With the full list of 2006 Virtual Console games having been released earlier last week, C&VG thought it was the perfect time to focus on the retro download service and uncover some of those mysteries in an interview with Nintendo of Europe. The main details were:
* The Wii stores a history of all of your downloads so that if you have to delete any Virtual Console games for any reason you can re-download them for free at a later date.
* Virtual Console games will be locked to the console they are downloaded on so even if they are on an SD card they can’t be used on other machines. If your console ever breaks, Nintendo will offer support to recover the games you paid for.
* Each Virtual Console game downloaded will come with a digital instruction manual.
* At first, only 2000-point cards will be available at a price of $20 / €20 / £14.99. A total of 10,000 points can be stored on your Wii account at any one time.
Question: GameCube games are played with GameCube pads. Can they be played with the Classic controller too, for those who don’t actually have any GC pads?
Nintendo: Nintendo GameCube games can only be played using Nintendo GameCube controllers. The Classic Controller will not work on these games.
Question: Can you specify which controllers it will be possible to use for each of the VC games types (NES, SNES, PC Engine, N64)?
Nintendo: All virtual console games can be played using the Classic Controller or Nintendo GameCube pads. The Wii Remote can also be turned on its side and used as a traditional controller to play NES games. However, a game will only be playable with the control mechanism it was designed for. So, for example, you will play NES games with the D-pad, not an analogue stick or motion-sensitive functionality.
When using a mixture of Wii and GameCube controllers, the Wii Remote or Classic Controller will take priority. So if you have two Classic Controllers plugged in they instantly become player one and two regardless of how many GameCube pads are inserted.