Because you can literally run NES games on a modern toaster. And the GBA was CPU only, there was no APU or GPU. There's not that much to emulate.

1) VC sucks in general. Where's Genesis, TG16, N64, etc...?
2) They probably want to do more HD releases like Wind Waker

They did have all those, on the Wii anyway.

Might it have to do with HDD size? The WiiU HDD is not exactly massive in size, and they might figure that it is just not big enough for it to be viable to sell games that can be larger than 1GB.

Not really an issue, you can externalize files on the Wii-U.

Yeah, I agree with the second one. They will release more HD games probably. Although, a Super Mario Sunshine HD sounds good to me.

Are you sure you mean literally? I'd be very surprised if there were any actual production toasters that had any computing power, let alone enough to emulate the NES.


Besides, there's still the question of why the games aren't emulated if the 3DS can supposedly do it so easily.

Because Nintendo is lazy, and porting is easier than developing an emulator when you're only anticipating a few games.

They're not ports. Porting would have been more effort than writing one emulator. Porting 1 game would have been a large effort let alone 10.

Any thoughts on the NES game playing toaster?

Confirmed!

http://www.stupidfingers.com/projects/nintoaster/

It's a thing.

[EDIT] ninja'd.

All of these are on the Wii VC, which can be accessed if you have a Wii U.

Okay, but eventually the Wii Shop will close, and they still lack the 'enhancements' that the Wii U Virtual Console has to offer.

Not in the most literal sense, but I think one could rework an advanced toaster into a NES, to illustrate the point of the metaphor 'running on a potato'.

I'm a huge fan of Nintendo, particularly their classics. They've always emphasized a gameplay first approach to game design which I always felt made their games works of art on top of being virtual entertainment (sort of like old Blizzard, old Konami, and old ID did things with their games). That being said I don't see them making hardware much longer. The market has drastically changed between Japan and the US with Nintendo boldly sticking to the way they do things on console. They can't shake the image they made for themselves in any of the big markets and it's killing their sales. Whatever happens, I hope Nintendo will continue to make games.

Back on topic, gamecube vc might not be happening because it might not generate a lot of money. I'm sure MS didn't make a lot from their downloadable classics and they killed off their BC program on the 360 based solely on the idea that not a lot of people played old xbox games on the 360. Nintendo probably eyeballed MS and Sony on how they did with their sales of classic games. If GC emulation had a bit of difficulty on VC, they probably decided not to do it or at least not devote a ton of person hours to it.

Does Nintendo still not have an online account system so if you buy a downloadable game from their store, and if your device is stolen or broken, you can just buy a new one and still have the games attached to your account? I was seriously considering buying a 3DS for Shin Megami Tensei IV (if it ever comes to the EU/PAL region) but I can't seriously bring myself to buy one without an account system like Steam/GOG.