News Tagged: Industry Gossip
News: Wisconsin Set To Tax Digital Downloads
With the popularity of digital downloads at an all-time high, it should come as no surprise that governments are beginning to look at ways to tax them.
The State of Wisconsin just recently signed a bill into law that allows for a 5% tax on all digital downloads spanning music, books, ring tones, and even video games. The state expects to rack up nearly 7 million dollars yearly from the tax once the..
News: Mercs Coming Soon, With a Different Name!
Capcom occassionally makes a blog post about their upcoming VC games - They've done it again today for Mercs. The game was already rated by various rating boards ages ago (And released in Japan not so long ago), so it's nice to finally see it released on VC in the US and Europe.
What's interesting is that the blog post also says they have renamed the game. As you might be aware, Mercs is actually..
News: Treasure: Buy Dynamite Headdy, You Fools
Highly respected Japanese developer Treasure has spoken about the Virtual Console service in a recent interview with 1up.com.
President Masato Maegawa said he was pleased with the commercial performance of titles like Gunstar Heroes and Sin & Punishment, but was sad to see that so few people had downloaded Dynamite Headdy – a game which holds a special place in his heart.We don’t want to..
News: Virtual Console games to be directly downloadable to SD cards
At a press conference in Japan today, not only did Nintendo announce a barrage of new DS/Wii games and a new DS, they also announced something Wii fans have been wanting for a long time - A storage solution!
Sadly, it's not a hard drive like many people assumed. Instead, you'll be able to directly download games to SD cards. At the moment, the only way to get games on SD cards is to download them..
News: The DSi – One Step Closer to a Portable Virtual Console?
Nintendo has just unveiled details of a new handheld console called the DSi. But before you get too excited and spill your Sunny D all over the keyboard, it’s worth noting that it’s essentially a DS with slight modifications rather an all-new machine. Improvements include larger screens (3.25 inches, up from 3 inches), two cameras (both 0.3 megapixel), an SD card slot and a built-in web browser.
This is all very well but the thing that has us most excited here at Virtual Console Reviews is the ability to download games to the machine. As we hypothesized some time ago, Nintendo’s next handheld must surely feature a Virtua..
News: Bionic Commando Not Approved For Virtual Console
Way back in April we reported that Capcom’s Ben Judd stated that the NES version of Bionic Commando would not be coming to the Virtual Console.
Not content to leave it there, that old chestnut has been raised again as Bionic Commando Rearmed is due on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC soon. Here’s what he had to say on the subject in a recent interview with 1up: 1UP: What about the..
News: Goldeneye Locked In Legal Limbo
WAAAAY back in the mists of time we reported that Nintendo was looking to bring Rare’s N64 classic Goldeneye to the Virtual Console.
Soon afterwards it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen, and to make matters worse, it looked as if Rare’s new owners might bring the game to their 360 console via the Xbox Live Arcade service, albeit in an enhanced form. That didn’t happen either,..
News: Publishers Remain Tight-Lipped On Black Monday Debacle
Boy, Monday was a real bummer, wasn’t it? There we all were, waiting in feverish expectation for the impending triple-whammy of Mega Man, Ys Book 1 & 2 and Samurai Showdown II, as we had previously been promised by the respective publishers of these games. Then Nintendo pulled the rug from beneath us and released Sonic and Splatterhouse II instead.
Feeling a sense of duty to the legions of..
News: Nintendo Responds To US Release Date Queries
Following Monday’s US Virtual Console release debacle, Nintendo has responded to enquiries about how three different publishers were issuing statements claiming that their games would be coming out on the 4th, only for Nintendo to release two entirely different games instead.
Speaking to GoNintendo, the company had this to say: A number of variables can affect a game’s release date. Therefore,..
News: ESRB To Crack Down On Early Leaks Of Games
Since the very beginning of VC Reviews we have rounded up the latest games which should be headed to the Virtual Console on our coming soon list so you have the inside scoop on what games are coming up.
One of the primary ways we do this is by checking game content ratings on the ESRB website. Basically if a game doesn’t get rated there then it won’t be coming out in North America. It has been..
News: Nintendo Wii hard drive coming soon?
A recent press release from Nintendo makes interesting reading. In addition to news that the company's fortunes continue to soar there was also an interesting bit of information from company president Satoru Iwata in regards to the hot topic of the Wii's limited flash memory:
Q6 I am personally enjoying WiiWare and Virtual Console but feel Wii’s flash memory size is not enough and annoyed that I..
News: South Korea gets their own Virtual Console
Interestingly the Wii finally went on sale in South Korea for the first time yesterday on the 26th April. This wouldn’t normally be a news item for us but with the Wii launch comes a whole new Virtual Console region with different prices!
Let’s take a look at the launch games as listed on the Korean Nintendo site:Famicom / NES (400 Wii Points)Antarctic Adventure - KonamiDonkey Kong -..
News: Super Turrican - Director's Cut Possibly Coming To VC?
As you might know, videogame forum NeoGAF is quite popular among people in the industry - Various videogame developers and publishers post there. One individual, called Turrican, claims he works at Factor 5, and has given some information on Turrican's VC future in NeoGAF's Virtual Console thread.
First up, if you downloaded Super Turrican, you might've noticed the operations guide has a whole list..
News: Wii to support BBC's iPlayer (UK only)
An update is now available to allow Wii users to use the BBC's iPlayer on their Wii console via the Internet Channel. The BBC said a message would be sent to Wii owners to alert them to its availability. This appears to be for the United Kingdom only at present.
The BBC's iPlayer video service will soon be available via the Nintendo Wii.The video download and streaming service that lets people..
News: Commodore 64 coming to Virtual Console
Regular readers will remember that quite some time ago we reported on C64 games coming to the VC. We ended up with egg on our face as it turned out to be some sort of mistake on Nintendo's Norwegian website and no more details about this ever materialised.
It is now the turn of Nintendo's Finnish site to break the news about C64 games coming to the VC as you can see here.The first releases look..
News: Virtual Console Passes 10m Downloads Milestone
Nintendo has confirmed that its Virtual Console service has successfully recorded 10 million downloads in its opening year.
Nintendo Supremo Satoru Iwata revealed: Virtual Console saw over ten million downloads by the end of last December. That's the total number of titles people paid to download. I think that selling over ten million classic games in that price range stands as proof that there are..
News: Master System Games Coming to The VC!
The first new Virtual Console channel of 2008 has been confirmed and Sega fans should be rejoicing as it's the 8-bit Master System that will be getting the VC treatment. Game Gear software will also to be released under the same channel (which makes sense as technically the two consoles shared the same technology).
The first games in Japan will be the scrolling fighter Fist of the North Star..
News: Goldeneye NOT Virtual Console Bound?
Xbox site Xbox Evolved has posted a rather worrying story regarding the N64 classic Goldeneye. According to the site, Rare is gearing up to publish the game on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service.
Rare apparently has already started to seek the permission of current Bond licence holder Activision. Other classic Rare titles such as Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie are in the pipeline as well, if the..
News: Nintendo of Europe relaunches with Wii Points exchange!
After a little over two weeks of downtime, the Nintendo of Europe site has relaunched with a totally new look and new features. One of these is the ability to swap your stars for Wii Points!
Go to http://wiipointscard.nintendo-europe.com and select your country. After logging in you can exchange your hard earned stars for Wii Points! They come rather expensive though - 4 stars for 1 Wii Point. So..
News: VC Earns over $30 million so far
A recent press conference in Tokyo shed some light on the astonishing success of the Virtual Console service so far.
Nintendo's own Shinji Hatano reiterated a previous figure of 7.8 million downloads and then went on to reveal that currently the service had generated 3.5 billion yen ($33 million / £16 million)The humble Nintendo exec then saids of these figures, "We're currently unsure if..
