Betagam7

I just wish DS Lights would hit rock bottom so I can replace my old Phat with its broken hinge.

Won't be throwing away my GBC, SP or Micro then...not that I ever had any plans to do so. Nothing beats playing on the original hardware.

As with the Wii VC it looks as though Nintendo is trying to get away with simply making the minimal required effort and churning out another overpriced ROM-factory. It hasn't learned at all what people want and is clearly expecting the consumer to lap it up all over again. I think it's in for a rude awakening.

Way to defy the point of portability Nintendo. Some of us like to travel with our portable systems and that includes moving between regions.
I suppose at least with the 3DS we don't have to worry about ropey PAL conversions...or do we?

Wow, if this is true then Nintendo really is on a 90's vibe. Stiffing europe with 50hz retail releases and now not bothering to bring RPG's to the west.

It's like owning a SNES all over again.

Does the game have infinite continues?

I've only played 'passage' on the PC.

It isn't so much a game as a comment on life, full of subtle little metaphors about the journey through it. If I owned a DSi I'd buy this for the measly asking price just to thank Jason for making a game that brought about genuine emotional content.

Won't Arcade GnG have unlimited continues...thus making it easier rather than more difficult in the long run if not the short run?

Yep, Ghosts and Goblins and Exed Exes confirmed for VCA next Friday.

They are 200 points for goodness sake. It's fantastic to see passage opened up to a wider audiance.

Good.

Nintendo deserves to see this bomb in sales. Credit to the informed consumer who doesn't purchase their shoddy goods.

The demo sold me. Looking forward to enjoying the rest of it.

Nintendo continues to ensure I don't give it my money with more 50hz output.

At the very least I would hope that this can finally be the game that can be given seperate review scores by Nintendolife for the PAL and NTSC version. I realise the possible impracticalities of doing this for VC games but this is a retail release that, when all is said and done, people will be paying around £20 for...that would seem important enough to me to justify seperate review scores so that its noted clearly and firmly that the PAL version is inferior.

Perhaps seeing its ratings dive in metacritic averages might finally wake Nintendo up a little.

@ Alfred.

It seems so obvious doesn't it? But then a lot of things do and yet seemingly don't occur to Nintendo. The best thing you can do is express your disappointment to them directly via their UK service centre and request that your complaint is passed on to Nintendo Europe's HQ.

NintendoServiceCentre@codestorm.co.uk

@ Big A2

That doesn't make sense

I think I might know what you are suggesting though, that Nintendo might have optimised the game to at least run full screen if only in 50hz as it does with its SNES VC titles? We'll have to see.

@ DrDaisy

It's not really about choppyness.

The game will run 17.5% slower than NTSC versions, it'll also more than likely have black borders at the top and bottom of the screen and a squashed display as a result. This is how the SNES game was and as it seems that this is little more than a Rom dump on a disk then this is probably more than likely how this game will look/play.

What can I say? A sadly all too predictable disgrace, even if I never believed when I wrote the abovementioned article that Nintendo would stoop so low as to output 50hz disk based retail releases in 2010.

Sadly, the decision was more than likely a very easy one for them to take. People have been happilly buying their 50hz VC releases and accepting second class service. Even now with trading standards investigating consumer complaints for a second time they are still mislabelling certain games as 'runs in 60hz' (they've only just gotten around to removing that little white lie from games such as Ironclad and MUSHA after almost a year of false advertising).

The statement above from what I presume are Codestorm (Nintendo's UK customer service team) even appears to reflect their own frustration at Nintendo Europe with the use of "unfortunately".

I suggest everyone who now won't be buying the game drop Nintendo an email to tell them why they are losing your money this Xmas.

It might just make them think again when next time around, even if it is too late to save this one.

Interesting review. I'm considering it.

Even though I always played this fella on the Amiga at the time I remember having lots of fun with it. The C64 port also wasn't bad.

It had a nice "Jet Set Willy" vibe about it with the individually named screens.

"do we really need another version of the original Makaimura?"

I'd say yes. Who want's to play the 50hz glitchy NES version?

Keeper, the thing about Rygar is that it doesn't let you continue for the last few levels which means its still very difficult, if not barely impossible to complete.

The £64'000 question:

Would Nintendo really ruin this by lazily slapping the 50hz ROM onto the disk?

Finally a VC service where we won't have to be concerned about the PAL conversion!

Yeah, Geist wasn't good...

...it was fantastic! Seriously, Geist was a very, very well made, interesting and above all original title that was way more than just another first person shooter. It's a shame that some had a problem with what were for me its perfectly respectable graphics. I'm now sorry I didn't buy the game back at its release and only picked it up second hand years later. I enjoyed it immensely and would have liked to have supported it with a purchase in retrospect.

Eurocom have made some excellent games in the past; most notably the terrifically underrated Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy which really deserves far more praise than it gets. If they can do as good a job on Goldeneye then I'm sold.

Another 50hz Neo Geo title is of no real interest to me.

I'll stick to playing the selection of 60hz fighters on the SNK Wii collection.

Beat this back in the day. Very cinematic and a lovely bittersweet ending to it. The bit in the gladatorial arena was a horrendous piece of trial and error though...although that may have been the intention.

Just picked this and Flashback up on ebay from Demon212 so will give them both another blast later in the year when I collect them.

I downloaded the game, it does have borders, quite large ones, at the top and bottom but also oddly has a third border down the right hand side of the screen, I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the partial optimisation hinted at in this article:

http://www.giantbomb.com/sunsoft/65-19/

Could the implementation of the vertical border be done to effectively reshap the screen back into how it would have looked originally and if so why not just spend time removing the original borders?

Puzzling. It will be really interesting to see what shape this arrive in as a NA import.

Interesting that this is perhaps the first time that NA gamer's will be paying extra for a 50hz PAL "import". I'm presuming the game has not been altered in any way to make it run in 60hz for our NA cousins.

Or could it be that the game is automatically sped up in the manner of NA C64 releases?

Can anyone confirm?

Most hilarious of all was Reggie making the following absurd statement:

"Describe another form of entertainment that has a vibrant used goods market. Used books have never taken off. You don't see businesses selling used music CDs or used DVDs"

Errr.....

It's good that Nintendo is starting to come to terms with the fact that tackling piracy in its current authoritarian manner is only ever going to be counter productive.
A fresher better approach would be for the company to encourage pride in ownership. Look how many collectors there are out there who own hundreds of games and would never dream of counting ROMS as part of their prized collection. Sites like Backloggery are now becoming more and more commonly used and again, reflect a growing interest in actually owning games. There are surely similar ways that Nintendo can encourage people to take pride in their physical or digital collection; perfecting its own emulation of digital offerings on the VC would be a good start, as would offering incentives to download these over mere ROMS.

I'd rather see Karnov's arcade game appear on the VCA than have his NES game show up in PAL territories given the likelyhood that it, like this, would arrive in 50hz there.

I've found that the game is more than beatable in a limited number of credits if you change the settings to 4 lives and 5 life bars.

The default settings really are too stingy to let you progress in the final level where there are essentially three bosses and few restart points.

This reminds me of Orbient: I'm in!

I wasn't so sad to pay the extra 100 points as it means the game is in 60hz!

I am sad about the annoying difficulty curve though!

I've never had a problem with the pricing of VC titles...it's the terrible PAL conversions we suffer that Eurogamer would do better to quiz Nintendo over.

MrMystery; there are always people who believe that "nothing will be done". People said it was a waste of time complaining about the Last Ninja 3 issue, yet consumer action got that title removed and refunds issued, something that wouldn't have happened if people sat on their hands waiting for Nintendo to decide to fix it. People said there was no point in complaining about the misleading advertising over IronClad, yet people who complained have received complaints.

People said "nothing will be done" when complaints were flying in about the storage solution situation. Low and behold Nintendo acted when they realised lack of storage was costing them sales.

In the 90's there were plenty of people who said that complaining about PAL ports wouldn't achieve anything yet Nintendo, Sega, Sony et al listened quickly enough when people began turning to grey imports.

Nothing is ever gained by saying "nothing will be done" but something is nearly always gained by doing something.

Simply not buying the broken titles is an admirable suggestion but when that equates to 75% of the VC's library then why is that an option that people should have to sit and take, when a ready made solution is staring Nintendo in the face.

Much like the storage solution situation, it is simply going to take enough people to tell Nintendo that it is haemoraging sales due to the lack of an easily fixable solution to get the company taking the issue seriously.

200 points equates to a piddling amount of money that will be easily rewarded by the fun five minute sessions that this game will provide.

I have the original ticking away in my house and it still gets regular airing between myself and my partner. Great fun and in respect of the price (around £1) it more than deserves the 8/10, imo.

Anyone who bought the Megadrive Hanabi titles is well within their rights to do the same.

Meanwhile, over the pond:

http://www.idyacy.com/output/558a3cfb1997ae6f7cb811a3218ff67e.swf

Ristar, they have nothing to "investigate", they have already given out at least one refund over the issue:

http://www.vc-forums.com/showpost.php?p=150589&postcount=34

followed by

http://www.vc-forums.com/showpost.php?p=152336&postcount=40

Don't let them fob you off with excuses.

The next step might be to contact Nintendo for an update on this situation (particularly the false advertising over Megadrive Hanabi games)

For the UK and Ireland that means an email to:
nintendoservicecentre@codestorm.co.uk

For our German Readers its: info@nintendo.de

Spanish readers can contact them here: contact@nintendo.es

While our Australian friends don't seem to have been given the option of emailing them (a bit like all those missing Aussie VC titles!) but can find other methods of contacting them here:

http://www.nintendo.com.au/index.php?pageID=11

Swedish customer service seems to have been farmed out to a 3rd party, details here:

http://www.nintendo.se/contact

While Norway gets the slightly better: support@nintendo.no

There will be others that I've missed off but the point is that if everyone who has taken the time to comment on this article can also find a few minutes to email their local Nintendo HQ then we might just send them a message.

Keep the faith, we have nothing to lose by trying and history tells us that its something that was achieved through similar methods in the past. Keep the emails polite and logically argued and we'll see what Nintendo has to say for itself.
I've actually been really pleased by the lack of negative comments and its great to here that so many other people have yet to become jaded by this and are still keen on trying to get Nintendo to reform its policy...to do so (even if it doesn't come this generation) will hopefully send a message to other services pulling the same stunt (PSOne Classics anyone?)

Stardust, I agree that would have been a good solution had we seen this coming in advance however by the time the VC launched many of us had already purchased our Wii's and several games by the time we realised that we were going to be stuck with this problem, that's why many of us are still hopeful Nintendo can come to its senses.
Surely it can't be happy to learn that people making up its userbase are actively avoiding its products because of this issue, nor should it dismiss them as geeks and otaku when, quite frankly, geeks and otaku are exactly the core userbase that a retro download service should be catering to. Wii-fit moms certainly arn't the ones downloading M.U.S.H.A!

Whatever the future holds for the issue the question Nintendo must answer in the present is why it is misleading customers into potentially purchasing games such as the abovementioned title by claiming they run in 60hz when they do not. This is, without question, false advertising and anyone who bought a title under this premise should be querying it and asking for their points to be reimbursed.

Interesting views WiiLovePeace, however from the 100+ comments here so far, what is "plain to see" is that you appear to be in the minority. Waverace 64 is certainly a terrific game...in its original format. to anyone who's played that format, the humungous borders and abysmally choppy framerate and squashed graphics of the PAL version are a real travesty. It's a fact that these are all things present in the PAL version and closing your eyes and denying their existence doesn't alter that fact.

I see your argument though; you're perfectly content to eat fishsticks while the rest of the world dines on caviar; that's your own prerogative.

My argument is that when I walk into a restaurant and order caviar, when the restaurant menu clearly states caviar, when I am billed the exact same price as the customers who are eating caviar...I don't want the waitress to bring me fishsticks.

"buy the points from Nintendo"? - dear me, what a shambles.

Ristar, I am aware of at least one PAL owner who purchased IronClad under the misleading "runs in 60hz" banner, being given a full refund of his points when he complained to Nintendo's UK service centre. The precedent has, it seems, been set.

It seems Nintendo only gave the refunds for LN3 to those who had logged a complaint prior to myself reporting them to UK Trading Standards and accelerating the issue. Refunds for that game have now seemingly been handed over to Commodore Gaming. If they continue to delay on giving you your money back then i would suggest contacting Trading Standards yourself through their website. They are very quick and efficient at chasing up such matters on your behalf.

I'm not worried about what PS3 or 360 owners get.
Let's just hope that PAL owners get the NTSC version of the SNES game and not the 50hz PAL original.

In the 90's this issue led to people turning away from purchasing PAL consoles and instead importing the superior NTSC machines and games or modifying their consoles to run in 60hz, all practices we know Nintendo seeks to discourage. The question for Nintendo is; in 2010, do you really wish to recreate that situation?

The issue regarding the misselling of Sega Megadrive titles (and for a short time Iron Clad for Neo Geo) erroneously advertised as 60hz is also something they should be treating with a degree of seriousness, especially after they were reported to trading standards and forced to remove Last Ninja 3 after having sold this faulty piece of software to PAL VC owners for over a year.

Over 100 responses to this article in a little over 24 hours (combined with the independent creation of a protest facebook group and petition of 2000+ signiatures) almost all largely condemning the 50hz practice seems to tell its own story about how its PAL customers view the issue. Perhaps its now time Nintendo themselves were guided towards this content and encouraged to provide an articulate and reasoned response to what appears to be large scale European consumer dissatisfaction with the service being provided.

Perhaps the most alarming thing for Nintendo is the revelation that many people who have commented here are actively avoiding using the VC service because of this issue, surely that, if nothing else should be a motivation to a company that is openly keen to promote and grow its online services to the extent that it runs a connection ambassador programme.

Bulbasaurus Rex:

The simple answer to your question is YES! There are even some on the VC; nearly every C64 game for example. Because the majority of these games were developed in PAL regions they wern't converted properly for NTSC for many of the same reasons. As a result, while you don't lose any of the picture, C64 games are sped up in NTSC, making what was already a difficult batch of games even trickier. I neglected to point this out in my article but thanks for reminding me as it demonstrates that even if only in small incriments, lack of proper optimisation affects the NTSC crowd too.

There are some European developed console games which are similarly affected such as Shadow of the Beast for the Genesis which plays absurdly fast in NTSC (some further info on this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Beast#Sega_Mega_Drive.2FGenesis), but as yet none that I'm aware of have hit the NTSC VC.

Timp29: Yes you are correct that Ninja Gaiden's pal release was the 60hz import.

Tank2Tank: The Version of SMB released on the PAL VC was the "Speed corrected" version found on the SMB/Duck Hunt combo cartridge. It was, as you speculate, a not entirely succesful early attempt to correct some of the issues found in the original release.

Here's another interesting fact. As well as GC Animal Crossing, Wii Smash Bros Brawl's "masterpieces" are also the 50hz PAL originals despite the main game itself running at 60hz. It's to be supposed that Nintendo didn't want to give the game away with a straight NTSC port that revealed the differences in these mini-games to the actual VC content available, although humourously its there for all to see everytime an 'unsquashed' 60hz Mario runs across the screen for a VC download, looking ever so slightly taller than he does in the VC version we get to play!

It will be interesting to see whether or not the SNES PoP game unlocked in UBISOFT's new Wii Prince of Persia will be the PAL or NTSC version, given that they have no such interest.

@ Ren

All NES VC PAL titles run in 50hz except for the Hanabi releases.

Yes, this does indeed suck.

@ Buffalobob. Unfortunately although they are currently the worst offenders on VC, the problem does not just rely with Sega. Every NES game, for example runs in 50hz with borders and slower speed.
Also, "recoding" isn't what we are asking for and as the article relays, if Nintendo allowed a 60hz/50hz option as standard it wouldn't actually be necessary. This is how Wii games themselves are able to run full screen and full speed without the recoding work that once would have needed to be done on, say, a Shadows of the Empire.

@ Genjuro, nice work with the facebook group, if it is indeed you who created it. I've joined and I hope others will too:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=113312485358377&ref=ts