I got to thinking about all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones games that were not originally developed by LucasArts but were licensed by them. I was wondering if LucasArts could easily publish games that Sega (for example) developed. This isn't a case of aquiring a license to publish a game but more already owning the license and aquiring the game itself.

Capcom just did this with Fighting Street. Capcom played no part in developing or publishing Fighting Street originally, just licensed the game to HudsonSoft to port to the TurboGrafx. Now Capcom themselves are publishing Fighting Street for the Virtual Console.

Hmm, I was under the impression that, like Sega with Genesis and Master System games, Hudson published all the TG16 games on Virtual Console.

No. If you check, there are other companies releasing games for the Genesis and TurboGrafx. The only publishers to hold a completely monopoly on particular consoles are Sega for the Master System, D4 Enterprise for the Neo Geo, Nintendo for the N64 and Commodore Gaming for the Commodore 64. However Sega and Nintendo are only publishing games on those consoles that they also published originally. No third party publisher has stepped up yet. I assume that for whatever reason, Nintendo have stopped third party publishers from releasing third party developed games on the N64 or doing so is a risk that only Nintendo are willing to take (for some reason). D4 Enterprise is handling the publishing of SNK and ADK's games (I don't think any other developer/publisher released games on the NeoGeo originally). And Commodore Gaming is publishing C64 games that were either developed by individuals who had no company of their own or long defunct companies. I imagine the likes of Capcom and Konami would be handling the publishing to their own C64 games if they ever choose to release some and not Commodore Gaming.

We are one step closer to getting licensed games NOT from Lucasarts. First the Star Wars games appearence on the Virtual Console, then this interesting discussion on how publishers were able to publish there products. I'm telling you, something is happening.

Remember Disney games? While they are very unlikely and would make some sense to rule them out until after Epic Mickey's release, we could see them if the game sells in the million. Disney could be convinced to release there games on the Virtual Console. They might be able to do this right now in some cases, since Virgin Interactive no longer works for the video game industry. Not all, but some (The Sega Genesis version of Aladdin and The Lion King).

Yes, and now we can have Rare games on VC! I mean, they were released on Nintendo systems and Nintendo published them, so,... Wa-hoo!!!

@Xkhaoz: Um, not exactly. There is a difference between what I'm saying and what you're saying.

You're probably joking on this, but Rare is owned by Microsoft. We all know that unless Nintendo and Rare and/or Microsoft can settle on a deal, we'll never see the games on the Virtual Console.

Disney and Virgin Interactive issue however is a little easier to get by. Virgin Interactive no longer exist in the gaming industry, so prehaps Disney might be able to publish some of there games on the Virtual Console without having to ask Virgin permssion to put them on the Virtual Console.

Of course if that happens and Virgin wouldn't allow it, they'll sue Nintendo for it.

Yeah, regarding Rare, they removed Conker and Banjo for Diddy Kong Racing on the DS. Although Rare are allowed to release games for the DS, they apparently won't put their big name characters into new games for Nintendo. Donkey Kong Country is the only games we'll see from Rare on the VC since Nintendo owns the characters whereas everything else Rare has done is owned by Rare.