Mario Kart 64 on Wii U VC Doesn't Have Support for Ghost Data

Very strange--as Donkey Kong 64 on the Virtual Console supports it.

Eh, it's not terribly heartbreaking. I'll be happy so long as this game sees a North American release. What other significant games used the Controller Pak that haven't been ported to the Virtual Console?

@Plainsville Are you sure you're not thinking of the Expansion Pak? Although I'm not the most knowledgeable on N64 hardware, maybe that's the same thing or DK64 used them both, I dunno.

You know if they put some extra effort into some of these classics,they could add online leaderboards and multiplayer.It would certainly breath new life into them and justify making us buy them for a 2nd or 3rd time .SEGA done it with Street Fighter 2 on the Wii VC so it can be done.

@Plainsville The DK64 manual says nothing about the controller pak, only the RAM expansion pak and Rumble pak.

http://www.gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_N64//Manual/formated/Donkey_Kong_64_-1999-_Nintendo.pdf

@OorWullie Should be done... Plain and simple.

@Discostew @Not_Soos Whoops, I was wrong. Sorry about that.

I still think this is absurd though; the games come out so far apart, you'd think they'd make the effort to at least make these games fully operational.

I remember reading the same issue mentioned here in the Wii Virtual Console review of Mario Kart 64 nine years ago! Wow, I feel old.

Never mind the n64 what about cube games on vc I mean £8.99 for an old n64 game is pricey when you can buy gamecube games with much better graphics and more content and better controls?

I'm not going to loose sleep over it.....

(Thunder sound effect from Mario kart 64 plays)

In the original game, couldn't you do time trials, but you just couldn't save them? It appears you can't do time trials at all on the VC version.

Strange, because the Project64 emulator simulates the Controller Memory Pak just fine... Why can't Nintendo's own emulator accomplish what an old third party one can? I could understand Nintendo's greenhorn emulation knowledge with the Wii, but with the Wii U, there's no excuse for lack of experience.

Recently come to light????. It's same as Wii VC that's been available since 2007

Bummer. Well, at least this time N64 games support rumble and suspend states, neither of which were available on the Wii VC's N64 games. And save states are also an obvious plus.

I don't care.

Perhaps amiibo cards can be made to support this kind of functionality?

In any case, this sort of functionality is pointless. I think the omission of multiplayer for DS games on Wii U is a far more pressing issue. I see no reason why they couldn't at least support Download Play for multiple DS/3DS units.

Funny how Nintendo, being the makers of the N64 and the one with all the N64's documentation, still can't emulate their own hardware. Shocker.

My reaction to their inability to program VC properly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIgfiSzCy1o

It baffles me how bad Nintendo are with emulation. Hobbyists can do a better job trying to backwards engineer stuff in their spare time, but full time coders with access to all the original hardware specs make such a mess! They're actually going backwards with the dull colour issue in the Wii U's N64 emulation.

Do save states not alleviate this problem?

Its why I love the SNES Street Fighters on the Wii U VC as for the first time they remember my stats which never happened on the cartridge.

Sony are currently re-released ps2 classics with trophy support and (from what I understand) a bit of spit and polish. Nintendo really should look at what competitors are doing occasionally. Not for everything, but just for a few things it would be nice.

I'm not terribly bothered about this, however I wish they would sort out the muddy screen all n64 games on wii u seem to have. You expect nintendo games to be bright and colourful and it was really apparent as soon as I loaded this up yesterday, everything just seems to have a dull grey overlay it's quite depressing

Being honest, Nintendo literally put the bare effort with their VR released this is so easy to fix but we all know Nintendo and they wouldn't bother

I actually had the Controller Pak back in the good old days, and it still would not let me save ghosts. Only a few years ago I found out that holding Start while powering the console on with a game that support the Controller Pak allows you to see what has been saved.

Mario Kart 64 requires that you use ALL the blocks. Yes, you need one Controller Pak with nothing else saved on it, just to save ghosts and get rid of the "can't save ghost run" message during Time Trial.

What's worse is you can only save 2 ghosts. Even worse, it will only save the ghost if you have a perfect run. So if you hit an enemy, fall off etc, it won't save the ghost.

So while this is Nintendo being very lazy (heck, Project 64 emulator supports Controller Pak), you aren't missing much. Your Time Trial times will still save.

It's a shame that Nintendo hasn't worked some sort of virtual memory card into the N64 Virtual Console. While the majority of first-party/second-party games used EEPROM, SRAM or FlashRAM, there's a good chunk of third-party games that don't (probably because it made the cartridges cheaper to order). While the N64 is not renowned for its third-party software library, there's still a number of great games that people are missing out on. Moreover, it further adds to the misconception that the N64 "only had a few good games".

I haven't played any N64 titles on my Wii U but can you have save states as per SNES games? I don't remember N64 games having them on Wii VC — if not, then that pretty much guarantees we're not going to get any Controller Pak-only games.

@MegaWatts N64 on Wii U DOES have Restore Points, yes.

And yes, the controller pak was mostly used as a way to help third parties get cheaper game carts to improve developer support. I really hope they can get that worked out or we'll have even less chance of some real gems like Goemon's Great Adventure hitting VC.

@Stuffgamer1 Ah, that's good to know! In which case, I imagine maybe Nintendo is worried it'll cause confusion when the game asks the player to save the game and it then doesn't work.

The funny thing about Goemon's Great Adventure is that the Japanese version of it actually saves to cart! If only they'd invested a little bit more when it came to the Western versions (thankfully I've played it through so many times I remember everything anyway!).

@MegaWatts Ugh...yeah, the localization of that one was a bit cheap. Cut out Japanese songs for no good reason, too. sigh

It could be related to the restore points actually. I think this time it was more of a choice to avoid any issues as we have rumble pak support just fine

I think Nintendo's time would be better spent working on some new games for us.

I thought it was a great feature, racing against yourself or a friend to stay sharp, shame it's missing on the Wii U.

Sounds like this might be the last nail in the coffin for my, admittedly, slim hopes of seeing Castlevania 64 on the VC. For those who don't know, a controller pak is required to save the game. Guess it's a good thing I still have my N64, cartridge, and controller pak.

Really happy to have it on WiiU played it lastnight with pro controller but couldn't get 2 player to work with p1 on game pad and p2 on pro control 😐
anyone know if that's possible please?

While this is an issue which could easily be fixed, it isn't as big as multiplayer handheld platforms, Pokemon Red, Green, Blue and Yellow have resolved this issue while blocking the use of Restore points so you can't clone Pokemon is also a good idea to stop this, yet I'm disappointed you can't clone. Haha This does give me hope that more handheld games will follow this trend (Excluding GBA and DS on Wii U, most likely on NX if it is a Fusion Console).

As for Nintendo 64 and Controller Pak, it could be an easy fix, but in Mario Kart 64's case, it isn't that big of an issue, would I love to save my Ghost Data? Sure I would, just want to beat my best time and helping me remember how I did it. For games that require the Controller Pak to save major data or to save the game anyway, you could always use the restore points or suspension points when you open the game up again.

Although this does make me skeptical for a potential future GCN VC library. Sure it is likely an easy fix again like Controller Pak, but the GCN games don't have any Master Saves and relied on Memory Cards, so you wouldn't be able to save GCN games unless you used Restore Points, you could work around this in Pokemon Colosseum/XD by having an automatic Restore Point Save happen before Trading in the after game so cloning doesn't work, even then, these 2 would only release after Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen and Emerald hit VC as well, could be a complicated process to trade on NX though if it is a fusion which is why I don't see it happening unless it allows you to run 2 games at once.

Pikmin and Pikmin 2 could be another example, you shouldn't be able to create restore points while in the level, while only being able to create them on the main menu, save select, stage select etc. But that's probably just the Pikmin fan in me wanting to keep the challenge. Haha

Animal Crossing GCN would probably work like Wild World, although Wild World on a future VC release could get Multiplayer, not as big as Pokemon multiplayer, but at least it would be there, just how much would Nintendo be willing to invest in Multiplayer Handhelds could be another issue, Pokemon is a big franchise which relies on Multiplayer as a key element which is why that is getting it.

If I've missed anything out, let me know.

@Rockman55 Restore Points could help with the issue? Never played the game, but I'm just getting ideas out there.

One of the main reasons I bought the wii u was to have classic N64 games to play again, have to say I've been quite disappointed by the presentation of them on the wii u.
I know the N64 is getting on but as mentioned above the games look really washed out and grey.
Not the loving nostalgia trip I was hoping for.
On the plus side the wii u games are awesome.

Lazy, lazy, lazy, overpriced ROM dump from Nintendo. As usual!

Well, Mario Kart 64 isn't a MK game that has aged well anyway...

Well it's either emulate the controller pak or the rumble pak, & I'd prefer to have rumble over ghost data any day!

Don't really care for ghost data, but it's hilarious that even after 10 years Nintendo STILL can't do emulation right.

So I'm guessing those SD Card we put on our Wii U was never useful then? Seriously Nintendo your console had an SD card slot, 4 USB ports, and a 32GB hard drive, how hard is it to just implement the feature to at least one of those?

@InternetBowser Why bother though? It would make much more sense just to release more MK8 DLC than to add online multiplayer to MK64 but that doesn't seem to be happening either.

While not a huge loss, youd think that this is a feature they would implement from the getgo, should another company try to release games that exclusively save on controller packs.
The weirdest part for me is the inconsistency of it all. With some games they go the extra mile and translate them (Sin and Punishment), with others, they implement Link-Cable emulation (Pokemon) which is among the hardest aspects to emulate and then you have titles released with the wrong localisation (EU eshop: Golden Sun is english only, Mario Tennis is multi, Mario Golf is english only again) and here, they missed controller packs, which is, emulator wise, just pointing to a specific save file pretending to be a CP....

I get that putting so much effort into cheap old games is not a good business decision. But at least keep it consistant. Especially in times, where the VC makes up the majority of your library,

Block Fort, Skyscraper, and a gang of trash talking nostalgics. We good.

Laziness, that's the answer. When Nintendo decides to emulate a game properly, they also charge an extra for the job that every homebrew emulator do flawlessly: Pokémon R/B/Y trading.

Now it's just laziness. Maybe with the Wii version it wasn't going to quite work or some other excuse but now we're getting GBA eReader levels, expansion pack games and other bonus contents unlocked for us. Controller pack data shouldn't be locked unless there's some other reason for it now. Copyright issue? Names we can't have out there anymore? Game breaking glitches? Really awkward. Although the ghost data doesn't bother me being missing, it isn't pretty looking anymore.

@Peach64 Nintendo does a decent job at emulation compared to some PC emulators that have random pop in and other technical glitches. For example on Project64, Mario Kart 64's Wario Stadium and Luigi's Raceway doesn't display the Jumbotron screen footage in the background. As long as the core game is intact and relatively lag free I can live without the inclusion of some hardware emulation or network features. For me the exclusion of ghost data is okay, I can live without it. As I previously had this on the Wii VC I will be buying it for Wii U VC when and if it comes out in NA.

Well, there's always the NX VC version. Maybe they'll fix it then...

So when is this coming to the US? Also, when will they update their emulators to run at 1080p natively in the game rather than just 480p?

Again Nintendo sourcing as little time / money as possible with a VC release. It's quite annoying.

@bofis they won't....

Nintendo is really doing as little as possible with the Wii U VC...

I'm not sure if it's been addressed already but there is a big problem with the lack of Controller Pak support. Almost every third-party N64 game required the Pak, which means that a good majority of the N64's games won't be on the eShop if Nintendo truly decided against emulating it. This means that games like Gex 3, Hybrid Heaven, Resident Evil 2, Fighter's Destiny, Rayman 2, Tonic Trouble, Glover, Turok, Nightmare Creatures, and Rocket: Robot on Wheels will not be available. Without Rare's games or third-party games, the N64 selection on the eShop isn't going to be as good as it could be.

Most N64 game carts had internal memory for saving progress, but certain games like Mario Kart 64 made use of the memory cart. Basically for MK64 the ghost data was a record of your best run in time trials, and you could in turn save your best run and take it to your friends house to challenge them to beat it. Keeping in mind this little bit of data was a hog that just about completely filled the official memory packs anyway, it's a feature I didn't really use anyway.

@Nico07

That's actually been fixed for some time, it has to do with the framebuffer, which has been corrected with newer plugins. I won't say anymore about it on here.