Downloadable Wii games coming to Wii U eShop – Initial Lineup revealed
The Wii U Virtual Console is gaining another supported platform. It’s just not the one you were expecting.
Overnight, Nintendo announced that Wii games were coming to the Nintendo eShop and will be fully accessible from the Wii U home menu. There’s no need to boot into a specific Wii mode for these games as Nintendo has figured out how to make it all just work. Games will of course require a Wii Remote, unless they support the Wii Classic Controller and in that case you can use the Wii U GamePad to control the games.
The lineup for the Wii games on Wii U Virtual Console varies depending on the country but all of them retain the same special introductory pricing. For the first week of availability, the game will be half price. Which is great because the first game, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is up on the eShop right now and it’s a mere $13. The standard price would then be $26AU.
Along with the below titles both Sin and Punishment 2 and Pandora’s Tower were also teased.
Australia and Europe
January 14th: Super Mario Galaxy 2
January 22nd: Donkey Kong Country Returns
January 29th: Metroid Prime Trilogy
America
January 14th: Super Mario Galaxy 2
January 22nd: Punch-Out!!
January 29th: Metroid Prime Trilogy
Thirteen dollars for some of these games is an absolute bargain!
Great news – it’s out now, and it uses the save found on the Wii Menu on your Wii U – so don’t have to start all over again!!
I’m super keen for this. I’ve been playing Halo Master Chief Collection (not really a Halo fan, but it was part of the Xbox One bundle) and the whole time I was thinking it would be great if they released a HD remake of the Prime series. This isn’t quite that but it’s handy to have the three playable on the Wii U, especially since I’m not going to fork out the hundreds of dollars they want for the Trilogy disc on eBay.
I wonder if they can do this for Wii, would it be possible for gamecube games. I really want to play some gamecube classics again and if they did, then almost all Nintendo platforms would be playable on a single console.
Original gameboy and 3ds would be the missing systems.
The Wii VC games are taking advantage of the Wii hardware in the Wii U. The Wii U becomes a Wii to run the game and can’t open stuff up like Miiverse because it thinks it’s a Wii. There isn’t Gamecube hardware in the Wii U like there was for the first version of the Wii, which is why it could play GCN games. So for GCN titles they would have to make an emulator for the Wii U which can be very taxing on hardware unless optimised just right. And considering they haven’t been able to get N64 titles on the Wii U yet… I wouldn’t hold my breath for GCN titles. But I have my fingers crossed because I would love to have access to the entire Nintendo software collection from one console!
This is why the PS3 only had a small collection of really bad, really simple PS2 titles in it’s legacy collection and why publishers went down the HD remake path for better games.
“We’ve created a console with extremely limited storage space and a clunky way to expand said storage, let’s release 4.7+GB games for the machine!”
Sorry how is plugging in a portable HDD a really clunky way? I had to add storage to my 360 in a similar manner.
Cant really call adding a 500GB hdd for 49 dollars a terrible deal… Beats not being able to add extra storage.
Will Metroid Prime Trilogy also be introduced at $13 like SMG2?
Devolution works with gamecube games in wii mode on the wii u, maybe Nintendo should get in touch with the author and start moving things forward