Nintendo REALLY needs to ramp up its VC releases.

We got ONE game last week, a crappy N64 snowboarding game and two this week, Columns 3 and the NES version of Operation Wolf. Are you fucking kidding me?

And Operation Wolf doesn't even have light gun support, which is disgraceful considering the Wiimote IS A FUCKING LIGHT GUN!

They should have given us the TG16 version of Operation Wolf. It wasn't quite arcade pefect, but it was much nicer than the shitty NES version. And sure it was a Japan-only game, but the amount of actual Japanese text was negligible.

I implore everyone to write angry letters to Nintendo's customer support about the VC BS.

Actually, I don't promote using ROMs. It's true that I use them, but only because there's lot of stuff out there that's not readily available to people. However, I don't allow ROM requests on the boards and the one ROM that was ever offered on the site, SMB2J, was taken down the day it went on the Virtual Console.

When given the choice, I would much rather play a game on my big screen TV with a real controller than on my computer. And I really like having the option to cheat via save states taken away. Having used ROMs for screengrabs, save states have become second nature to me. I can't play a game on an emulator and not use them, no matter how are try. Things like the VC and Mega Man X Collection force me to play better, and I like that a lot.

DarknessDeku wrote:

I don't know of any emulators that save naturally.

Well, what do you mean by save "naturally"? There aren't many emulators that autosave if that's what you mean, but most emulators let you insta-save by mashing F2 or F5. And when you're reviewing a game, you pretty much rely on this feature because you often find yourself needing to retake screenshots.

JEW wrote:

I just find it funny how everyone was talking about how great the wii was, and now all I hear are complaints about stuff.

I have no problem with the system itself. The sytem is pretty great and it has some great games that I fucking love and it's very fun to play those games. However the console has two very big problems, both of which Nintendo could very easily fix if they wanted to. These problems are:

1. A terrible online strategy
Before the Wii came out, Nintendo was touting how they were better than Microsoft because they weren't going to charge for their online gaming and everyone was psyched. Unfortunately, it turns out that Nintendo was just stating the obvious. They couldn't charge for their online service, because no one in their right mind would pay for it. No netplay on VC games? Separate friend codes for every fucking game? 1-3 games released on the VC each week? What in the fuck? Nintendo should be releasing SIX games on the Virtual Console each week. One should be an import, one should be a bonafide classic, and the other four can be complete shit or hidden gems or whatever. The Friend Code thing is beyond gay. For a company that has spent many of its post censorship days claiming that it doesn't sell "kiddie systems", they were awfully quick to embrace an alarmist "Oh my fucking god if we let you have one friend code for everything, pedophiles will kidnap your childrens!!!" strategy for online gaming. It's beyond retarded.

2. The fucking hard drive.
It's almost a good thing that so much uninteresting shit comes out on the VC because Nintendo gave us dick for HD space on the Wii and they repeatedly refuse to release an external hard drive despite the incredible demand for it. Are they fucking stupid? A HD is necessary in this day and age. Not only does it give us room for VC games, it allows for game patches and extra downloadable content such as Guitar Hero song packs.

Again, both these problems are easily fixable. Will Nintendo fix them? Probably not. The problem with Nintendo is that while they can make a great game, they don't make good business decisions. When everyone else was switching to CDs, Nintendo stayed with cartridges. Result? They lost a lot of third party support. Then when everyone else was switching to DVDs, Nintendo used mini DVDs. Result? The Gamecube was home to the last multi-disc console games, and they failed to win back as much third party support as they could have. Nintendo resisted online gaming in the lastgen and they continue to resist it in this generation. Like or not, online gaming is par for the course. And Nintendo has given themselves a major handicap.

Any emulator I've ever played on will let you save naturally if you really want to. The problem comes when you start mixing save states with actual saving. If you load a save state, that overwrites the battery save. So let's say you had been playing the game with save states, then you decided to start playing it through without them. Let's say you beat four dungeons in Legend of Zelda. Then let's say you accidentally loaded one of your save states. Your battery save will be wiped out and replaced with whatever the battery saves were like on the emulator save state.

I did that once with a translated version of Final Fantasy IV Hard Type. Well, sort of. I hadn't been using the save points at all, just the save states. Then during the battle with the three sisters, I accidentally backed myself into a position where I couldn't win. If I had been using the save points, I could have just let myself die and restart right near that battle. But since I hadn't been using them, I had to start the whole fucking game over.