http://www.vc-reviews.com/news/2008/02/wiiware_and_retro_gaming

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 - By Damo

The wonderful Rez, now available on XBLA

Nintendo’s WiiWare service will be with us soon and with it comes the tantalizing promise of liberation for small-scale developers. It should grant diminutive studios the opportunity to create fun and affordable experiences without having to worry about such complicated factors as distribution and inventory management, which is obviously great.

But will the service also be used to for retro gaming, as has been the case with Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Sony’s Playstation Network?

While the Virtual Console provides perfect emulation of hundreds of classic retro titles, it seems unlikely at this stage that Nintendo will support more recent consoles (like the Saturn or Dreamcast) via the service. The reason for this is that the Wii isn’t powerful enough to emulate anything more powerful than the N64.

This means we may never see titles like Rez and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (both recently released on XBLA to critical and commercial acclaim) on the VC service. Surely the solution is to release these games as WiiWare products?

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

The aforementioned XBLA ports were coded from the ground up for the service (so basically no emulation of the original hardware was taking place). This could easily be done with WiiWare releases, too. The Wii itself may be lacking in power when compared to the 360 and PS3, but it’s capable of replicating titles from the previous generation of machines - with a little effort on the part of the developer, of course.

As XBLA has proven, gamers are willing to pay a little more for more ‘modern’ retro games like Rez and SotN; especially when, in the case of the former, they are improved and embellished (Rez possess a new HD-display mode).

With the Wii’s gigantic installed base dwarfing that of the 360 and PS3, established companies like Capcom, Konami and Namco will surely be eyeing the new WiiWare market with interest. It could be the key to helping them make a healthy profit on titles from the 32-bit era that are currently unattainable via emulation on the Virtual Console service.

 You do realize the N64 was more powerful than the PS, don't you?

As for remakes of older titles, that's possible if the IP owners want to do it but it's not the purpose of WiiWare. 

^When will Wiiware be off. introduced? (date)

I never knew about this site until today, it's got some good interviews on it. It's just sad that the article you chose to post here was obviously not written as well. There are some obvious mistakes in the article.

The mistakes are pretty irrelevant to the point of the article. Whenever anyone posts an article people are immediately drawn to typos or minor factual mistakes and completely ignore what the article is saying.

The point of the article is wouldn't it be cool if WiiWare, as well as getting brand new games, also got conversions of older games that the VC's software emulation can't handle. I for one would love to see cheap downloadable Dreamcast and Saturn titles in addition to the full releases such as Samba De Amigo and House of the Dead.

Of course it would be cool, the more games that the Wii gets in any format the better for the system as a whole. Choice is always a good thing and the Wii does so many things right in that regard.

 I'm pretty sure I also replied in regards to the article itself therefore I did not ignore the articles point.

Nothing wrong with pointing out fallacious information....especially if it voids one of their major points of the article; the VC could never have games such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

I don't see the logic behind the Wii not being able to emulate something more powerful than N64.

I don't say that the statement is false, I just want some facts to help me understand it.

It's considerably more odd that he says the Wii cannot emulate better than N64, but then says that perhaps the titles could come to Wiiware?... Wiiware will work in exactly the same way as the virtual console except with new games (or like he says, re-coded games)... so if it truly cannot emulate better than N64 (which I don't think is true) then it won't be able to put games better than N64 on Wiiware.

Makes no sense.