Good point. The spinoffs and then games like Phantom Hourglass are much worse. Hourglass was so bad I blocked it out of my mind until now.

One N64 game a month I think is good. I mean there aren't THAT many N64 games. And considering it'll likely mostly be first party stuff that narrows the amount further. There was some data mined info or whatever a couple months ago that seemed to show 38 games planned for the N64. Assuming that list was indeed what they plan to do, that means even at just 1 game a month they'll have put everything from N64 they plan to put on it in just over two years. Once it gets up to 20 games, presumably later this year, it'll be well worth the money, especially considering they'll likely also be regularly adding Genesis games as well.

The thing is, as far as I'm concerned, for this service to be worth the asking price it should have effectively had every single first party N64 title on it at launch, and preferably as many third party titles as possible as well. Pretending that Majora's Mask, a 22-year-old game that has been re-released at least four times since the original on N64, is somehow a selling point for the service is ridiculous, and the same goes for all the other N64 and Genesis games. This exact same thing has played out again and again since the Wii, where Nintendo drip feeds its online service with its old games at a glacial pace, and then when a new console comes around, they start the process all over again with an almost identical list of games every single time. I genuinely cannot fathom how Nintendo thinks doing this is somehow a good thing.

Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures and Triforce Heroes aren't spinoffs. And Jesus fucking Christ what is it with people hating on Phantom Hourglass!?

Because it's garbage. Shitty controls and revisiting that one dungeon over and over sucked balls. Nintendo was masturbating themselves with the stupid touch screen controls ruining so many games. Prime Hunters,Zelda,Mario 64 DS all suck for the horrible awkward controls. Hourglas more so for just repeating the worst Zelda dungeon ever so many times. Gave up on that game,sold it never looked back.  Nintendo is capable of making Bad Zelda games and that is their worst.  Triforce and such are spinoffs. No one looked at those and said ah yes the next mainline Zelda is coming. It's a sub series within Zelda.

There are 19 mainline Zelda games and all games that start with "The Legend of Zelda" are mainline and part of the timeline. Zelda II is the only exception. The only games that are spinoffs are the Hyrule Warriors games, those weird Tingle games, Link's Crossbow Training and Cadence of Hyrule. All of the multiplayer Zelda games still have the same basic gameplay like all of the other mainline Zelda games.

And I heavily disagree about touchscreen controls being terrible.

lol there is no timeline. Fans created the theory and Nintendo abided for a time to shut them up but they erased it again with BOTW.

Well that is exactly why it's so awesome they've switched to a subscription service. Sure they are building it out a lot slower than we'd like (GB and GBA should totally already be on there by now) but now they don't have to keep rebuilding their retro games offering each gen. Now when the next Nintendo system comes out this presumably will all be up there from day one. They are building the dream retro game service, with the games online to boot (which is probably the reason why games release slowly, cuz otherwise once each emulator was done they could easily just throw a bunch of games on there at once).

Are they being typical Nintendo being real slow with online stuff? sure. Are they making dumb decisions like releasing N64 before the emulator was ready, and getting rid of Mario 35 - an entire game they built to add value to the service and then just threw it in the trash after 6 months? Absolutely. Are they adding systms too slowly? You betcha. But even at $50/yr this thing is cheap and well worth the price. i mean the $20 tier is an even better deal - really just an absurdly good deal -  but the expansion pack seems like a great value even now, assuming the emulation isn't too bad after the recent update. Banjo this month and MM next month are huge additions to the service - probably two of the most desired games they could possibly add.

I mean if you've played all these games recently then you're not the target audience. Most people have played the games on the service in 20 or 30 years. The service is for people who WANT to play these retro games, not for people who have bought every rereleased version of these games and aren't interested in them anymore.

Doesn't change the fact that they're not spinoffs.

I think 40€ is a good price, but $50 is a bit much.