the last two of the Asterite's globes just floated there, mocking me. Great days.

    But why should I pay money for a 12 year old game? I'll tell you why. It's because game companies are now incapable of producing games so good you'd spend days of your life crusing and screaming in frustration and still count the game as amoung the best you've ever played. They simply cannot do it anymore. So they have to chew on the cud of past successes. Liek a showband or a pop band "covering" a better band's tracks because they simply don't have the talent to make something on par.

    Not that a game had to be frustrating. It just had to be enjoyable, even in its frustrating moments. Even in its low points. Game's nowadays spend more time and effort on ridiculous things like crafting out each characters digit, or otherwise trying to make games like movies.

    Idiots. Super Mario World and Ecco the Dolphin are better than 99% of what's on gamestore shelves today. Period. You can push that up to 100% if you consider the new releases on some months. Gaming is dead. The mainstream killed it.
    • Ninja Gaiden was a damn fine game. I fail to see how gaming is dead.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by 246o1 ( 914193 )
        Ninja Gaiden rocked! I heard they were gonna do a remake of it . . .
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Tides of Time (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Frizzle Fry ( 149026 ) on Saturday December 02, 2006 @05:50PM (#17084086) Homepage

      game companies are now incapable of producing games so good you'd spend days of your life crusing and screaming in frustration and still count the game as amoung the best you've ever played. They simply cannot do it anymore.
      Go beat Master Mode Extra in Super Monkey Ball 2 and then come back and tell me this.
      • Dear God, I don't want anything for Christmas myself, but please... mod up the parent post. Thanks.
      • Also: Trauma Center. Countless instances of screaming and wanting to throw things to get through that one. And that's not even the X missions. The new monkey ball for Wii doesn't disappoint in difficulty either...

    • Re:Settle down now (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Psykechan ( 255694 ) on Saturday December 02, 2006 @05:50PM (#17084088)
      Easy there old timer. I know how you feel about the classics and I can share your thoughts on how there is some real drek being pumped out of the industry these days. So don't bite my head off when I tell you that you are wrong... or at least a bit misguided. Gaming is far from dead.

      Super Mario World and Ecco the Dolphin are classics and are better than many games today, but saying that companies are incapable of producing good games like "back in the day" is unfair. Twilight Princess is a really good game; the kind of thing that makes you want to play it just because it's combat is fun even though it has so many other things going for it. I want to beat the game so I can start it over again except that it would interfere with me playing the other good games that are out right now.

      Yes, games today may have characters with well defined fingers and a majestic storyline. Is this so bad? I imagine that you were the type of person who got fed up with the industry in the '90s when they were doing tings like FMV and terrible 3D. I can understand as I've met many people like you, hell, I used to be someone like you. It wasn't until I learned to look for that gem in the rough that I finally learned how to appreciate the modern games as well as the classics.

      Take off your rosy colored glasses for a second and remember that there was a lot of drek back in those days too. Super Hydlide? Alex Kidd in Enchanted Castle? Anything from LJN? Shaq Fu? Search your feelings Luke, you know it to be true.

      Let me switch gears for a second with a true story. My aunt, who was responsible for introducing me to videogames back in '79 with the Bally Professional Arcade [wikipedia.org] really was annoyed with games like Spy Hunter and Pitfall II for the 2600 because they had the nerve to try to include background music. By late 1985 when I showed her Super Mario Bros. for the first time, she had had enough of the industry. There were just too many gimmicks in these new games.

      She was a true gamer back before video games were relegated entirely to the domain of teenage boys. The fact that she never gave a real classic like Super Mario Bros. a chance is appaling if you stop to think about it. Don't let this happen to you too.

      Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go kill this giant enemy Gohma. Thanks to real time weapon changing I can flip it on it's back and strike the weak point for massive damage!
      • HEY!!! Don't talk bad about Shaq-Fu! I live my life by that game!
      • re:"Take off your rosy colored glasses for a second and remember that there was a lot of drek back in those days too. Super Hydlide? Alex Kidd in Enchanted Castle? Anything from LJN? Shaq Fu? Search your feelings Luke, you know it to be true."

        Those would be repressed memories. You don't want to seriously cause people to have to wrack up untold dollars on extra therapy after picking that scab off do ya? Of course you don't.

    • I'll tell you why. It's because game companies are now incapable of producing games so good you'd spend days of your life crusing and screaming in frustration and still count the game as amoung the best you've ever played. They simply cannot do it anymore. So they have to chew on the cud of past successes. Liek a showband or a pop band "covering" a better band's tracks because they simply don't have the talent to make something on par.

      Were you around in the early 80's?

      • Chase the Chuck Wagon?
      • Coconuts?
      • M.A.D.?
      • King Kong?
      • Sssnake?
      • Swordquest: Fireworld?
      • E.T. The Extra Terrestrial?

      I hate to break it to you, but flooding the market with poorly made knock-offs and licensed games isn't a new invention.

  • Retro games not so go (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Taulin ( 569009 )
    I have a hard time seeing retro game downloads as a selling point. I will first ignore the fact I own almost all the games available to download, and the fact anyone can get Mame and download them also. I haven't heard of a single person who has picked up a game over 10 years old and spent a lot of time with, let alone 30 minutes. Yes, it is fun to remember the feelings you had, or to laugh at the absurdity of those old games, but the truth is why spend time playing through an old game when you have newe

    • Three Words: River City Ransom (Score:5, Interesting)

      by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Saturday December 02, 2006 @04:37PM (#17083530) Homepage
      When most everyone else was busy playing with their PS2 and XBOX systems, my buddies and I discovered River City Ransom for the NES. This was several years before the game was re-announced and re-released for the GBA. We must have spent entire man-weeks in that game! Just because you are tired of the old games, doesn't mean that other people won't find them a lot of fun.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nwbvt ( 768631 )

        If thats the game I think it is (and after a few minutes on Google, I'm pretty sure it is), I'm almost tempted to go out and buy a game boy advance just to play the re-release. We didn't own a copy of it, but one of our friends did and he brought it over all the time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 )
      but the truth is why spend time playing through an old game when you have newer ones to dabble with?

      I usually get modded down for saying this (presumeably by younger folks who never actually played an Intellivision except as a novelty antique)..., but around the SNES to early PSX era, video games reached a peak from which they've slowly fallen.

      Why would I rather run a buggy and slow PSX emulator than play the latest and greatest PS3 game? Because "gameplay" and "plot" still meant something, while "reh

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by miyako ( 632510 )
        I think that the time from the release of the NES through the death of the SNES was really a golden age in gaming. There were a lot of simply amazing games that came out in that period.
        The thing of it is, I think that it's not fair to write off modern games simply because they aren't keeping pace with the games back then. Doing so would be akin to writing off modern art because we aren't producing masterpieces like they did in the renaissance.
        Part of what I think happened is that, during the NES and SNE
        • Garbage games have always been produced. Angry Nintendo Nerd [cinemassacre.com] illustrates some of them. I think people who talk about a drastic decline in story and gameplay are exaggerating. There have been lots of games with outstanding gameplay and story, for all platforms.

      • Re:Retro games not so go (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Shados ( 741919 ) on Saturday December 02, 2006 @10:21PM (#17086010)
        ecause "gameplay" and "plot" still meant something
        Honestly, its not even that. Games with "lesser" graphics that are newly released, be it on the DS, on GBA, what have you, are still of very close quality to what we used to get.

        The thing is, on higher up consoles that are capable of high end graphics, people expect high end graphics. High end graphics cost a lot of money, and take a lot of time to make. That time cannot be used to enhance gameplay. SOME companies manage to balance both, but they are far and few in between.

        Thats half the reason right there that Nintendo made a console that -forces- developers to give up on the fancy graphics. Hopefully it works, then we'll have games worth playing.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shados ( 741919 )
            Its called being relative. Technology evolved, development techniques and tools evolved too.

            Gamecube was quite the powerful console compared to the rest, while Wii is quite weak now.

            Making a game for the DS is a joke, relatively speaking. But back in the SNES day, making a game for it was considered quite hardcore.

            Thats not taking into consideration that the gamecube had a LOT of other issues, both technical and not.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 7Prime ( 871679 )
            Sure there were crappy games on the Gamecube, but the ratio of crappy games was probably lower than any other system in history. The fact that the GCN has very few games total, yet has about as many games (and good games) on my shelf than PS2 games really says something. Nintendo did a great job enchoraging developers to make good games, that generation, they just had a tough time getting as many developers, due to their lower market share.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nwbvt ( 768631 )

      A couple of years ago I got a NES emulater and got addicted to the origional Mario Bros for a while. Then it was Contra. Then it was The Legend of Zelda. Then it was Tecmo Super Bowl (the best part was playing the Chiefs and running with Christian Okoye). Then it was Mario 3. Then I deleted the whole thing because it was distracting me from my school work.

      These are the same games that entertained us for so long when we were kids, why would they cease to be fun now? Just because you have now seen nic

    • why spend time playing through an old game when you have newer ones to dabble with?

      You'd be surprised. After a lifetime of gaming, I find myself logging more time in on older titles than I ever did before. Certain games have great replay no matter how old they are.

      • I always hear "who'd want to play those old games" from people who are only in their teenage years now (and generally the 14 and under crowd are the worst). I think it's because they never played the older console games when they came out, so they expect the gaming world to be all whiz bang graphics and require fast twitch reflexes.

        I'm only 26, so I'm not old by any stretch, but I still tend to prefer the older console games because they didn't require 30+ hours of playing. They were fun, and that's what
    • There are genres that are all but forgotten in modern consoles. When was the last time a major publisher released a turn based wargame? What about a deep, thematic strategy game, like X-Com, or Rocket Ranger? Is there any PS2 castlevania that plays like Symphony of the Night? A modern japanese RPG that beats Xenogears and Chrono Trigger? An economic simulation like Capitalism II?

      Abandonware and download services are popular because you can easily pick and choose the best games of the era, and play sure-fire

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Durrok ( 912509 )
        When was the last time a major publisher released a turn based wargame?

        Not so sure about "major", but Shattered Union was excellent.

        An economic simulation like Capitalism II?

        Try 1701AD.

        Good games out there but you have to really look for them. Mostly Indie developers and the like.
      • Dawn of Sorrow on the DS does... And yes I have this game and can see its merits, but I cannot see the high praise of the series, after the 20th rehash of the sidescrolling beatemup concept it really is.
    • Uhhh... the best-selling system is still the GBA, whose library has a lot of NES/SNES/Genesis games. Okay, this month there's a spike because of the double platform launches, but I bet the 2007 sales of the GBA will still be bigger than the PS3 or Wii. And the GBA player for GC doesn't do too badly, either.

      In my game library, I have Dr. Mario, Puyo Pop, Mario 3, and Advance Wars, all of which are based on old games. They get more use than my GTA or Wipeout, too. Note that a lot of those games have very fun
    • "I haven't heard of a single person who has picked up a game over 10 years old and spent a lot of time with, let alone 30 minutes."

      Last week I popped in the SNES version of Zelda. I've put about 5 hours into it and still intend to put in some more. A couple of months ago I was into Star Control 2. Both those games are past the 10 year old mark.

    • There's a pretty good reason: by still selling the old IPs, companies can claim people downloading the games to play them on emulators are infringing on their IP and criminally prosecute and shut them down. Nobody really cares for old games on a new console. Perhaps on cell phones and other portable devices with tiny screen and hardware.

      So, people genuinelly in love for the old games or historically curious can either:
      * play them at their old consoles until they die;
      * pay 8 bucks for each of them, regard

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

        Nintendo would crush all emulators if they could.

        Nintendo could easily do it if they charged the right price for their VC games. $5 for a NES game is too much. $1 would do it. I would imagine that iTunes has helped slow down pirated music to some extent by offering music singles for $1 and making it so easy to obtain (legally). I'm more than happy to grab a $1 song when I feel like it, than spend time and energy going through spoofs and ghosts until I find a good copy of a song.

        Cheers,
        Fozzy

    • I haven't heard of a single person who has picked up a game over 10 years old and spent a lot of time with, let alone 30 minutes.

      You obviously have. Most of those MAME downloads are over 10 years old.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Taulin ( 569009 )
      First, great replies. Vote me as you wish, I like these conversations.

      Again, I support the fact that a new system offering retro games is not a selling point. I do think it is 'neat', but I don't think it is a selling point and/or worth the money.

      1) I never said the games are not fun anymore. We simply do not have time for them anymore (at least people post high school don't). If your interest is in playing these old games, then there were already mediums to play them, aka The original systems and/o

    • I own the original Final Fantasy for every console it was released on (NES, GBA, and Playstation.) I also have the MAME rom. I still play it on of of the consoles anytime I have a few hours to burn. I recently flew to the Middle East and drained the battery of me DS playing FF Origins the entire flight. When I can get my hands on a Wii, it will be the first game I download. It is also on of the main reasons I am going to buy a Wii. So your argument is wrong. There are some of us who see the ability to

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by nissu ( 823183 )
        There are some of us who see the ability to return to some of our childhood favorites as a huge selling point...

        Sure, but many of those games (except Nintendo titles) are or will be available for PS2 and Xbox as part of those "classics" collections which are probably better value for money anyway (dozens of titles for $30 or so, instead of one title for $8).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by seebs ( 15766 )
      I'm on vacation with some friends, a whole art studio of them in fact. We brought a Wii with us to the resort.

      So far, I think only one of our people hasn't put in at least a full hour on Sonic the Hedgehog. The average is closer to six or eight.

      It's a fun game, and having a port of it handy is easily worth the $8.
    • anybody know if these guys are using the "classic" controller, or if they are somehow playing with the wiimote? I haven't heard of anybody with the classic peripheral yet, but I'd imagine it would make playing virtual console games much more satisfying
    • I have a hard time seeing retro game downloads as a selling point. I will first ignore the fact I own almost all the games available to download, and the fact anyone can get Mame and download them also. I haven't heard of a single person who has picked up a game over 10 years old and spent a lot of time with, let alone 30 minutes.

      I've got a 10 yr old who is just now discovering the classics I grew up with. Excellent selling point. Yesterday I heard her humming a level theme from Sonic and I said "Green M

  • Best Wii Download Yet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Krentz ( 1034778 ) on Saturday December 02, 2006 @04:48PM (#17083604) Homepage
    Bomberman '93 + 4 Wiimotes + 1 Gamecube controller == Instant party for 5 people. My Wii has logged more time into Bomberman than anything else except Twilight Princess so far. It's a blast! (I know I know...)
    • I used to have an older Bomberman for the TG-16. I didn't have that much multiplayer fun again until Smash Brothers for the N64 and later GC, and Bomberman didn't have the huge learning curve. Eventually the "Turbo Tab" that lets you connect the 5 controllers broke. I am buying a Wii just for Bomberman and Smash Brothers Brawl.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zarthrag ( 650912 )
      I agree, it is a blast! But we've all be clamoring for SNES version of Bomberman 5 (with the kangaroos, and getting to "interfere" from the sidelines.) It's only 4 players, but it made for a fun party game!

    • Re:Best Wii Download Yet (Score:5, Informative)

      by glassware ( 195317 ) on Sunday December 03, 2006 @02:37AM (#17087270) Homepage Journal
      Saturn Bomberman was probably the best version in existence, but is hard to find and even harder to get a system to play it on.

      http://wso.williams.edu/~aeatonsa/bomb/pixb.html [williams.edu]
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Bomberman [wikipedia.org]

      In addition to a five player battle mode with dinosaur mounts that grow and have special abilities, you have wild powerups like the ability to throw bombs, kick bombs, sprint, drop bombs in front of you, and launch active bombs as they explode. When you died, you could shoot bombs onto the stage to harass people. When time ran out, blocks and powerups would drop from the sky as the level gradually shrunk down to nothing.

      There was also an absolutely insane eight player mode that packed the screen with the most bomberman goodness that's ever been on a TV.
      • I remember playing that on my friend's Saturn. Incidentally, that was the only game we ever played on that Saturn, and that was the only Saturn I ever saw.
  • IMO take top 10 selling gaming magazines no matter the format (PC, Handheld, or Console) and get the issue that has top 100 games of all time. Those more often than not are the cream of the crop and even have the old school gems we all want on our systems to play.

    I myself have sent several emails to the maker of an awsome old school RPG Mordor. Simple long lasting game that would fit so well on the DS or PSP. If any have played would see the power of that RPG on a hand held.

  • My wife, her mother, and I have spent probably hundreds of hours playing Dr. Mario in competitive mode. And we still do. This is on an original NES, that we will probably still keep around until it finally dies.

    I am really looking forward to seeing Dr Mario on Wii VC, and is one of the arguments I used to persuade my wife to purchase one.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jt007 ( 459122 )
      "we will probably still keep around until it finally dies"

      You need to learn your ass some respect - that is no way to talk about the mother-in-law!

  • Ecco and Golden Axe critics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BenoitRen ( 998927 ) on Sunday December 03, 2006 @01:15PM (#17090912)
    The idiosyncratic (read: sort of awkward) controls certainly don't make things any easier. All told, they make Ecco an acquired taste, and at the eight dollar standard rate for Genesis games this might be a tough sell. But we'll go ahead and give it the nod just for its boldness in straying from the beaten path.

    Well, of course they're not like your typical game. Ecco is underwater, and the 'water feel and control' is well implemented, in my opinion.

    Something was lost in the conversion to Genesis, though, and the Wii port is all the more galling for its lack of online co-op... something available in much less expensive XBLA classics. Golden Axe can be mindless fun with another player, but here it's under-featured and over-priced.

    Too bad they don't say what was lost.

    I don't think it's fair to bash it for not having online play. It was never announced, and XBLA's approach to its games is different. This is just a Virtual Console, where you just play games like back in the day, when there were no online cooperation options.

    • Ecco was a great game on the Genesis. I'd probably download it if I didn't already own the Sega CD version. The Sega CD version (which was released 6 months to a year after the cartridge version) is much better...far better music (CD audio), faster/better animation, and several levels that were omitted from the cartridge version. I have both Ecco and its sequel for Sega CD...sadly they can't really put these versions on the Virtual Console because the images would be around 650MB each (they filled the pa
    • Agreed, I have no idea how a reviewer can ever fault a game for a feature that was never intended to be part of the product. I'm getting very tired of reading reviewers consistently complain about the lack of multiplayer in various games. There needs to be a separation between what the product actually is, and what the reviewer thinks it should have been.

  • Virtual Console = Money Tree? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fozzyuw ( 950608 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @09:53AM (#17098920)

    There's one thing I can think of when it comes to the virtual console (this was sometime around when I dumped $20 on my account to purchase The Legend of Zelda), that allowing these games for download have to be one of the closest things to having the proverbial 'money tree'.

    Take Zelda alone. It's 500 points or $5.00. If there will be 4 million Wii's sold by 2007 (the estimate that Nintendo will have shipped 4 million units to North America, and that the likely hood that these will sell out is great). If 1-in-4 consoles download Zelda, or another VC game, that's $5 million that Nintendo just made. Sure, maybe it was a Sega game, but for simplicity, lets just say it all goes to Nintendo (because they're downloading Zelda, Mario, or whatever).

    Now, that's a good amount of dough. But what's more impressive, is the fact that these games did not cost them significant amounts of money to produce! The code is already there. Emulation is far from a 'new' technology, it's fairly mature. I hardly doubt it takes a significant resources to 'flip' a game to the VC. Not that it takes none, but what, maybe $100,000 in labour? Maybe less? Eventually, I wouldn't doubt that the process of converting games becomes fairly automated.

    After thinking about this, just from a Zelda perspective (and that there will be many downloads of this game, I wouldn't doubt reaching a 1 million mark fairly quickly), that the VC will probably be one of Nintendo's biggest cash cows with this new system. Sure, people and magazines can talk all day long about why system has the best 'launch titles', but the fact that the Wii has this emulation and plays GameCube, it works well (with the exception of the update fireware bug), and is easy to use, makes the Wii far more attractive it might be give credit for.

    Though, with that said, I find $5 for a NES game to still be far to expensive. I'm willing to pay it for Zelda, but I cannot see paying that for anything else, except maybe Super Mario Word (SNES), which will probably cost around $8. I'd prefer to see $1 NES games, $3 SNES/Genesis, $5 N64. I think that would be more reasonable for these old games. They would get me to spend more money on VC games if they dropped the prices to that above, than they'll get from me with high prices. Other games I would spend money on would be, Dr Mario (NES), Baseball Stars (NES), Techmo Super Bowl (NES), and Golden Eye (N64). Maybe some RPG games, but not likely. If the prices where as inexpensive as above, I'd be buying racing games, Sonic games, nostalgic games like Conta, Blades of Steel, Double Dribble, Super Mario 2/3, Castlevania series, etc., etc.

    Cheers,
    Fozzy

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