Topic: Yoshi's Cookie

Any idea why this game is not on Wii U VC?

@Don
I have no idea.
Ask Nintendo directly.

@Anti-Matter

Nintendo never answers anything. Their response is always "We have nothing to announce at this time."

They can't sell it because it doesn't belong to them.

They'd need to get the licence back and that's probably too much problem for them.

@Meowpheel It's Yoshi. Then who does it belong to?

It's also on Wii VC.

Hermetica belongs some other studio.

They licensed the gameplay concept to nintendo and they made Yoshi's Cookie.

The snes game is an interesting reversal, the studio that owns the game got a license from nintendo to use the yoshi brand in their game.

@Meowpheel But it's on Wii VC...

Last time I heard, it was removed.

Yes, Yoshi's Cookie on Wii VC was the only game I know of where Nintendo gave an explicit warning they were going to completely remove it from the server and would not be redownloadable.

The gameplay of Yoshi's Cookie is owned by some Intellectual Property Holding Company or something.
(as credited on the Japanese GameCube version and in the Operations Guide of the Wii VC version)

Essentially Yoshi's Cookie originated as a game called Hermetica developed by a company called Home Data (who made some other console games but I think also a number of ADULT arcade games). BPS (Bullet Proof Software, who I think changed their name to Blue Planet Software before they dissolved, which was started by the Tetris Company head guy I think) got consoles rights, sold the CODE to the NES version to Nintendo, and then published the SNES version.
Since the GC version was credited to whatever that holding company was (which I assume is where Home Data's other IP went), I assume Nintendo has not owned the rights to the gameplay, and has to re-license it to re-release since then.

@Meowpheel Didn't know that, makes sense in that case.