Retro City Rampage

If you were still hoping to see the eventual release of Retro City Rampage on the Wii U eShop in the near future, it’s probably best you erase any thought of it from your mind now.

In a post on the game's official website, Vblank Entertainment's Brian Provinciano has spoken out once again about the requests for a Wii U version of Retro City Rampage and how it simply won’t be happening.

According to the one-man studio, a port of the title from the Wii to Wii U is more than just a push of a button – with the Wii U having a completely different architecture to its predecessor. Other problems include what would essentially be mostly the same game having to re-enter classification and marketing phases – with all of these stages requiring time, effort and money.

It wouldn't be trivial and would take months from start to finish...it would be 95% identical to the WiiWare version. Because the Wii U is backwards compatible, it does not make sense to pour months of time (and the costs) into doing it for a system that can already play the game. Again, months of work -> a 5% different product.

Further supporting the decision is the fact the original Nintendo version of the game failed to make a profit due to the WiiWare threshold requirement – with the game incurring over 20k in costs that were never recouped – and fans’ requests for the game on WiiWare significantly outnumbering the actual sales.

This is a bleak sales outlook compared to the 3DS version which sold 400k in paid copies [Correction: 400k sales is for all platforms, with the 3DS version cited as a strong contributor]. It also reinforces for creator Provinciano why the game does not warrant a release on Nintendo’s current generation home console.

Whilst a Wii U version is seemingly off the cards, Provinciano did note in his latest post that the WiiWare version of the game had just been updated to the DX version last month, and that this iteration really didn’t have many setbacks, despite not featuring high-definition visuals and direct Wii U GamePad support.

You can already purchase and play the WiiWare version in Wii mode, so if you've been holding out, please pick that up instead.

While off-TV play on Wii U with WiiWare games requires a separate controller, it still already works. While the Wii isn't HD, the game itself is 240p anyway...it doesn't really matter if it's on Wii in 480p or Wii U in 1080p — the pixels are simply enlarged either way.

And to really put the matter to rest, Provinciano tweeted he would consider releasing Wii U games with the development kit he acquired back in 2012, just not Retro City Rampage.

Read Brian Provinciano's lengthy post on the official Retro City Rampage website, and let us know what you think about the game not coming to Wii U.

[source retrocityrampage.com]