In the absence of a Switch Virtual Console, Japanese publishers are making their own ⊟
Right now, the Switch is without an official Virtual Console, as Nintendo prepares… whatever its subscription service is going to be. We know it will involve NES and SNES games, some with added online play, but not when or how many. But while this Nintendo initiative is taking its sweet time to spin up, Japanese indie publishers have been quietly loading the eShop with worthwhile retro games.
So you can’t buy Super Mario World again yet. Good. It gives these games time to shine.
The main retro presence on the Switch is, of all things, the Neo Geo. Publisher Hamster Corp(?) was there a week after the system launched with six Neo Geo games, including popular fighting games like The King of Fighters ‘98 and Waku Waku 7. To date, the Switch, eShop features 27 Neo Geo games, with more on the way. To compare, there are 21 Nintendo 64 games on both the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles. (Side note: The Switch is a handheld system with a dock that allows players to instantly transfer their Neo Geo games between playstyles. Therefore – bafflingly – the Switch has become the successor to the Neo Geo X).
Other companies are filling the void left by Urban Champion or whatever: Namco Museum Switch is an all-in-one Virtual Console, a single eShop download with 10 worthwhile retro games and The Tower of Druaga. Just last week, publisher Zerodiv surprise-released two Psikyo arcade games, Strikers 1945 and Gunbarich, on the eShop.
Now, it’s not a one-for-one guarantee that everyone who would have just bought Earthbound is going to buy Waku Waku 7, but the current dearth of big-name Nintendo retro games leaves space for discovery. And if Hamster is releasing Neo Geo games at the rate it is, that suggests that people are discovering them in enough quantities to make the enterprise worthwhile.
And then maybe, once we’re all playing SNES games together, we’ll have acquired the knowledge that these other retro games are happening too, and both can coexist on the eShop. Allowing off-the-radar retro games a tiny bit of oxygen is, to my mind, a better innovation than online play.
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