I can't stand it anymore.

I really want to know what is wrong with Nintendo. I mean, yeah we can joke around about how they won't listen to us because they are too busy swimming Scrooge McDuck style in a giant bin of money, but I want to break this down for a bit. Particularly the Virtual Console. I mean, there's a lot to discuss when it comes to Nintendo's failing at being a current generation console and downright terrible controls, but I want to talk about VC.

Virtual Console is basically isn't the same as the PSN or Live Arcade. That would be the Nintendo Store. Virtual Console is first and foremost an emulator. All it does is runs the classic NES-N64 games you've purchased from the Nintendo Store. But what gets me is that it does nothing else.

Why am I bringing this up again (as while I haven't made a thread for it, my opinion of this 'service' has always popped up in conversation when talking about VC)? Well, Ixzion and I decided we wanted to play Final Fantasy VI (III) co-op. There is a 16 hour drive between our places of residents, so how did we do this? With ZSNES. Now before we go on a legal tangent, we both have our physical copies of the game. I still even have that plastic sleeve thing on the bottom to help keep the metal leads on the cart from coming into direct contact with anything. I'll take pics if need be.

ZSNES has a function called Netplay. it allows someone to set up their computer as a server and allows others to connect to them. The first person to connect is assigned Player 2. And then then next is Player 3, and then Player 4. You can even change who is which player before the rom is opened. It's a VERY simplistic process as the most complicated part is making sure your firewall doesn't block the connection. And most of all, it works. Ixzion and I dumped 6 hours into Final Fantasy VI while on Skype last night and had a blast. And the more we thought about it, the more we realized that there is no excuse why Nintendo can't do the same thing with the Wii and VC.

So I started digging around. Take a look at this:http://www.zsnes.com/index.php?page=news&skip=30

This is the home site for ZSNES on their News tab. This post was made back in November of 2000. This was when Netplay released for Windows. IN 2000! The Wii came out in 2006. So six years ago from the console's release (and is now 11 years old currently), some guy in his basement programmed the ability to play SNES games over the internet FOR FREE... and you are telling me that six years later Nintendo puts out the same games distributed ONLINE of which you can legally obtain and they just can't have this feature? All the while the other two major consoles can and do release classic games with fully functional online capabilities. There really is no excuse for this. If the VC had online and voice over IP like the other consoles, I would have gladly spent however much money they wanted to be able to play games with Ix and you guys.

Ouwaoo!!!

Haha, I'm glad netplay works for you. I've been trying it for years and always run into problems with routers and networks and ports. Oh my.

I don't own a Wii, but it does seem surprising that you can't play VC games with others online. That'd be kind of an obvious feature to include. Do we know why? System limitations? Laziness? I'm betting there's just not enough demand for them to put more effort into it. They just want to toss the old games up, wash their hands and sit back to watch the money roll in, so they can move on to current-gen things.

I admit that I am not really familiar with everything your guys are talking about here but let me ask you this. Does Sony allow you to play your co-op PS1 or PS2 games over PSN? Does Microsoft allow you to play your co-op original XBOX games over Live? It seems to me that none of the three let you play online anything that isn't for their present system. If I am right about that then I don't understand why this is a Nintendo thing.

Actually, that seems right, I can only think of remakes of older games (pre-PS1) that are on the PSN and XBLA that allow you to play online. Those are remakes, not ports like the VC games.

Could I go on the PSN, download Ehrgeiz, and proceed to play multiplayer online?

As far as PS1/PS2 goes, I have no idea. But all the classic games like Sega/Nintendo ports such as Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and Earthworm Jim do, in fact, support online functionality. And I'd be willing to give a little slack to PS1/2 games as there isn't any emulators that I know of that'll run PS1/2 games online. But the technology exists for the older games on NES/SNES.

oh. Well the point I'm making is that it's not just the Wii that doesn't provide internet play to the ports of games for its older systems.

To be fair, the multiplayer for the classic ports on other systems is programmed into the actual games. Virtual Console games ( I believe? ) are exact copies of the old games they're emulating. Netplay would have to be a VC function, available in some overall menu ( like the ZSNES ) rather than in the specific games themselves, or it wouldn't be emulation. It also totally should be available in any sense of fairness, at least for the SNES. ...though maybe not being able to restrict it to one system is the reason they haven't been able to implement it.

Hurray for semi-coherent speculation!

xbox did flawlessly until it closed the OX servers...

I can see the argument that they are ports not remakes and they did not originally allow for multi-system play, I do, however, agree with Lantis that the technology is readily and cheaply available to make online play with snes, nes, etc. a profitable reality.

I do agree that it's a good point that the VC titles aren't remakes... they are copy/paste ports. But that's exactly what they are in ZSNES as well. There's not a single binary changed in the actual ROM and yet you can still play it online with someone else. The code that makes these online ready would have to be in VC and not the actual game. And here's how I think it would work.

VC would have a function that allows you to set up a lobby of sorts. Then, using the Wii's wonderful, user friendly, and incredibly fun Friend Codes, invite people to said lobby. Then load up then run the game from a list of what you own. The person connected to your lobby would then be given control of Player 2 as dictated by VC. No changes are made to the actual game. This would mean that Nintendo would have to do some work to make VC a running program from the Wii's dashboard. To my understanding VC is just kind of something that runs in the background right now.

Hell, just hire the guy who made ZSNES. I'm sure he'd be glad to do it for a chance to dive in your Scrooge McDuck money bin too. Because what I described isn't much different from how the ZSNES did it 11 damn years ago.

I think that it will happen sometime, but here's the question, what about N64, Turbografx, and Sega games. do their emulators have online capabilities, or would it just be limited to the SNES?

You know, I haven't tried. Let me look.

~Some time later~

There's a Genesis emulator (Gens) with Netplay. Also works with 32X titles. There's is also a 64 emulator called Project64K that also has Netplay. But again, it really shouldn't matter the system it's on if VC dictates the controls of Player 2.

It's not as though Nintendo can't alter the games on Virtual Console, either.

Simplest example: Wave Race 64 has all the Kawasaki banners replaced with Nintendo ads.
Biggest example: Pokémon Snap can save photos to the Photo Channel!

Nintendo: "What? We'd be giving Kawasaki free advertisement if we put Wave Race on the Virtual Console? We can't have that, someone fix that!"

I'm sure it went something like that.

But yeah, that just more solidifies my point.

Well, to be honest, Kawasaki could have sued them for it if they didn't ask permission.

You know what? You are right. I forgot we live in such a screwed up world. I wouldn't put it past a company that if another company was doing something that would only boost their sales, they'd sue in hopes of getting even more money.

Happens every day, really. If someone on Youtube so much as breathes copyrighted material it's war, yeah?

Considered sending Nintendo an email, Lantis? The only thing that'll prompt them to create VC multiplayer is player demand.

I don't think of myself as so important that they'd stoop low enough to my level to listen to (let alone consider) anything I have to say. That and they couldn't hear me anyways from the wads of cash they probably have stuffed in their ears as their pockets are already full.

To my understanding, the deal with Wave Race 64 was that the liscensing agreement with Kawasaki has long since expired, so they couldn't legally re-release a game that would in part profit using the Kawasaki name. It's like how "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" eventually became "Punch-Out Featuring Mr. Dream".

Still doesn't change the fact that they have the capability to change in-game data, though.