I knew it had to happen sooner or later, but this is a bummer. You can only buy things until March of 2018. Redownloads stop in 2019. There are many Indie and Virtual Console gems on here that may never be purchasable again. Some really great stuff not released anywhere else in fact. First “store” to close on a console? I think so?
That sucks. I understand not allowing new purchases after a point, but cutting off downloading of previously bought titles?
Yuck.
OG Xbox LIVE Arcade.
Yeah, I agree that sucks. I’m not sure what the answer is necessarily, but it seems like there should be one. Hurry up and fill your fridge before it’s too late, I guess? I’m going to be sure to download everything I own and probably still pick up a handful of things we may never see again like Contra Rebirth and Castlevania Rebirth. I think all the Neo Geo stuff will be covered on current systems, but Virtual Console imports are the other major ones. I already have Sin and Punishment, but I recall a few others that I never got.
Nintendo has released a handful of Hudson TurboGrafx-16 stuff on Wii U, but there are some solid games like Lords of Thunder only hidden away on Wii Virtual Console. My Wii Fridge is located on my Wii U now. It’s at least easy to have a big enough place to put things.
Unfortunately, outside of first-party titles that should have no availability issues beyond emulation accuracy on relevant platforms (N64 and onward), the concept of the Virtual Console as a maintained library of classic video games for sale has grown more and more tenuous over the years, as publishers close down, other publishers (that may have different views on how older titles should be distributed) buy up IPs in fire sales, companies leave video games entirely (as seen with Irem), and rights ownership becomes murky (No One Lives Forever, anyone?), and it’s not hard to see why Nintendo might want to leave that particular iteration of the platform behind after over a decade, rather than expending resources to maintain it when the primary platform that supports it has effectively been off the market since 2012. It just gets worse when you throw WiiWare in there - plenty of games on there from small developers that may not even exist anymore.
It certainly sucks to see it happen, particularly with titles no longer being available for download, and hopefully it prompts wider discussion of the concept of game ownership in the digital era, but it’s not hard to see potential reasons for Nintendo to finally do it.
I doubt there’s anyone at Qt3 that’s terribly interested in this, but the 26th is the last day to add funds to the Wii Shop Channel. Given there are still a bunch of games, both Virtual Console and WiiWare that are not available legally any other way, if you want to get anything, now is the time to add funds. You can spend them through the 2019 closedown date for downloads.
Personally, I’ve set aside some points and will get the ReBirth games from Konami as well as a handful of Turbo Duo games (CD…) that are not available on Wii U or any other platform. I have a number of VC titles, many that I’ve since moved to Wii U, but there are games like Lit, Bust-A-Move Plus and Excitebike Rally that I’m pretty sure will forever be stuck on the Wii.
These two statements are so similar that I suspect we might actually be the same person.
And for the record, I’ve already added more Wii Shop points than I would care to admit, and I’m planning to buy up any of the titles that I’m interested in that won’t be available anywhere else. Any WiiWare titles for sure, and probably some Genesis and TG16 games for good measure.
Any specific recommendations would be welcome!