Topic: Nintendo's lack of support for N64 on VC.

This is getting pretty riduculous. Nintendo has really been lazy when it come to N64 games. Besides the fact that Super Smash Bros. and Majora's Mask are not out on the North America VC yet,there are TONS of N64 games to be released on the VC. Nintendo has been mainly just supporting NES games. They are now just beginnig to support SNES games, [where is Yoshi's Island!?]. But they are only 15 games for the N64 in North America,and only one game is made by a company not related to Nintendo [Crusin' USA that's a horrible game]. So what is up with the lack of N64 games on VC!?

I agree! Where is Donkey Kong 64? Mario Tennis? Goldeneye? Perfect Dark? Diddy Kong Racing? Banjo Kazooie? and other great N64 games by nintendo and rare? I could go on forever.

My guess is that the N64 just takes more effort to emulate than the rest of the consoles.

Rare games will never appear on the VC, aside from the DKC games, as Nintendo owns the Donkey Kong franchise. DK 64 and Mario Tennis are the only one's out of your list that have good chances of being released. Sorry.

I remember reading about the game support in the Nintendo64 being really bad (though I rarely played games at the time)...
Maybe that is the reason to the shortage of N64 games...

I think it's either Nintendo blocking third party support (which I partly believe is because they don't have some sort of method for Controller Pak heavy game) or nobody else is interested in putting their N64 library up. I wish we could figure this out, 2 and a half years and nobody's bothered to ask Nintendo or anyone about why we're only getting N64 games they had a hand in?

Come on. It's obvious that the best games for the service are saved for special events. If they gave us all of their best at once, a lot of people would still be whining about there being nothing worth playing...

That being said, the excessive amount of 1 game weeks will pose a problem if it continues...

Well, there aren't that many good games for the 64. About as many as the original Gameboy. And as Aenaida said, we won't get any Rare games.

But that said, it is surprising we don't have SSB, or Majora's Mask. Rayman 2 would be nice as well.

It makes sense to go through their older catalogs first. There's no telling how long Nintendo plans to support the Wii or what they plan to do about Wii DLC transferring to whatever the Wii's successor is. If the VC is in it for years to come, it would be best to save N64 games for much later. Perhaps on the next system there will be more storage space and better capabilities for emulating more advanced machines like Saturn and Dreamcast which would fit nicely with the N64. If they release everything now, they won't have much of a VC business to run in a few years.

Yes, I know there are a lot of games, but ignoring N64, licensed games, games by publishers that have no interest in VC, and all the awful games out there, I don't think Nintendo can sustain the VC on the current systems for more than maybe two or three years. By withholding N64 games, they'll have a large library to fall back on once the currently favored systems are dried up.

Just my personal speculation.

You should just rename the thread, Nintendo's lack of support for the VC. They just have no for-thought or planning into the VC and right now they are doing nothing to make the service stand out in my view.

Well there was the memory barrier with the SD card problem........now that it's fixed, I bet we will see more N64 games.

There are multiple reasons for that.

1.) Nintendo solved the expansion pak pproblem for N64 emulation recently
2.) Controller Pak problems for emulation - all or most 3rd party games
3.) Nintendo doesn't have the rights to most Rare games anymore on the N64 like Perfect Dark for an example since Microsoft owns Rare..
4.) The N64 had over 120 sports, racing, or extreme sports games. Big problem with that is most of those games have license problems.
5.) License problems with games that not sports. The N64 has at least 37 licensed games for the N64 that are not sports.
6.) Game companies that no longer exist orl making it barely after declaring bankruptcyare hurting the N64. See Titus, Ocean, Acclaim, Electro Brain(assets now owned by Sony), 3DO, video system, bam!, and Midway (rumors of being bought or taken over by numerous companies mentioned last month.)

7.) A good number existing N64 publishers haven't published a game on the vc by choice or some other reason. Infogrames(owns muliple companies that published games for the N64), EA, Ubisoft, T*HQ,Crave, SouthPeak, Take-Two Interactive (owns other N64 publishers), Atlus, and Kemco.

I think NA will get SSB64 on VC in 2 weeks

This doesn't really bother me, to be honest. The 64 era wasn't exactly Nintendo's finest hour.

I'd rather see the VC get quality imports we've never played than mediocre games from 12 years ago.

I know. Nintendo sold rare. but those games were on nintendo consoles and should belong to nintendo.

I don't think getting liscensed games is entirely impossible. They released 1080º Snowboarding, and it had a few liscensed brands in it. And then there was the editing done to Wave Race 64's Kawasaki banners.

Here the problem with that theory:Majora's Mask. You see,Majora's Mask is supposed to be coming out for the NA VC too. But unless Nintendo is super generous and gives us both games in 1 to 2 weeks back to back [yeah,right],we're going to be waiting awhile for either Smash Bros. or Majora's Mask. Nintendo is just lazy! I appreciate them releasing games like Super Mario RPG,Mario Golf,and others last year,but it's been MONTHS since we had a classic first-party VC Nintendo game.

Yeah,Rare games on N64 is pretty much impossible because of that 1 stupid mistake of Nintendo selling Rare to Microsoft. That's why I have a Xbox 360.

By the way,what about Hudson Soft's N64 VC support? There are at least six games that are on the N64 that are made by Hudson,namely the Mario Party series,Bomberman 64 1 and 2,and Bomberman Hero. So what's up with Hudson not supporting the N64 too? The N64 may have not have been the greatest console Nintendo have ever made,but it had some of the greatest games.

I think Nintendo should improve the emulation of Mario Kart 64. Cuz controller pak emulation is obviously possible with Crusin USA!

1.) Good thing they FINALLY fixed that, too. WAY overdue.

2.) The Controller Pak was so stupid to start with. It only existed to make the game carts slightly cheaper to manufacture, I believe (due to not needing built-in save features, of course). Probably the only way Nintendo could get people to release games on N64 at all since PS1 discs were so much cheaper to make. Even so, they've proven with Pokemon Snap that they CAN work around the issue. I refuse to believe that it's a significant barrier to releases.

3.) True that. Only other game Rare was involved in that we should expect to ever hit VC is Donkey Kong 64.

4.) I don't think anybody really expects any of THOSE games to hit anyway.

5.) Yes, many licensed games, sports or otherwise, would have problems releasing. But again, those aren't what we're really thinking about.

6.) HERE we have a REAL problem. If there's a problem determining who has the rights to a game, it won't release, period. Nothing anybody can really do for that one. Fortunately, I can't personally think of many (if any) games from those companies I care about being released. Sorry for those who can, of course, but it really can't be helped, sadly.

7.) An even BIGGER problem, and something of a curiosity in some ways. Ubisoft has released multiple PS1 games on PSN, but doesn't care about VC? Why? EA are jerks who probably don't see the value in VC (but may come around sooner or later, as Activision just FINALLY did). I can't comment much on most of the other companies. Atlus, however, is a truly lamentable loss, but not really for N64 games. They only did 3 for the system (Snowboard Kids 1 & 2 and Ogre Battle 64). I want to see Pieces (SNES) and Crusader of Centy (Genesis) on VC, though, so I wish they'd join the party already.

Well, that's my view of the situation. What a pain, huh? I think I'll go over to Atlus' website and see if I can complain, for all the good it'll probably do. Everything else seems to require the "wait and see" tactic, unfortunately.

There's really no excuse for Nintendo-made or published N64 games to show up more often. As for 3rd parties, they should do their best and deliver on the N64 finally!

I can't complain on Atlus' website. What they have to say (assuming that Nintendo hasn't changed policies since) is QUITE interesting, however. It's in the first post here: http://www.atlus.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8

3) Virtual Console: It's not up to us to decide what gets put on the VC. Bug NOA if you'd really like to see our games on it. Also, localizing old Atlus games for release on VC wouldn't make us any money, so there's almost no chance of it happening.

That makes it sound like Nintendo has to ask Atlus to release their game! Given that the post is so old (late 2007), this may already be common knowledge that I somehow missed out on. Did people around here know this already? It could explain the complete and total lack of games from certain publishers in a vastly different way than I'd previously assumed. Maybe they WANT to release VC games, but actually CAN'T?