Topic: More SNES Games?

Are any more SNES and NES games going to be released on the 3DS VC any time soon, or is there no more plans?

Thanks

I hope so! I'd add Gameboy games to the mix as well and tg16.

Yeah GB too. But Nintendo don't seem to be releasing them on a regular basis.

We're obviously going to get more SuperNes games. it has only been a week since the last one appeared and we've been getting 2-4 additions a month since it rolled out with 6 games in March. And a fair number of titles on the Wii U from publishers also supporting the 3DS Virtual Console remain absent like Axelay. So seems like a safe bet we can expect more here.

But I wouldn't count on anything except for more SuperNes games. Ignoring the long dead Game Gear section, the NES is fast approaching the 2 year mark with no new additions for instance (Despite titles like Earthbound Beginnings that they could release). And outside of a brief revival with the Donkey Kong Land trilogy in 2015 and the introduction of Pokemon last February, you have to go back to May 2014 for the latest Game Boy release and February 2015 for the GBC.

So there's little reason to expect a change there, although it's certainly not an impossibility. We've been surprised before in the past, like the sudden revival of the Wii Virtual Console years ago after months of inactivity. I bet we had another year of 1-2 releases a month afterwards, despite having been left for dead earlier.

Don't count on it.

North America got 3 TG16 games months ago on the Wii U and we've yet to see anything more, so it seems likely they sold poorly. So that apparent poor showing gives them little incentive to bring it to the 3DS at this late date. Heck, I'd even speculate that it might've hurt our chances at even getting TG16 games on the Switch VC in the future.

Especially seems unlikely to hit our 3DS Virtual Console when it seems it didn't even take off in its home country, somehow. Japan's 3DS Virtual Console has 4 PC Engine releases, but they were released from December 2013-February 2014, with nothing since then. If the 3DS Virtual Console only managed 4 emulated releases for this system in its home country, that likely means it did poorly and it hardly bodes well for it doing well here.

Can't see Konami bothering. I suspect we'll just have to be glad that we got as much as we did on the Wii, and that those downloads are backwards compatible on the Wii U as well.

SNES games need to come to older models, instead they ostricize their biggest install base with no new VC titles.

@GameOtaku Get a stronger model that's capable of proper SNES emulation. For $100, you can get a special New 3DS model on Black Friday.

Although I suppose at this point it would be smarter to wait and see if the Switch has proper VC support. I can't imagine why it wouldn't, but it's Nintendo, so who knows.

@Ralizah
I've always seen it as a cash grab to get people to upgrade to the new (slightly) more power model. The sega 3D classics are on an enhanced emulator and they put a whole lot of work into them compared to Nintys bare bone ROM dumps.

@GameOtaku It's not a cash grab. You simply don't want to accept that the OG 3DS can't handle proper SNES emulation. We've been over this.

@Ralizah
We'll just have to agree to disagree on that. Still they are lazy. The trickle of VC says as much.

@GameOtaku As someone who has been on this website since the days when the entire VC "section" was a separate, dedicated website: You don't know what you're talking about. Sometimes there are genuine hardware limitations, and sometimes, the effort to overcome that is not worth the obviously meager returns they get for VC releases.

"Just because you can, doesn't mean its wise"

@CanisWolfred
I'm sorry but the older model 3ds is several times more powerful than the SNES. Here's a quick rundown comparison
SNES: 16-Bit Ricoh 5A22 (65C816-Kern) 3,58 MHz - Grafik: 2
PPU

3DS (old):
ARM11 Dual-Core 268 MHz (128 MB RAM) - Grafik: Digital Media Professionals
Pica200 (6 MB VRAM)

There is not a dedicated emulator on the 3ds as far as I understand it when you buy VC titles you buy it wrapped in the emulator. Segas 3D classics run on an enhanced emulator (gigadrive or something like it the name eludes me) and they are "Cheaper" than Nintendos VC and have 3D as well as save points and extra modes.

Tell me again how they are not lazy.

Sega also only has to deal with a very select amount of proprietary games, only a few of which required hunting down former excecutives of lost companies in order to release without risking a lawsuit, and they don't have to deal with as many fans demanding quanity over quality, only to turn aound and complain when they get less than perfection. My point wasn't that they couldn't do it. They just can't afford to deal with those challenges for every game.

M2's approach is very unique and time consuming. It's a hybrid and is part porting and part emulation.

And the original code that is emulated is often heavily modified, such as opening up the perspective to 16:9 proportions by adding area to the left and right that the original games never rendered due to the era's 4:3 arcade monitors, the doubling of Outrun's frame rate, or the higher resolution textures in Galaxy Force II.

It's a far cry from what Nintendo needs for the Virtual Console. They want a versatile and reliable emulator for each platform that can run virtually any original game thrown at it without any issues. So once the emulator is coded, the work beyond some basic QA is basically finished from the programming standpoint. It's a far cry from the heavy amount of effort that goes into every single one of M2's 3D Classics conversions.

No indictment of Nintendo's excellent New 3DS SNES emulator, but they're just two drastically different approaches. If Nintendo were to undertake 3D Classics conversions of their 16 bit library, enhance frame rates, open up the perspective to fill the widescreen display, and so on, they'd also have to basically rebuild each individual game as well.

But the glory of straight emulation like this, is that you avoid all that title specific effort. You program the emulator and if it works correctly, you've created compatibility on that hardware with the full range of software that ran on the system you emulated.

This no doubt is the reason.

Quality SuperNes emulation doesn't come cheap in the resource department. Surely if the significantly enhanced guts of the New 3DS wasn't needed to power this emulator, Nintendo wouldn't make it exclusive. But clearly they need that extra horsepower to accomplish this.

Nintendo knows that the SuperNes VC being exclusive to the New 3DS line isn't going to move very many systems, so there's really no conspiracy here. If Nintendo could sell SNES downloads to every 3DS owner, they obviously would do so.

Thus there's a sound technical reason behind this.

Nintendo's not doing all that for VC content. A select few active publishers are involved with the Virtual Console and submit content for Nintendo's consideration. Nintendo doesn't decide they want Game A from some obscure long dead publisher and then go into detective mode to get it licensed and ensure it's fully cleared.

SNES emulation is not that taxing! I played on an emulator in highschool back in 2000 on already 5 year old computer playing Sailor Moon Another Story and the Sailor Moon fighting game on a SNES/SFC emulator and they ran well enough! They are 16 bit games they are not that complicated! If it soft resets like smash or MH4U who cares?! As far as other VC titles some are on wiiu but not 3ds (ex Double Dragon 3, Bayou Billy) or games that should have logically come to it (ex Castlevania Legends, Contra).

You can't believe everything Nintendo says, I've seen hacked 3ds play SNES perfectly (N64 games too)

@GameOtaku Sorry, but CanisWolfred said it best.

There's no conspiracy here. Just obstinance on your part.

Y'all are blinded by Nintendos lackluster sheen.

And it was trash. Inaccurate and widespread issues plagued SuperNes emulation back in those early days.

They were designed basically to run the most popular 50 or so games in the library, with title specific hacks to work around their inaccurate emulation (And even then, things were still off). Go beyond that group of titles and it was often an unpleasant experience.

Read this interview from the creator of the only cycle accurate SuperNes emulator around to get an idea of the task this really is.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-on...

Nintendo's New 3DS emulator isn't 100% like this one is, but it's clearly evident that it's excellent and thus is much closer to this end of the scale than it is to something like ZSNES, circa 2000.

Thankfully, accuracy seems to matter at Nintendo where this issue is concerned these days, and along with the drastically enhanced NES emulation on the NES Classic Edition, hopefully is a positive sign for the Switch and its own Virtual Console compared to the often slipshod emulators of the past.

@GoneFishin
It would be more sensible for Nintendo to simply improve the SNES emu for 3ds, rather than them stay exclusive to force people to upgrade. Or else to make up for the exclusivity to release more NES, Gameboy, Game Gear and TG16 VC, or better yet go the Sega route (which again are cheaper than nintys Rom dump)

If Nintendo thought it sensible to program a 3DS SuperNes emulator, they'd of done so. They didn't do this just to inconvenience you and restrict SuperNes portable sales to just a fraction of their 3DS install base.

@GoneFishin
That is exactly why they did it. Don't forget there is no dedicated emu program, every VC game you buy is wrapped in a emu program. Thus we can safely assume that each VC title has tweaks to it to get it to run properly. Considering the slow drip of releases (1 every 2 or 3 weeks), it's clear they need more competent coders.