Wii virtual console games – is Europe about to be stiffed!? (again)

First we hear Wii will be REGION FREE, from the Americans – YAY.
Then we hear Wii will NOT be region free, from the Europeans – BOO.

It’s a shame that it will be region locked of course, but Gamecubes were region locked and folks managed to get around the issue, so hopefully the same will be possible with Wii for those gaming connosieurs who like to import (remember the European fiasco with Animal Crossing on the cube?)

Now then, do you remember them mentioning the Virtual Console? Its basically an emulator of sorts that lets you download and play Nes / Snes / Megadrive and PC Engine games. Quite cool.

Well maybe not so cool for everyone, as Nintendo later went on to say that the availability of these games would be region specific. At first I was thinking, ok well that probably means we`ll just get a filtered down pick of the games Japan gets to choose from, but it’s beginning to look a bit worse than that. Compare these two pages:

Japan:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/features/virtual_console.html

Europe:
http://ms.nintendo-europe.com/wii/?site=w_virtual_console.html&l=enGB

Japan gets NES / PC Engine / SNES / Megadrive / N64 / MSX games, but Europe doesn’t get the PC Engine or MSX games.

The virtual console has such potential to be like a museum of classic games for fans, where you could also compare regional and platform differences. But if content is region locked (as the websites suggest) then it could turn into somewhat of a dissapointing novelty.
There is no definitive list of what will be available, so things may turn out ok in the end, but I’m not betting on it.

Come on Nintendo, don’t filter down the potential of your console – show the world how great you are and let everyone have access to all the games!
(need an email address to politely petition Ninty Europe)

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