VC and WiiWare for the Week of July 14th

Mega Man 9 Debut Trailer and Details

Who can forget that distinct sound of an old-school game? The well-crafted midi music brings the good memories back to all of us. The songs were so catchy that you found yourself humming them all day because you couldn’t get them out of your head, no matter how hard you tried. This is why we play old-school games, not just for the songs, but for that sense of your childhood being rekindled.

This is why we must thank Nintendo for bringing us Virtual Console. And now we must thank Capcom for bringing us Mega Man 9, a new game in the series that brings Mega Man back to his roots on the Wii Ware service. Be prepared to be blown away with the trailer below.

That’s not all. Capcom has also confirmed that Mega Man 1 and 2 will be making their way to the Virtual Console. Also, many thought that Mega Man 9 would be a Wii Ware exclusive, but Capcom has announced that Mega Man 9 will be hitting all three consoles.

Are you a die-hard fanboy of Mega Man? Did you wet yourself when watching that video? Discuss Mega Man 9, or any other Mega Man in ‘The Retro Gamer’ section of our forums.

Virtual Console Games For 6-1-08

Ninja Combat (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated E 10+ for Everyone 10 and Older-Mild Suggestive Themes, Fantasy Violence, 900 Wii Points): Released in 1990, Ninja Combat is a side-scrolling combat-action game. Take control of the ninjas Joe (one player) and Hayabusa (two players), and enter into battle against a group of evil ninjas called the Kage Ichizoku. Make your way into their home fortress, Ninja Tower, which dominates a big city of the near future. Fight using normal attacks, jumps, special movements and ninja materials that deliver damaging blows to all enemies on the screen. In addition, you’ll find weapons and items to aid you along the way. Even better, as you progress in the game, reliable allies such as Musashi, Kagerow and Gembu will emerge to fight alongside you, allowing you to choose a new character in each stage. Ninja Combat also supports simultaneous play with two players, so you can grab a friend and defeat the Kage Ichizoku together.

Nintendo may consider a flash-based memory solution (finally)

Last week’s Nintendo press briefing brought some interesting and refreshing news. Most notably in the Q and A, President Satoru Iwata finally addressed the issue many of us face with the Wii’s limited storage:

Statistically speaking, it is true that there are a small number of customers who feel that the flash memory is too small, while many others find that they have plenty of memory. However, because this small number of people are none other than the most avid players, we know we have to review the best possible solution to eliminate their inconvenience.

How many days have we been waiting to even hear that? Previously the Nintendo suits saw the vision of the Wii as a “download and redownload” station. The limited storage capabilities of the premier next-gen system have forced more avid Wii gamers to annoying delete games to download others, making amassing a sizable VC collection neigh impossible. But with Wii Ware coming up for American audiences, something has got to give. As long as it’s Nintendo that’s giving here, we’ll be sure to bite.

So let’s brainstorm; what would the best solution be? Maybe utilizing those mildly-useless USB ports for external hard drives?

Or could we get a simple firmware update that lets us store about a certain amount of “essential” data per channel on the Wii’s storage, and the rest could be transferred and played off of an SD card? If anything, I find this to be the best way for Nintendo to compromise, keeping their downloadable vision and letting us keep storing our games. What do you think? Take it to our forums and discuss!

Harmonix: Lack of Memory Means No DLC for Rock Band

As Wii owners, we are used to the way Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 owners look down on us for having an inferior system. But it isn’t just players who are being critical.

Harmonix, originators of the Guitar Hero series and sole creators of Rock Band, publicized the Wii’s lack of memory space for downloadable content in a recent interview with CVG:

“Come on Nintendo, we need a hard drive,” said Harmonix design director Rob Kay in an interview with CVG. “That’s what we want. The whole problem is there’s nowhere to store it. If the platform could do it, we’d jump on it. It’s something that we championed to Nintendo, that we’d like to do it.”

As a result, Rock Band for the Wii will not offer any DC, since there isn’t enough memory to do so.

In the age of digital media, it is tough to even fathom a half-way intelligent reason why the Wii was shipped with such low memory capacity. Frequent buyers of Virtual Console games have already noticed this, reporting that they can download a lot of older NES titles, but only a couple of N64 titles before they are out of memory.

IGN reported that Harmonix has sold more than $6 million in DC for the PS3 and Xbox 360 Rock Band versions. With that kind of money train coming in, it’s no wonder why Harmonix is critical of Nintendo’s lack of memory for the Wii.

How far will the Wii’s 512MB memory last when WiiWare is released to the American public? Sure, you can copy games over to an SD card, but you can’t play them from the card; forcing gamers to painstakingly cut and copy games every time they want to play a title that’s not currently on their Wii. It’s minuscule memory is especially laughable when compared to the current memory capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PS3, which range from 20 to 120GB. In this age of downloadable content (DLC), Nintendo’s decision to not include a larger harddrive seems like nothing more than sheer negligence.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has promised Wii gamers exciting news at the upcoming E3. While this writer was initially hoping for a new Kid Icarus title, I would rather see announcements about my beloved console’s hard drive and a more user-friendly online feature, such as Xbox Live.