Nintendo downloads: The calm before the 3DS

Today's Nintendo downloads include Natsume Championship Wrestling for Virtual Console, Arcade Essentials for WiiWare, and G.G. Series D-Tank and Shapo for DSiWare.

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It's officially the last Monday before Nintendo's 3DS becomes available in the US. Though the new handheld won't launch its store until May, it's set to play DSiWare titles along with its own Virtual Console of Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Game Gear, and Turbo Grafx 16 games.

Now might be a good time to look back on great Nintendo downloads over the years. Or, alternately, it might be time to release a few unknown indie games and an extremely obscure Super NES title. Guess which option Nintendo went for? Check out the full list of offerings below.

    Virtual Console

    • Natsume Championship Wrestling ($8, SNES)

    WiiWare

    • Arcade Essentials ($5)

    • Dive: The Medes Islands Secret demo (Free)

    DSiWare

    • G.G Series D-TANK ($2)

    • Shapo ($5)

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 21, 2011 7:00 AM

    Comment on Nintendo downloads: The calm before the 3DS, by Steve Watts.

    • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      March 21, 2011 7:04 AM

      It's such a shame what happened to the Virtual Console. So much potential wasted. The release scheduled slowed to a glacial pace and they're not even doing full VC support on the 3DS which would have been amazing.

      • reply
        March 21, 2011 7:16 AM

        I think if the games were just a little bit cheaper then people would be buying more VC games.

        • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
          reply
          March 21, 2011 7:17 AM

          Yeah, if they just gave up on the service without ever trying to lower the prices that would be really shitty.

        • reply
          March 21, 2011 5:10 PM

          At $1-2 a pop (e.g. phone app pricing), I would buy the ever-loving crap out of so many VC titles.

      • reply
        March 21, 2011 7:19 AM

        Agreed, although I think part of the problem may have been the industry's poor archiving history, a lot of stuff from the N64/PSX era and earlier is lost forever.

        • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
          reply
          March 21, 2011 7:21 AM

          Maybe the source code, but finding copies of the games that actually matter is never that big an issue. For the most part the VC games are just a ROM + Emulator package.

          • reply
            March 21, 2011 7:28 AM

            yeah, they might have to pirate their own games before sending it over to Nintendo, although I'm sure some of it is just IP problems.

      • reply
        March 21, 2011 8:02 AM

        If they had VC support of all SNES games I'd probably buy the 3DS at launch.

    • reply
      March 21, 2011 7:06 AM

      Seeing the line up it looks more like it'll be "the calm during the 3DS".

      • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
        reply
        March 21, 2011 7:25 AM

        It seems like consoles never have strong software launches anymore. Maybe it's just because of the time it takes to develop games these days? You'd think they'd be able to manage something for a handheld though.

        • reply
          March 21, 2011 4:17 PM

          I'm betting this is just a big marketing strategy, all of the really good games seem to come out around May, they are just probably building up a hardware base before then. Meh, I would like to see DoA as a launch title though.

    • reply
      March 21, 2011 7:25 AM

      Summary: Today's Nintendo downloads include Natsume Championship Wrestling for Virtual Console, Arcade Essentials for WiiWare, and G.G. Series D-Tank and Shapo for DSiWare.

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