A Nintendo community
by the fans!
           
  Forum main
 + 
VC titles not playable on the Gamepad screen?
News reported by 
(Editor)
September 14, 2012, 06:33
 
Please be wrong, please be wrong, please be wrong...

Even worse, this article implies that the same would be true for Wii and WiiWare games. That's balls.

This eradicates 50% of the coolness of the Wii U concept. But they have to develop new Virtual Console emulators for Wii U, right? Unless... it would... cost extra money...

URL to share (right click and copy)
09/14/12, 06:33   Edited:  09/14/12, 06:41
 
Why not sign up for a (free) account?
 
Yeah, I hope this isn't the case. It's not a huge deal, but it sure would be convenient, especially since I misplaced my Classic Controller.

Naturally, it'd be even better if the games appeared on the screen as well, but I'd be satisfied with merely being able to control them.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 06:39
Yeah it looks like on the WiiU home screen, there will be a "Wii Mode" or "Wii content" button of some sort. You go into that, and that's where you access all of your Virtual Console stuff, your WiiWare stuff, etc.

So, unless they have something special up their sleeves, no, it doesn't look like VC emulators will be given any additional functionality. At the least, it looks like VC games you've already bought will not have additional functionality (like the functions we've come to expect on the 3DS).

I HAVE, HAVE to imagine that they're looking into having a little button that says "Transfer from Wii Mode to Wii U Home Screen" or something to that effect. Playing VC games on the Gamepad was something I was very excited for. Please don't fuck this up Nintendo. I don't want to sound like super entitled gamer guy here, but we're talking about updating an emulator here. I don't even care if the Wii says "We notice that you have this, this and this game. Would you like to update them from the WiiU eShop?" And then your games get replaced with better versions of the games that can be played on the Gamepad.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 07:02
They will probably just resell them with screen functionality.. Maybe they will up Rez them to make people double dip?

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 13:15   Edited:  09/14/12, 13:16
This is one of my biggest disappointments with the Wii U thus far. I was really looking forward to playing VC games on the GamePad screen. It sounds like it's like DS, DSiWare and GBA games on the 3DS, where they have absolutely no new functionality -- you can't even access the home menu without quitting out of the game.

Honestly, it pretty much invalidates the whole transfer process for me. I may just leave them on my Wii and hook it up to an SDTV, since VC games look best on one of those anyway.

I expect Scrawnton is right, they'll re-sell them to us with new functionality. Which honestly I'm not so much bothered by that as I am by the fear that they're going to trickle them out AGAIN, like they're doing on the 3DS AGAIN. I hope it's like the Ambassador games, where you can update it for free as soon as the full version is available, but I'm not really expecting that.

Chris Kohler at Wired did an interview with Bill Trinen, and he said that they'll be talking more about Virtual Console between now and launch, and that they "hopefully talk about it in a way that makes you happy". Hopefully that means there's more to this, but I fear that, like I said earlier, it will just be that they're re-selling the games with Wii U functionality and maybe some other additions (higher res, configurable controls, etc).

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 14:17   Edited:  09/14/12, 14:24
I guess the best I can hope for at this point is a firmware update that would allow it, because I would LOVE to take some of my VC titles to the shitter with me.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 15:24
This is huge.

I thought it would be a given - It's like people at Nintendo who design the system never play videogames.

Wii games - on the norm, would be hard to do because you could only do certain Wii games that allow classic control (or Wiimote only) funtionality. But Wiiware and VC games - there are no excuses. I thought there would be a button that says "view Wii screen on tablet" or something and then the Wiiblet has all the control of the menu screen. How hard is that?

We will see what Bill Trinen says later on - but I'm expecting more support for the VC - there are still hundreds of games out there not available.

*sigh*

S

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 16:04   Edited:  09/14/12, 16:05
@Deerock69

This reminds me, what exactly is the range of the Wii U GamePad? Is it basically like a WaveBird (~30 feet or so with walls, etc)? Will it cut off suddenly if it goes beyond that point?

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 16:09
I don't understand. Maybe Nintendo's working this out? Wii and WiiWare I understand, but VC makes no sense.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 16:43
I'll file this one under baffling decisions that make absolutely no sense, right next to leaving the second circle pad off of the 3DS.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 17:33
@TriforceBun
My house is a giant cube (sans handle-LOL), so I'm sure I'd be fine with Wavebird distances.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 17:35
deathly_hallows said:
I'll file this one under baffling decisions that make absolutely no sense, right next to leaving the second circle pad off of the 3DS.

At least this is something they could potentially fix with a system update or updates to the individual games. (Whether they will or not is another thing entirely...)

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 17:37
I'm still unclear on one thing... is one of the concepts of Wii U that someone can play one game (say, disk) on TV with a Wii remote while someone plays a different game (downloadable) on the tablet controller? Or did I just dream this?

Because if so, then this news really sucks, because it would be cool to play some downloadable game while my brother played a disk game. But if I only dreamed it, then it's not a big deal to me, because I'd probably rarely use this feature anyway.

Although... getting to play on the can would be cool. Yes... yes... very cool.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 17:43
This is disappointing, but I don't think it's inexplicable or unexpected. Wouldn't they need to create a Wii emulator for that to happen? Is that how any systems do backwards compatibility?

I don't think we can give up hope on Virtual Console games being playable on the tablet though, because if they release any new Virtual Console games, those will be presumably made for Wii U, not Wii. The question is if they will bother updating the VC games already released on Wii, and if they do, if they will make us rebuy them.

@rebonack

Maybe not. I don't think, for example, that they could make a firmware update for Wii that allowed home button functionality for Gamecube games.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 17:51   Edited:  09/14/12, 17:51
I just wish they could do this differently. Why do they have to just run the system like it's a Wii? Yes, I suppose it ensures 100% backwards compatability. But this? This is like, one of the easiest things they could possibly do, isn't it? I could maybe understand them not being able to do this on Wii with Gamecube games, but I don't know how this could be an issue with games that are so small. Memory certainly wouldn't be an issue.

When you play an old GB game on Game Boy Color, the GBC colorizes all the sprites. It was so cool at the time to be able to play old games in a new way. Obviously, this is a different kind of scenario, but we're literally just talking about them making an emulator with the option for one Restore Point and an option to put it on the Gamepad (which apparently isn't hard, because that's possible with every other game they have). I don't even think Nintendo would have to redesign the whole emulator, would they? They have the emulators designed already, and all they'd really need to do is alter them to add Gamepad support, no? Am I thinking that this process is way easier than it actually is?

Am I crazy? Am I one of these super entitled gamers that wants Bioware to change the ending to Mass Effect 3? I don't want to come off like that, but it's like...come on Nintendo. Please don't make something like this a huge issue.

I'd pay money to play my VC games on my 3DS in a heartbeat - THAT, I'd understand. This is a bit harder to swallow for some reason, and I can't exactly articulate why. I think part of it is because they already allow me to transfer my games over. They'd be right there, sitting on the system, but wouldn't be able to have any of the functionality of the system I just bought.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 18:15   Edited:  09/14/12, 18:16
Very disappointing news.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 19:11
I'm gonna take the naive route and say that I DON'T expect Nintendo to try to sell us the games again IF they update the emulators. I mean, we are transferring our licenses, after all. That wasn't the case with 3DS.

@Jargon
I think a lot of us hoped that they could just run Wii software on the Wii U and stream the audio/video to the gamepad instead of outputting to a TV.

Now the sensor bar on the Wablet makes even LESS sense.

@TriforceBun
The range is supposedly pretty low, but I'm hoping that Nintendo is being conservative about that.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 19:39   Edited:  09/14/12, 19:42
@Zero
I don't recall hearing anything like that. Playing a game like NSMBU on the gamepad while someone does something ELSE on the TV screen (like watching TV or a DVD on a DVD player or playing a PS3 or something) is supposed to be possible though.

Posted by 
 on: 09/14/12, 23:59
@Zero
I've never heard any mention of the ability to play 2 separate games at once on the same Wii U. I think you may have imagined that.

Posted by 
 on: 09/15/12, 00:01
@nacthenud But NOT watching TV via Nintendo TVii.

Posted by 
 on: 09/15/12, 00:02
I think this'll just be around launch, and will be an update in the future. The 3DS didn't even launch with an online store whatsoever.

Posted by 
 on: 09/15/12, 01:08
  Forum main
 +