Nintendo to Bring Older Games to Console

If you had told me that I would be able to play Sonic the Hedgehog on a Nintendo machine a decade ago, I would have called you crazy.

This is good news; the key is going to be the pricing. How much do I have to pay to play these older games?

I agree that the price point is going to be a big issue for me.

But if the price is right, I'll be excited for a Nintendo console for the first time in like 10 years.

This is a great way to try to fight the people the use emulators. Assuming no more than $5 a game, I would probably end up buying more vintage games than I would new games. One key factor, however, would be a way to backup the games that I purchase.

If Nintendo goes out of business in 5 years I still want to be able to play the games I download from them ... and If i have to send my unit in for service and they send back a formatted system, how do i get my games back? If i drop 200$ on vintage games I don't want to loose them later on.

Wow, PC Engine games on a modern console. I am impressed. It was a seriously under-appreciated system with tons of great games.

Not sure if MAME on a hacked Xbox can play PC Engine ROMS but either way, Ninetendo's take on it will get some attention for all those forgotten games. Nice.

Definitely have to think about preordering this one.

Now if only they'd add Saturn games :(

I never got to play the bulk of the great titles for that system, and getting any of them now requries a much larger investment than I'm willing to make.

This sounds promising. I just hope Nintendo doesn't price themselves out of the market. I could swing $5-10 per full download, but anything more would seriously stretching it. They should also give away some titles, or have bundles of games from the same genre.

Bundles are the way to go, IMO.

If they bundled say, Super Mario Bros 1/2/3 together, or hell, maybe a big Mario fun pack including all the mario games up through the N64.

Stuff like that would be awesome.

I just hope they can and do secure distribution rights for some 3rd party titles. I'd love to play some of the classic RPGs on a TV once again.

I'm fairly certain that Nintendo will offer a monthly subscription approach alongside a pay-per-download service. That way you can get as many games as you like and try out new ones without fretting over whether you'll play them often. As for the guy who worried about keeping games even if the service were to evaporate, the Revolution is shipping with flash ram which is expandable, also there are two USB ports on the back (possibly you could attach a HD), so I think there should be no problem for you to store your games for all time.

This is wonderful news, but as Vincent Grayson brought up, the key is going to be in getting the go ahead for third party games as well. Mario and Zelda are great and all, but where would the SNES be without it's Mega Mans and Final Fantasies, not to mention all the third party stuff on the PC engine? The 16 bit era was the era of excellent 3rd party support, and without it, the retro gaming experiance is going to be poor indeed.

Especially since a large number of Nintendo's first party titles are already available on the GBA/DS, albeit at a much higher price than I'd be willing to pay when the Revolution comes out.

Sonic has been a part of the Gamecube lineup of titles for a while (consider ports of the Dreamcast Sonic Adventure series). Sonic Team and Sega have established that they are now a "pure software" developer, and will make games for whomever pays for them. I am not surprised that Sega and Hudson were among the first to license out their old titles for the Wii (let's try and get used to the name).

Assuming that 'retro gaming' won't be a main selling point of the other consoles, and that's a safe bet, I don't see any serious issues with Nintendo getting licenses from Square and Capcom and all the others. This is an opportunity for these companies to make relatively easy money on old titles that are otherwise not generating revenue. Assuming neither side gets too greedy, I look forward to playing a wide array of classic titles on the system.