Wii U Virtual Console

Waiting for the (hopeful) eruption.

Wii U owners (myself included) have been disappointed with the amount of content available on the Virtual Console. The 3DS has a veritable flood of content that is updated almost every week, yet the Wii U has seemingly been left out in the cold. But as always, rumors circulate.

What I am hoping for is a process similar to the Wii to Wii U save data transfer (which I enjoyed watching immensely), where all of your Virtual Console purchases are taken over in a matter of minutes. I would also like an option to purchase VC titles directly onto the Wii U. The backwards-compatible inclusion of the Wii menu is great, but ideally I would only use it for playing Wii games, not having to go to it every time I wanted to do something else the Wii could do. Plus, playing VC titles on the GamePad would be fantastic.

And since GameCube is two consoles ago, I think it is safe to say that it is Virtual Console-worthy. Think about it. Eternal Darkness? Skies of Arcadia? Wind Waker? Paper Mario: TTYD? Battalion Wars? SSB Melee? All available for around $10? Sign me the hell up. Sure, certain titles have been re-released on the Wii (e.g. Pikmin 1/2, Resident Evil, etc.) and I guess can be played on your Wii U, but they're not $10. And while the GamePad control scheme isn't a GameCube controller, it's a hell of a lot closer than the Wii Remote. I am looking forward to turning on my console and saying, "Oh, there are suddenly hundreds of games on the Virtual Console available to me, including GameCube titles."

Playing NES/SNES/Genesis/etc. games on the GamePad would also be a nice feature. I think for most N64/GameCube titles, the GamePad screen might just be a little too small for some details to be noticed, plus the internal speakers on that thing don't really make the cut for me.

I love Nintendo through and through, but it would have been much better had these features been available before the console sat in my house for almost three months (and as of now, it is still just speculation). For Nintendo, it seemed like a very scattered, lackluster, and poorly planned launch. But they have a tendency to make up for mistakes and turn things around. We shall see.