Topic: Will every single game be on the Virtual Console?

With the expections of imports, I believe that every single game will grace the Virtual Console. We'll finally be able to see Earthbound and Banjo-Kazooie. We'll also have to put up with Action 52 and Superman 64. Am I saying every game will come during the Wii lifespan? No way! Of course it won't. But if Nintendo keeps supporting the Virtual Console throught out the successors of the Wii, we'll eventually see them, unless you count imports that is, and them some will get in. Licensing issues will be gone, so we'll eventually be able to play Batman Return for the SNES and Goldeneye007 for the Nintendo 64. Nintendo will promise to never go back to one-game week, so it'll make the wait shorter. Don't judge based on this generation, judge base on the future of Nintendo gaming!

I like your spirit, and it would be a wonderful dream come true, surely. But to be absolutely certain of anything takes time...I personally have no clue how Nintendo will EVER convince Rare (and several others) to give them the thumbs up for VC releases. But stranger things have happened. And hey, it's not like the House of N is strapped for cash...they spread enough of the wealth, we might just get lucky someday...in the (hopefully) not too distant future.

That's impossible,it will never happen!

issues with releasing everything:

well, theres the ones I listed here (https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/virtual_console/no_love_for_the_64?start=20). Also, Nintendo may stop the series when it is no longer profitable (but that won't be for a LONG time), or, if the virtual console does not exist on the next system, several years after the life of the wii. Interest could fade, which is a good possibility, and once again, there are some games they just can't get the rights to

In case your wondering, I'm not talking about releasing them all in one day, but gradually throughout Nintendo Wii's successors. Like release 2-6 games in a week should be normal, NO MORE ONE-GAME WEEK!

It SHOULD happen, though. Why should old video games be forgotten? The past is important - it is where we have come from, it defines the present and, most importantly, we learn a lot from it.

If you have a favourite movie that you enjoyed during your childhood, there's a good bet you can get a copy by simply walking into a high street store. A game, on the other hand, can be almost impossible to track down. Before we had the Virtual Console, how easy was it to obtain a copy of a game as groundbreaking and popular as Mario 64? You'd have to try e-bay or, if you're lucky, a second hand store. A game that changed gaming forever, yet was unavailable to buy to people who didn't get it during its popularity in the 90's.

So yes I hope every old game will find its way to release some day. Licences are a problem but old, obscure films with a ton of music and copyrights that need to be acknowledged find dvd releases despite the fact very few people will buy them. These things can be sorted but, at the moment, games just don't seem worthy enough to be remembered. At least Konami put some effort in with the Turtles games - I hope more follow their example.

I highly doubt anyone (please specify who "you" refers to by use of the reply button) seriously expects all of the games to be released in one day. I myself was talking about them being released at all. And as mentioned here by myself and Adam: https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/general_discussion/will_we... we might want to look towards the long-term business plan of Nintendo. If they plan on this service continuing past the Wii, its likely in their best interests (and they'd argue in ours) that they keep the releases as slow as they are so that we have something to look forward to. If all of the best games are released either quickly or early, then we'll have nothing good at ALL in the future.

Considering the rate of VC games being released weekly, no.

It's simply impossible. No offense, but you don't really seem to have much of an understanding of how things work. There are games out there that are rare enough that there aren't even ROMs of them illegally available. There's no way Nintendo will ever be able to license every game. Even asking for every Nintendo game is a long shot, due to licensing and legal issues changing over time. Assuming Nintendo carries the Virtual Console service into the future, it will become even more limited. There are only a couple of consoles the Wii can't emulate through VC that Wii 2 could, such as the Gamecube and Dreamcast. Arcade games are becoming more and more a dying industry. As they move into the future, they'll either start to only have games from one or two previous consoles to rerelease (Microsoft and Sony are basically there right now), or focusing on porting games rather than emulating. Unless something major were to happen, like Sony or Microsoft pulling or being forced out of the gaming hardware arena for some reason, or a new console failing. While the former would be incredible, it's happened in the past with Atari and Sega. In that case, it's not impossible to imagine whatever remnants of the company are left working with Nintendo. The latter isn't unheard of either, but there's much less effort to try to compete in the console market nowadays. If the Phantom (hah) ever comes out, or more likely exclusive titles are developed for OnLive, or one of the children oriented toy-like game platforms actually gets good games, it's possible those would be a small bit of fuel, but if they collapse it's unlikely they would've had many games worth playing.

In any case, the only possible way for all games to ever be on a single platform would involve A- a lot of games which are incredibly rare or even presumed destroyed to have copies made, B- either gaming to have been dead for nearly a century, a total removal or alteration of copyright law, or an extremely unlikely partnership between all major players in the video game industry, C- A system capable of storing huge amounts of data for larger games (don't mistake more recent with being larger, plenty of games in the multiple gigabytes even back on the PlayStation). All of these three are incredibly unlikely, and would happen long after our lifetimes at best.

It will happen eventually, but every game will not be one there at on time. If Nintendo gets the rights to GoldenEye they will probably lose the rights to another game, and it won't be on the next Wii's VC.

Thank you, Feba, for your additions and corrections to the reasoning of an incomplete virtual console. I know i can't be right all the time, and a lot of your stuff makes sense as something I hadn't thought of.

@metakirbyknight: GoldenEye is another Rare game. Also, rights do NOT work that way. Some businesses may work out trades in licenses, but its not a necessity. Its really just a matter of Microsoft working amicably with Nintendo, which is highly unlikely. For the most part, the only raregames that could be released on a nintendo CONSOLE are those starring nintendo characters (Donkey Kong Country, etc.). Handhelds are a different issue entirely, FYI, as Microsoft currently has no gaming handheld, Rare can (and has) develop for that.

By the way, if someone knows something that contradicts me factually, please let me know. I'd hate to shut down dreams unnecessarily and spread misinformation.

At some point in the (relatively distant) future all supported consoles will have all games from all or most supporting developers, excluding games under a license, or a developer like Rare, which has moved on to support a different company's systems.
Of course, I say distant future because 1 game a week, 2 on a good day, isn't exactly quick.

[RETRACTING the following statement (thanks, feba). keeping it up because I'm not going to say I didn't say it]

From my response #48 to subzerobf's thread "No love for the 64" (https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/virtual_console/no_love_for_the_64?start=40#reply-48):

"2. there is one more issue that hasn't been answered yet. Several of the better games on the N64, including many on subzerobf's list in post 1, are M rated games. As of last week's update, there isn't a single M rated game on the VC. I highly doubt there will be due to laws against selling Mature games to minors, and with Nintendo's protection of minors and a general inability to be 100% sure that's not who's buying them, we can basically take these games of the table. Which is a shame".

M rated games are fine on Virtual Console. See Splatterhouse 2. Japan also has a game rated CERO D on their virtual console, which is roughly equivalent to the ESRB's M rating. PAL also has a PEGI 18+ rated game.

There's no laws against selling Mature Games to minors in the US; it's been repeatedly deemed unconstitutional. Other regions also seem to have no problems against it; even if there were, Nintendo could put in safeguards. PSN and XBLA also both sell mature content without problems.

Lacking of evidence is not evidence of lacking.

My mistake, refer to here (https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/virtual_console/no_love_for_the_64?start=40), same post number, for my explanation for it. Sorry.

Yep, only reason there's so few M-rated games on the VC is the lack of M-rated games on the supported consoles in the first place. This isn't 1994 anymore.

I believe that every single game will grace the Virtual Console. We'll finally be able to see Earthbound and Banjo-Kazooie. We'll also have to put up with Action 52 and Superman 64. Licensing issues will be gone, so we'll eventually be able to play Batman Return for the SNES and Goldeneye007 for the Nintendo 64.

No. Licensing issues will never go away. To believe otherwise is to show complete ignorance in the way things work. Companies won't want to put out the big bucks required to get a license for an old movie to release a crappy game that won't sell well. And we won't see Banjo-Kazooie because of Rare's new partnership with Microsoft. All sorts of things get in the way of releasing a large number of games.