What has to be an obvious thought if you've been a gamer as long as I have (22+ years)--and a really GOOD summation of why we ended up getting 44 Neo Geo games, yet only 21 (??)N64 games on Wii's VC:

THE LOSSES OF MIDWAY AND ACCLAIM.

We all know(I'd think if you're a Gaming History buff as I am)--Midway, makers of Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Midway Sports--and US Port company of Namco's arcade games(Not to mention Pinball KING alongside their counterparts of Bally/Williams)---where was I....oh yeah....MIDWAY was a huge supporter of the N64, and was originally intended to bring MANY of their classic games to the Wii VC, until they went under in 2008.

Acclaim--another HUGE 80's/90's company(porting several Midway games to home consoles), and makers of several other HUGE games back in the day--which I believe went under in 2010--would have ALSO provided some great support to the VC.

BUT instead of that happening, and us getting Midway and Acclaims WELL KNOWN games for Nintendo and Sega---WE got Neo Geo support up the wazoo. NOT to criticize Neo Geo, cause it was a fine video game "console"(okay, it was a Coin Op Machine, w/ up to 4 games per)--but STILL....WHO would take King of Fighters "___" over MORTAL KOMBAT??
Just in terms of Video Game HISTORY---Historically Mortal Kombat was WAY more significant in the grand scheme....and back in the 90's "Video Game Wars"---MK was Midway's STREET FIGHTER---perhaps 2 of the best fighting franchises in the 90's, and of ALL time....

WE have 7 SF II's on VC---and NO Mortal Kombat? How WRONG is that?

I know we'd never have seen the licenses Midway and Acclaim Sports games--but I'd love to have seen Midway's arcade classics like Arch Rivals, Toobin', and so on grace the VC....instead of Commodore 64, or the seriously-lacking VC Arcade we DO have in the US.

I had expected to get WAY more VC games than I do have--and hell, I don't even play the majority of games I have on VC--but IF I had the chance to DL the last 2 "Cruis'n" racing games for N64--or some classic arcade coin-ops, I'd play them constantly.

Meh not a big midway fan, what we need is... IDK honestly besides earthbound StarFox and Yoshis island (don't need Yoshis island ambassador)

Hell I'd take Clay Fighter over Mortal Kombat.

I'd take just about any fighter over Mortal Kombat.

Acclaim went under in 2004, and was, at least at the time, one of the most hated companies in gaming (present-day EA and Activision have probably gathered more gamer-hate). Primarily because most of their games were licensed shovelware (though I personally think THQ's licensed games, their main business until a few years ago, were more criminally terrible).
The N64 Turoks are the only Acclaim games I can recall hearing positively remembered.

Ask me or pretty much any Japanese resident if they'd take King of Fighters over Mortal Kombat, and they'd say yes. Your gaming history is not the same as everyone else's.

I agree with you though..as far as the 90's are concerned, not having Mortal Kombat was a huge loss but I'm really glad we get Neo Geo games. Thanfully if you can find the Midway Arcade Collections on tyhe Gamecube, you can get some MK action!

Warner Bros. could still release Mortal Kombat on the VC if they wanted to. It's available in so many other forms and collections though, it's not really that big of a loss imo.

SOrry, but classic Mortal Kombat were a huge load of crap: crappy control, slow. The only thing that was funny about them was the blood and pre-renderized graphics whic we didnt see so much back in the days. You only have to play one of them to see how bad are today compared with Street Fighter II which i beleive it was way earlier.

So, not a big loss that we dont have Mortal Kombat in VC.

IMO, the biggest losses are licensed games and Konami.

Disney really should have got in touch with Sega and Capcom (they didn't) to release their amazing 8 and 16-bit classics, and Konami should have released their Genesis games and kept up the TG16 and Hudson releases.... they didn't. They should have also released the later TMNT games instead of the first one on the NES.... they didn't.

Akclaim isn't a loss at all. DDII was published by aykys games. That's all that's needed

I would take not just King of Fighters but almost every Neo Geo fighting game over Mortal Kombat. Its entirely subjective of course but I've never cared for Mortal Kombat as a franchise. I accept that the most recent iteration on xbox 360 and PS3 was quite good but the Snes/ Genesis era games were stiff, unresponsive and to be honest just not very good. Personally I am grateful for the large number of Neo Geo games. It was an utterly fantastic console.

The original Mortal Kombat trilogy was also ported to the DS.

WE have 7 SF II's on VC---and NO Mortal Kombat? How WRONG is that?

Its wrong but Capcom wanted to support the Virtual Console, Midway/Acclaim or whoever did not. It wasn't up to Nintendo to aquire games from the publishers if the publishers weren't showing much interest.

The N64 Turoks are the only Acclaim games I can recall hearing positively remembered.

Shadow Man is one of the best N64 games. Which is from Acclaim.

I love how only five responses are talking about the actual topic rather than how great old school Mortal Kombat games are.

I for one, could care less if Midway or Acclaim supported the Virtual Console since everything that was built up from 2006, has been thrown out the window with the Wii U.

^Probably because that entire wall of text could be debunked in, like, 6 words. There's honestly more to say about Mortal Kombat than anything else here...

Speaking of which: in a perfect world, any self-respecting fighting fan would take King of Fighters over the early Mortal Kombat games.

"crappy control, slow" - You mean not button mashing like the new ones right?

@Bass: I thought Midway expressed interest in Mortal Kombat for the Virtual Console. The reason why we won't see it is because Midway went under (or at least is under the process of liquidation).

No, he means stiff, unresponsive, convoluted, slow compared to even the Street Fighters of the time...seriously, have you played these game recently? They really are a mess. Always were.