Previous rants:

Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
***** BEFORE I BEGIN *****

1. I don't condone people downloading ROMs from the internet, but I don't blame those who get ROMs because the game they're after is too rare, wasn't available in their region or was affected by PAL conversion issues.

2. I'm fully aware that there are other games available for Virtual Console besides Nintendo and Sega consoles, but as a Nintendo console, I'm more focused on Nintendo's games/consoles.

3. This rant contains more rage than the previous two, so expect to read quite a lot of CAPS LOCK when I talk about PAL conversion.

4. Completely unrelated to the rant, but if you're interested, have a look at my Alternative Character Battle, held on my alt account.

And now for the rant.

Welcome to the second part of the Wii rant. Previously, I commented on how ridiculous the price of a Wiimote-nunchuck combination is, the pointless features the console has, the small ass hard drive space and a few others about the Wii itself and some of the accessories. The second part of the Wii rant will be on Virtual Console. While I said I'd be ranting on WiiWare as well, I've decided to let that wait until I talk about the flaws in downloadable games in general.

Like I said previously, Virtual Console is (or maybe I should say was in some cases) a great opportunity for myself and other gamers to pick up old games we missed out on. Although there were already other ways to catch-up on old games such as NES re-releases on the GBA, Final Fantasy ports on PS1 and GBA, etc., Virtual Console have games that haven't had a re-release before such as Super Metroid, which was a game I was dying to play ever since I got into the Metroid franchise.

Initially, I (and perhaps others) thought there'd be most, if not, all the titles from NES, SNES and N64 as soon as the console was launched. Too bad Nintendo decided to take another path by releasing 3 - 5 games every week and then every fortnight when WiiWare was launched. While it made it exciting to find out which would be the next game to be released on Virtual Console, it's now coming to the point where they're slowing down and doing nothing but testing people's patience.

Sure, they've released most of the most well known titles from NES and SNES and some of N64, but the keywords here are most and some, not all. This means we've yet to get games like Contra, Battletoads, Earthbound, GoldenEye, Star Fox and more and it's beginning to piss people off, especially myself. Besides agreements on releasing games and shit, I cannot see why Nintendo can't release the majority of the previous generation games right away.

Contra, although this was re-released as a bonus content in Contra 4 for the DS, I'd rather have this on Virtual Console as 2-player mode wouldn't work well on the DS. Seriously, if you want to play Contra with someone, would you really want to share the console with someone in order to play it? Wouldn't you prefer to play it on Virtual Console instead where you'd have a bigger screen as well as holding your own controller?

Earthbound, this one has been debated about A LOT on the internet. There could be a whole rant on why not releasing Earthbound on Virtual Console is bullshit, but to keep it short, would Nintendo rather have people downloading the ROM of it or paying 800 Nintendo points for the game on Virtual Console? The only other option would be to spend over $75 on the original SNES cartridge, but unless there's a toploader for the SNES, the Europeans/Australians wouldn't be able to play this game on their console.

Star Fox, a well known franchise and since Star Fox 64 is on VC, why not release the first of the series? After playing Star Fox 64, I would love to play the original game. It's very surprising that this game has yet to be released on Virtual Console.

Battletoads and GoldenEye, although they were developed by Rare who are now owned by Microsoft, it's still a wonder why there isn't any actual word on them being released on Virtual Console. Supposedly, Nintendo have the right to release anything from their previous consoles on Virtual Console, no matter if a game company is now part of Sony or Microsoft. If that's the case, you wonder what's holding them up. They've released the Donkey Kong Country games, so shouldn't they have thought of releasing other Rareware games by now, especially GoldenEye which is highly ranked on most game sites.

I won't go on asking why each and every NES/SNES/N64 game isn't released on Virtual Console yet, but I will say that it's ridiculous how we've got to wait so long for certain games to come out or may not even see certain games coming out to give gamers such as myself a chance to catch-up on what we've missed on. Sure, there's always the option to get the actual consoles and the game cartridges, but:

1. As someone who missed out on the NES, SNES and N64, I thought it was convenient to catch-up on all the must-play games with just the one console, the Wii.

2. Getting the consoles and all the must-have games is going to cost so much money, especially when there's many games that are very rare nowadays.

There is one other major problem with Virtual Console and that's excluding the hard drive space problem. This is the fact that PAL gamers are FUCKED IN THE ASS for most VC games. Why so, you may ask? The majority of pre-N64 games are forced to run on 50Hz rather than 60Hz. Therefore, the games run on a slower frame rate and the music is slower as well. Mega Man 2 is a brilliant example. Compare the PAL version to NTSC. This game has some of the finest music in video game industry, but was butchered to death by the PAL conversion and IT'S COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT!

You're saying that a problem which occurred to PAL users only in the 80's is still happening on a console which was launched in 2006?! You'd expect them to fix the issue, especially when you can play the games from Sonic Mega Collection and such in 60Hz, but it seems they didn't care/try one fucking bit. The sad thing is, even the Sonic games from Virtual Console run slower, but from a compilation game, it runs at the right refresh rate. You know what? NINTENDO HAVE NO FUCKING EXCUSE AS TO WHY THESE GAMES CAN'T RUN ON 60HZ FOR PAL USERS!!!

This is yet another reason why people may resort to playing these games on an emulator rather than buying them from Virtual Console. This is also why I've been reluctant to buying any other pre-N64 game from the store. As a matter of fact, besides the N64 titles Star Fox 64 and F-Zero X, the last old games I bought from there were Mega Man 2 and Super Metroid together last summer. I'd be willing to buy more games from Virtual Console if Nintendo solved this issue, but from the looks of it, they don't seem to give a shit at all.

All in all, Virtual Console had so much potential for those who missed out on previous game consoles, but Nintendo completely ruined it by taking far too long to release certain games and making some games a nightmare to play thanks to PAL conversion bullshit which shouldn't have even happened in the first place. These two factors do nothing but disappoint gamers and most likely encourage them to get emulators instead of purchasing the games from their store. If Nintendo want more people to buy games from their store, they really need to release old games more frequently as well as solving the PAL issues for the applicable games.

Worst of all, I haven't even gone on about the actual Wii games. Yep, a whole rant on the Wii's game library is coming up next.