Virtual Console

[Modus Ponens]

What do you think the chances are that, eventually, Nintendo will allow amateurs to program their own NES, SNES, Genesis etc. games and distribute them for play on the Wii Virtual Console? I certainly hope that that day will come.

[Beldaran]

Nintendo's attitude towards homemade programming has always fluctuated between ambivalence and hostilty. Based on this trend, I don't see it happening. However, that would be so awesome if it did happen.

[Warlock]

I think it depends on your definition of "amateur". I believe I heard they were branching out to amateur developers, but that doesn't mean anyone and their mother can just start making games. You probably have to pay for one of their dev kits which I'm sure is minimum $1000 (probably a lot more). And I'm sure there is more to it.

I guess what I'm saying is, don't plan on making games for it, unless you're apart of some game company I don't know of :P

[AtmaWeapon]

They will probably approach it two ways.

One way (and I'm not sure how likely this is but I can see them doing it) is to distribute an SDK for a non-trivial price, as Warlock suggested. I imagine on top of this, getting your game into the virtual console system would involve setting up some kind of licensing and royalties with Nintendo. Thus independent developement is possible but Nintendo gets a cut and the chance to filter out any horribly coded trash heaps that will break your Wii.

Whether they do this or not, it is likely someone will figure out a way to subvert the system and get homebrew code onto the Wii. Nintendo will probably treat this as they have treated the homebrew GBA, DS, and GCN crowds: attacking sources of obvious pirating while simply ignoring legitimate homebrew efforts (at the cost of refusing to provide support for systems with homebrew games on them).

This is honestly the best approach in my opinion because anyone can get the information to code for the system and write the code without paying prohibitive costs, meanwhile Nintendo is not held liable for anything homebrew code does.

[MottZilla]

Homebrew games for Wii's VC will come about once the VC rom storage is cracked. For actual legitimate sale, there's not a chance in hell for most of the older systems. Nintendo's own development tools are horribly outdated and tedious and far to difficult for modern developers. I mean really, it's just unlikely anything other than previously unreleased games by classic developers will surface. But most of any new games would likely just be downloadable Wii games. That would be far easier than actually developing for a dead classic console.

[Tygore]

Nintendo has mentioned the possibility before. I believe the exact line was support for those whose "creativity exceeded their budget". Certainly makes me hopeful.

[Warlock]

Homebrew games for Wii's VC will come about once the VC rom storage is cracked. For actual legitimate sale, there's not a chance in hell for most of the older systems. Nintendo's own development tools are horribly outdated and tedious and far to difficult for modern developers. I mean really, it's just unlikely anything other than previously unreleased games by classic developers will surface. But most of any new games would likely just be downloadable Wii games. That would be far easier than actually developing for a dead classic console.

Given that Nintendo fully intents to make "new" VC titles, along with a lot of 3rd parties, it's possible they just updated the development tools (if only for themselves).

Afterall too, none of the old systems were meant to support online functionality, but at least IGN claims some VC titles will be made that support Wii's.

[MottZilla]

Warlock, the people that developed on older systems (particularly NES and SNES) may not even work there anymore, and probably are quite rusty. It makes NO sense to dedicate time and money to develop a new game for an old system when they could develop it to actually run on the Wii and be a downloadable title, which could appear to be anything really.

While it's possible, older systems like NES and SNES (and Genesis and Tg16) were not anything like developing for systems today. There is no C compiler to use (except maybe if you are creating a slow as shit game like strategy, or possibly one on Genesis). And if they wanted to do it right, they'd have to actually use ancient development units to test on real hardware. Testing on the emulator would be silly because of undoubtable inaccuracies.

I really think any "new" games will actually be unreleased games, maybe translated games. Forinstance maybe Square will release Terranigma in the North American region. Maybe Square will translate Seiken Densetsu 2 and release it officially. Star Fox 2 is a possibility.

[Warlock]

Warlock, the people that developed on older systems (particularly NES and SNES) may not even work there anymore, and probably are quite rusty. It makes NO sense to dedicate time and money to develop a new game for an old system when they could develop it to actually run on the Wii and be a downloadable title, which could appear to be anything really.

While it's possible, older systems like NES and SNES (and Genesis and Tg16) were not anything like developing for systems today. There is no C compiler to use (except maybe if you are creating a slow as shit game like strategy, or possibly one on Genesis). And if they wanted to do it right, they'd have to actually use ancient development units to test on real hardware. Testing on the emulator would be silly because of undoubtable inaccuracies.

I really think any "new" games will actually be unreleased games, maybe translated games. Forinstance maybe Square will release Terranigma in the North American region. Maybe Square will translate Seiken Densetsu 2 and release it officially. Star Fox 2 is a possibility.

Which is why I said they may have created *NEW* development tools for those consoles.

[Tygore]

I really think any "new" games will actually be unreleased games, maybe translated games. Forinstance maybe Square will release Terranigma in the North American region. Maybe Square will translate Seiken Densetsu 2 and release it officially. Star Fox 2 is a possibility.


Also, an official release of Mother (aka Earthbound Zero) and the various Fire Emblems perhaps? These especially make sense, being both Nintendo franchises and having a high demand among fans (yet being relatively obscure enough to not warrant a cartrige release).

[MottZilla]

What new tools Warlock? They can't magically create a C compiler for SNES that won't suck ass. The fact is the SNES is intended to be programmed in ASM, and nothing else. Esspecially true of the NES. You can't make a tool that magically makes this easier. All you could do it recreate/port older tools that may have been used for certain tasks like graphics and sound. But nothing is going to help you with the core issue of programming for the NES/SNES which requires ASM knowledge and low level knowledge of the SNES/NES hardware and certain quirky behavior it has.

The N64 isn't as bad, but with that tiny texture cache and other issues you'd be better off making your independant title for the actual Wii than the N64.

Tygore seems to see what I mean. While releases and slight changes to existing games are likely, I don't see any ground up new games being produced. Sure it could happen, but again I doubt it.

[Dechipher]

Nintendo is going to strike a deal with AGN and buy us out to use ZC on the Wii.

I'm telling you.

[MottZilla]

If Nintendo wanted to, they could create their own LoZ customizable game engine similar to ZC. In which case they wouls send us a cease and desist thing.

[Warlock]

I still think they'll be able to do NES/SNES-like titles for the VC. Like I said, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be emulated - they'll probably run off Wii hardware (closer to ports). But I seriously doubt all new VC titles are going to be strictly "new gen" stuff.

[MottZilla]

That's what I was saying. It'd make more sense to actually make the game for Wii similar to how Zelda Classic exists for PC. The PC can do games like Unreal Tournament, but at the same time you can make a game that looks like a NES or SNES title. So downloadable Wii games makes alot more sense for new titles.

[Warlock]

That's what I was saying. It'd make more sense to actually make the game for Wii similar to how Zelda Classic exists for PC. The PC can do games like Unreal Tournament, but at the same time you can make a game that looks like a NES or SNES title. So downloadable Wii games makes alot more sense for new titles.

I think we were saying the same thing, just wording it differently :P

[Modus Ponens]

[M]aybe Square will release Terranigma in the North American region. Maybe Square will translate Seiken Densetsu 2 and release it officially.

That would make me a very happy little boy.

[Tygore]

If Nintendo wanted to, they could create their own LoZ customizable game engine similar to ZC. In which case they wouls send us a cease and desist thing.

Not if we changed the name to "Adventure Maker", stopped packaging the original quests, and didn't have new quests default to the classic tileset. Remove the references to Zelda, and ZC/ZQ becomes its own self contained game maker, of which there currently are many.

[Warlock]

I'm still hoping Nintendo will do something like what they did with SMB3 GBA - where they take an old game (say SMB3) and make a ton of new levels for it (obviously as a seperate "game" to purchase, maybe with a level adding feature built-in so they can continue to add).

[Tygore]

I agree, SMB3 on the GBA was an amazing re-make, especially if you had the e-reader. I loved going through the game again with the SMW cape or having SMB2-esque vegetables sitting around in the ground.

[Vagla]

No, Nintendo will NOT be allowing legacy system development for the Virtual Console, plain and simple. Over the summer, I was directed via email by the warioworld.com staff to Dan Adelman, who works at NOA, about this very subject. His comments about it were very discouraging. He said:


There's a bit of confusion out in the general market about what we mean
by new content for Virtual Console. This is our fault, so I apologize.
Originally the name "Virtual Console" was coined, because we planned on
using it for content from previous generation consoles, such as NES. We
later decided to open the doors to new downloadable content, but in
keeping the name Virtual Console, it's certainly understandable that
people would want to make games for the previous generation consoles and
have them run on Wii. In reality, although the name Virtual Console
implies some kind of legacy platform support, for new content, we're
looking only at new content developed for Wii.

When I followed up on this with reasons why it is a good idea, even going so far as to bring up Nintendo's famous claim of making Wii a system for developers who have big ideas and little budgets and pointing out how this would be a wonderful way to help devlopers like myself, he simply said, "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is not the strategy we have decided to pursue," and that was it. Needless to say, I'm pretty damn frustrated about the whole thing because I'm an NES developer and was drooling over the Wii much because it was a platform I could develop for with no development costs since I already have all my own tools and whatnot (and even an impressive NES engine, to boot), and Dan Adelman basically stopped me from communicating with anyone else at Nintendo about this and ignored my comments on the issue. As a result, I still do not know why they're choosing this strategy or if anything can be done about it.

So to sum it up, new content on Wii is going to be for Wii, not for previous systems.