Nintendo certainly enjoyed a lot of attention in the 1980s and early 1990s, but in the early 2000s the company was struggling to retain its cultural significance. It’s not just about the sales - by having easy access to past games, you allow gamers to become fans of series they didn’t hear about before. This is the #1 reason why game preservation is good business. This was how I got acquainted with old Metroid games, and how I became a die-hard fan of the 2D games. It also helped me discover classics such as Super Metroid, and it was a vital step in me becoming the Metroid fan that I am today. The Wii’s Virtual Console was how I finally experienced many N64 games that I’d never owned as a kid like Pokemon Snap and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. The Virtual Console’s library wasn’t comprehensive, but it was about as robust as you could ask for in the late 2000s. They even brought over a Japan-exclusive N64 game (and an underrated gem) Sin & Punishment. Plenty of classic 3rd Party games like Chrono Trigger and Castlevania found themselves on the service. But that wasn’t the end of it - Sega Genesis, NEO-GEO, Turbografx-16, and Arcade games were present as well. And thanks to its backwards compatibility for the GameCube, the Wii offered games from all of Nintendo’s past home consoles up to that point. You had the NES, SNES, and N64 all there. The mainstream gaming audience could finally access that history and learn from the past. Up until that point, retro games had been locked to a niche audience that either retained the original hardware or who had gone through the trouble of emulating on a PC. This handful of games would gradually expand into hundreds of titles available to buy and download directly to your Wii. In November 2006, Nintendo released the first of its Virtual Console library as part of the Wii’s launch. The Wii’s Virtual Console was a watershed moment for me - it made me stop and appreciate retro games.
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