Our long national nightmare is over: Earthbound is available on Virtual Console for Wii U.
Sure, Japanese players were able to buy it for 30 cents and we have to pay $9.99. But that’s a small price to pay for a true classic of the role-playing genre. Earthbound, Nintendo pointed out in a press release today, has a “dedicated group of fans,” and when you look at how many copies Nintendo sold when it released the Super Nintendo game in 1995, the math would indicate that most of those fans don’t technically own a copy of the game. Finally it can be played without either a) resorting to piracy or b) ponying up $200 on eBay for an original cartridge. (If you want the box and manual, that price triples.)
Earthbound isn’t the only rare and collectible cult classic to be released on Virtual Console this week! Shantae, a Game Boy Color action-adventure game in the vein of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, is now available on Nintendo 3DS. Released by Capcom and created by WayForward, this game has recently become nearly as expensive as Earthbound.
A combined $15 for $400 worth of videogames? Sounds good to me. Hopefully Earthbound will enjoy sales good enough to motivate Nintendo to finally bring out its sequel Mother 3 once Game Boy Advance games come to Wii U’s Virtual Console.
And in all this excitement over long-lost classics returning, we should also point out that Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale, a 3DS game from Level-5 and the creator of the cult hit Boku no Natsuyasumi (“My Summer Vacation”) series, is out today as well.
Man, every now and then Virtual Console has a great week. You kids may not remember, but it used to be like this all the time.