Last week Nintendo of America changed things up by giving a preview of a couple of choice Virtual Console releases on the way, highlighting Double Dragon II and Life Force as arrivals over the following two weeks. Thanks to that we already know Life Force is due on 21st August, yet the latest Nintendo Download Update has highlighted some additional treats on the way in two weeks.
So, what's coming? We have an educational NES game (we're not kidding) and a much-anticipated 3DS retail title.
- Donkey Kong Jr. Math — 28th August (Wii U Virtual Console)
- Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (3DS eShop retail download)
That portable release is sure to have some fans pretty excited, though we're not sure the mathematical exploits of DK Jr. will have the same impact.
Are you planning to pick either of these up at the end of the month? Let us know.
Comments 54
Just in time for back to school?
I'll still pass.
At least we're getting it out of the way.
@TreesenHauser lol
We laugh at games like this, but I remember spending a lot of time with Number and Word Crunchers at elementary school as a kid.
100 percentile horse dung
It bad enough that the summer is about over and school about to start. We don't need to have a VC release that's about....................LEARRRRRNING!
No physical release of a Phoenix Wright game AGAIN??
@Porky "retail"
That dk jr math may be something my daughter would like.... But not at 4.99. Nintendo needs to work on the pricing structure of the VC something fierce.
I can imagine the hard decision in someone wanting to buy either the Wii U or the 3DS at that date.
Ludicrous
Why bother announcing DK Jr. Math at all?
If you only knew what shenanigans went on at Nintendo's secret Virtual Console meetings...
@CrazyOtto yeah, eventually they will ran out of NES games that can be published on the eShop and they might finally go with N64 Virtual Console
Now Nintendo is trolling us. This is a TRAVESTY. There are HUNDREDS, if not THOUSANDS of great games that should be on Virtual Console right now, and we're getting this worthless piece of garbagepoo?
I complain about the lacking quality in Virtual Console on Wii U every chance I get, with a Club Nintendo survey. They are definitely going to hear from me about this garbage.
Wii U is saved.
@JJtheTexan Well they don't have access to said hundreds to thousands of games.
Are you serious, Nintendo?? Why not Yoshi's Island for SNES?? (The GBA port is meh and clunky with terrible audio compared to the original). Why not DKC the trilogy? Why not some epic RPG like Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger or a Final Fantasy?? You can't because of copyright issues for being 3rd Party games?? Well how about Super Mario RPG then? Do you think there's somebody looking forward next week to download Donkey Kong Jr. Math??? Nintendo????????
@AdanVC Yoshi's Island SNES emulating FX chip issues
DKC Trilogy - Rare owned by Microsoft
Secret of Mana - owned by Square-Enix
Chrono Trigger - owned by Square-Enix
Final Fantasy Series - owned by Square-Enix
Super Mario RPG - possible issues since developed by Square-Enix
It is amazing how complicated some of the licensing and copyright issues are on old games. In licensed games the original developer may not have the license anymore (TMNT games for example) which makes reselling difficult, if not impossible.
Then there is the fact that the company no longer exists and the rights to the product has changed hands. Sometimes multiple parties believe they own something. Other times the rights holders are just not interested in releasing the back catalog onto the platform. Occasionally, people cannot figure out who owns the rights to ask permission because the creator passed away or there is poor documentation.
Even when there is no licensed product included, re-release can be difficult because there are multiple parties claiming copyright or ownership. Look at all the potential issues surrounding Earthbound (http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/02/earthbound-legal-issues/) that probably had to be vetted before it arrived on Wii U.
There are times when Nintendo is frustrating in releasing stuff that we want, but I would guess that most of the time there are compelling legal reasons for it not being there. Trust me, Nintendo wants to sell you stuff, but they have to do so legally and our system is a little messed up.
This news is mathematical! The Donkey Kong Jr. Math? I honestly have no fond memories of it, save for playing it on an emulator waaaaay back when. I honestly might get it, it does have a two player mode if I remember correctly.
Donkey Kong Jr Math confirmed for NES Remix 3
I think my son would love this.....but $4.99 is too steep. This is something that should be bargain priced at say $1.99.
@Gerbwmu agreed, this is a painfully old math tool that may be fun for a dollar but to charge $4.99 for this is just creepy.
@Gerbwmu
Well, keep in mind, back in the '80s this game used to be $40!
But yeah, sometimes I wish they had differing prices for "simplistic" NES games, like they do the simpler Gameboy games on 3DS. (Though, I will say $6 for the GBColor Zelda games & Mario Tennis is 1 dollar to much... They should not cost more then NES games... Glad I got the "Oracle" games when they were on sale for a $1-off each when they were first released.)
I would've gladly gotten Balloon Fight for $3, or $4 by now.
Y'know, "Mole Mania" is quite long for a $3 game, probably making it one of the best "buys" off the Virtual Console.
Donkey kong jr math? Really??? I have to say...big deal! NOT!!
@JJtheTexan Well technically there are probably only less than 60 games for the consoles Nintendo currently supports on the service that are still unreleased that Nintendo has any say about releasing on the service.
@WaLzgi @Neko_Rukiafan well, I'm also including MSX (lots of VC titles in Japan, zero brought West), Nintendo 64 (promised to us by Nintendo in 2011), Master System, Genesis / Mega Drive, Neo-Geo, arcade, PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16, etc. Not to mention the sudden death of Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Gear ports to 3DS.
If they would at least hurry up and bring over the remaining Wii Virtual Console games, I'd be happy. Running Wii Mode is a hassle.
I can play DK Jr. Math in Animal Crossing for Gamecube.
@Darknyht Rare already said they don't have the rights to the DKC Trilogy. Or DK64 and Diddy Kong Racing for that matter. Otherwise your comment is 100% right.
Dear God, I hate this news, but only because it's reminding me that I have to go back to school in 2 weeks...ugh...
Well, if math was ever fun, folks, this is it.
This is the last thing I need... MORE MATH.
And we thought apes were too dumb to learn math...
I really wonder why Nintendo insists on releasing so many mediocre NES games that nobody ever asked for. Such a waste of time and effort. Put out the best 20 or 30, ditto for the SNES and then move on to the N64 and Gamecube classics.
Wow, this is the first time I can actually say it would have been better if we had just gotten nothing that week. Donkey Kong Jr. Math is almost straight up insulting.
@JJtheTexan I've been doing the same thing, my friend. Surely Nintendo isn't blind to how pitiful the VC support has been up to this point. We probably aren't the only ones making our voices heard on Club Nintendo.
Seriously, their VC meetings have to go something like, "Well, let's see here. We can choose from Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Metroid Zero Mission, or we can bring N64 games to VC with Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. What do you all think we should do?"
board unanimously agrees with Donkey Kong Jr. Math
"That's exactly what I was thinking. Great work guys!"
There must be something else on the eshop that day. coff coff MK8 DLC
just when you thought they were done with NES DK...
@Nintenbomba64 I'm not sure whether you'll actually have to download the Mercedes DLC or if it'll come automatically with the update. The latter would be better for Mercedes but make gamers more angry.
Blahk, yuck, fooey !
um.... no.
@JJtheTexan I'm with you bro!! NOA are a bunch of morons!! You realIze wii u vc in Japan closing in on 200 titles while we're just passing 100? They suck!! Check out my list below!!
Really?? Sigh! This is crazy!! If you MUST release a game like this a least do it with 4-5 other titles to choose from??
Idk gamers but if I was in charge of wii u vc here's some of the games you'd see:
Crazy taxi, nights into dreams, luigis mansion, defender, joust, asteroids, pitfall, robotron 2084, super Mario 64, wave race 64, super Mario sunshine, kaboom!!, arkanoid, bubble bobble, centipede, millipede, missle command, ms PAC man, paperboy, gauntlet, moon patrol, super cobra, frogger, super breakout, tempest, road rash, Mario golf 64, Mario tennis 64, keystone kapers, megamania, stampede, gyruss, bezerk, frenzy, carnival, house of the dead 1-4, virtua cop 1-3,virtua tennis, virtua fighter series, SEGA rally championship, toe jam n earl, streets of rage 1-3, turbo, star raiders, outlaw, haunted house and sooooo many others!!!!!
You guys catch my drift??? This list here tells me Nintendo sucks at this bad!!
It's funny how even Nintendo isn't dumb enough to try and compete with (what I assume will be) MMX3 or Steamworld Dig.
The 28th could be a very good day (Tengami has been hinted at for the same day and Canadians may see Frederic next Thursday).
I've already pre-ordered Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney off of Amazon, so I'm all set until at least November.
@AdanVC Cause they don't have a damn clue that's why!!! ....see my short list below for games that should be posted by now if I was in charge!!
@WaLzgi They should be investing heavily to get access to as many classics as possible!! They do have the money!!
@IceClimbers Donkey Kong 64 contains Jetpac as a minigame though, and Rare do own the rights to that....they've made a suggestion in the past that Nintendo could just remove it and replace it with another game but of course that would involve Nintendo having to put the effort into actually altering a small part of the game and it doesn't look like they can be bothered.
The N64 version of Diddy Kong Racing contains a couple of characters owned by Rare (namely Banjo and Conker) so it would also have to be altered (in a similar way to how the Nintendo DS port was).
As for the original Donkey Kong Country games? I'm guessing Nintendo (perhaps) don't like the fact that they contain numerous Rareware logos and are therefore advertising a competitor as Rare are now owned by Microsoft. They could easily remove these, but again that would take a bit of time and effort that they seem unwilling to do I still don't understand why they had them on the Wii Virtual Console for a while and then removed them without reason, as Rare were long gone by then.
Hey, I always wanted to try DK Jr. Maths out
Well, before I was 9 (my DS era) mainly my games were Educational (Make 10- A Journey of Numbers (for DS) was simply awesome. Sadly it's underrated because it's educational, but it's 1000x better then Dr. Kawashimas Brain Damaging.) excluding my first Games (PS2) Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom/The Movie and Sonic Heroes and the Nintendogs Clones Petz
Yeah...
@joey302 Yeah, SEGA does not want to port and the rest... Copyright mainly.
I await a serious review of DK Jr. Math.
@NodesforNoids Exactly. Someone that gets it. Nintendo pull out first party games nobody is interested in (or nothing at all) when there are good things coming out that don't need their spotlight stolen by a re-release of a retro game.
why is this coming out
they got the supply but there is no demand
this makes no sense
why god whyyyy???
My math is a little rusty so maybe I should buy this... Haha.
I remember when my homeboy got this for Christmas!!! The face he had was priceless!!!
@ghasfarost Yeah, the Wii U VC is even slower than the Wii VC but at least they got their 1st party games out of the way alot quicker.
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