Nintendo showed me what to expect from the 3DS eShop launch next week and the most important info, at least to me, was the info regarding the Virtual Console content. At launch you can expect Super Mario Land ($3.99), Alleyway ($2.99) and Radar Mission ($2.99) in the Virtual Console. You folks old enough to remember may be getting Déjà vu as these are some of the same titles that original released with the Game Boy back in the early ’90s.
The games can be played on either screen (it won’t be stretched to widescreen on the top) and you’ll have the option of seeing the background color in the original yellow and green tints or the new white tint option. More important than that, you’ll be able to save your progress wherever you are in the original Game Boy/Game Boy Color games.
The Virtual Console will see “additional platforms beyond Game Boy and Game Boy Color” but Nintendo wasn’t ready to talk about that quite yet. They’d be insane not to re-release Game Boy Advance games, though. “Additional platforms” extend beyond Nintendo handhelds and Nintendo didn’t outright deny the potential of other handhelds (Game Gear, WonderSwan, etc) when I asked them about it. The Wii Channel features plenty of games that were never released on a Nintendo console so it wouldn’t be crazy if we saw the same happen for the eShop down the line.
