After the announcement of 30 American Virtual Console retro games coming to the Wii download service this year, you might think that would be the same worldwide, but you’d be wrong! Europe is getting one additional SNES game title, Donkey Kong Country, from Rare & Nintendo. But both Americans and Europeans look enviously at Japan, who on top of the 30-31 known titles are getting 19 more classic games.
Instead of Genesis’ Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine Japan gets Puyo Puyo, and instead of Turbografx-16’s Bomberman ’93 they get Bomberman ’94, both different versions of the same game type. As for the list of addition Japanese titles…
NES/Famicom: Legend of Kage, Gradius, Go-moku Narabe (Five-in-a-Row), Xevious, Ninja Jajamaru-kun, Wario’s Woods.
SNES/Super Famicom: R-Type III, Super Castlevania IV, Contra III, Street Fighter II, Super Mario World, Zelda: Link to the Past (900 points), Fire Emblem: Monsho no Nazo (900 points), Super Mario Picross, and also Donkey Kong Country.
Sega Genesis/Megadrive: Shadow Dancer.
Turbografx-16/PC Engine: Necromancer, New Adventure Island, Battle Lode Runner.
To make it worse, Sega Genesis/Megadrive games are just 600 Wii Points in Japan opposed to 800 in the West. But to be fair with the rest of the Virtual Console prices, they might seem high starting at $5 for NES to $10 for N64, but if they cost less I think many people would not play them as much and be buying them more to “complete the collection”. At least this way you pick what you like best.
One thing is for sure, they need to release as many of those Japanese games worldwide, even if it means adding a warning mentioning the in-game text/language is all or in part Japanese.