Nintendo has announced the games that will be hitting Japan’s Virtual Console in the month of July, and there are some interesting things happening, including a first-party Nintendo game that only a few Japanese players ever got their hands on.
On Nintendo 64, Paper Mario has indeed been bumped back to July, where it joins Wave Race 64 (right). Notable for being the first post-launch Nintendo 64 title, Wave Race was actually excellent and worth the download. And what else needs to be said about Paper Mario?
On the Super Famicom, the most interesting release by far is Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori (Famicom Book Collection: The Forest of Beginnings, or something like that), one of Nintendo’s last Super Famicom titles. Released in 1999 (!), it’s a graphic narrative adventure with mini-games that was only available through the Nintendo Power download service, where consumers brought blank, rewriteable Super Nintendo cartridges in to convenience stores and downloaded games to them for a low price.
Militia, an early Namco Super Famicom game, and Shiren’s Mysterious Dungeon 2 are also on their way this month.
On Famicom, we’ve already got two of the games here in America: NES Open Tournament Golf and Castlevania. Flappy and Star Soldier join the pack. Both of them will be out this coming Tuesday, June 3.
Also on June 3 are two awesome action games: Super Shinobi II for Mega Drive and Splatterhouse for PC Engine.
On the Mega Drive side for the rest of the month, there’s Ichidant-R, a spinoff of Bonanza Bros.; Treasure classic Dynamite Headdy; and the original Shining Force.
Rounding out the PC Engine lineup are five (count ’em!) more games: Makai Hakkenden SHADA, Power Sports, Dead Moon, Appare Gate Ball, and Power League 4. Lots of sports!
Hudson, as is their brave and wonderful choice, has also announced the American Virtual Console lineup for the TurboGrafx this month, which includes Air Zonk, Drop Off, Silent Debuggers, and (omg) Devil’s Crush.
But wait: there’s more! The MSX computer games Eggy and Aleste have been sitting on the release list forever, with tentative dates of “Spring 2007.” But since spring 2007 is long gone, they’ve been moved back to “Summer.” And the price on Eggy (though not Aleste) has dropped from 800 points to 700. So hey — if they’re messing with the prices, that must mean they’re close to release, right?
That’s all your Virtual Console news for this month. I doubt that Monday will bring us Paper Mario here in the US, but maybe they’ll have some surprises on tap.