Thursday, July 28, 2011

Nintendo 3DS: Massive Price Drop, GBA and NES Classics on Virtual Console


I might be buying a Nintendo 3DS next month. As of August 12th the price will go down to 170, which is one massive price drop and looks much more effortable.

Also, 10 GBA and 10 NES game were announced for the 3DS Virtual Console. This includes The Legend of Zelda and Metroid Fusion. That GBA games are coming to the service is really nice, however, the NES games might look like an overshoot, because we already have a Virtual Console for NES games on the Wii. Also, some NES and SNES games will be already ported as 3D Classics. I mean, where's the end? They could basically re-release the entire Wii Virtual Console library, which would be too much. It would be much more classy, if the 3DS Virtual Console focuses on portable games only. So, what I believe is that these are actually not NES, but GameBoy Advance games, namely the ports from the NES Classics series. There were a couple of NES games ported to GBA, which includes The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II - The Adventure of Link and Metroid. And I think all Nintendo does is re-releasing the NES Classics series on the 3DS Virtual Console. I could be wrong though, it's just a guess. For example they announced Donkey Kong Jr., which originally wasn't part of the NES Classics series... But it just seems so unnecessary to re-release NES games a third time, I don't know...

GameBoy Advance games are awesome though. I guess everyone would see it as a natural development, when the Virtual Console offers GBA games at one point. However, right now Nintendo has no plans to make the GBA games available to the general public in the future. They are only available to people who bought the system before the price cut. If you've already bought the 3DS, you must feel pretty pissed right now, so Nintendo offers you all 10 NES games and all 10 GBA games for free, which is not a bad deal, not at all. And those GBA games are said to be exclusive to the so called "ambassadors". However, I doubt that there are really no plans for GBA games on Virtual Console. They say so now to make the ambassadors feel better, but I guess same time next year they'll make GBA games available to the public because of "popular demand". Nintendo loves making money from re-releasing games and not offering GBA games would be a missed opportunity, a big one.

Well, the ambassador-program only works if you connect your eShop before August 12th. But maybe you're lucky and you get a price cutted 3DS early, so you get the cheaper 3DS and all 20 free games. I'll definitely try this, because this would be a hell of a deal.

Source: Nintendo / Kotaku

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