How Link Wound Up on the Wrong System

Super Nintendo Specs:
*CPU: 16-bit 65816 (3.58MHz)
*RAM: 128KB (1Mb), 64KB (0.5Mb) Video RAM
*Graphics: Dedicated graphics processor
*Colors: 32768 (256 on screen)
*Sprites: 128
*Sprite Size: 64x64 pixels
*Resolution: 512x448 pixels
*Sound: 8-channel 8-bit Sony SPC700 digitized sound

WiiU Specs:
*Tri Core, 3 GHz PowerPC-based 45nm CPU, very similar to the Xbox 360 chip. The CPU features 2 MB cache, 1 MB for Core 0, and 512 KB for cores 1 and 2
*2 GB RAM: 1 GB is allocated for games and is shared between the CPU and the GPU, while 1 GB is allocated to the operating system.
*Custom 40nm AMD GPU with 32 MB embedded eDRAM and unified shader architecture
*25 GB Blu-ray based disc
*8 / 32 GB internal flash memory
*Dedicated 120 MHz audio processor, 6 channel audio for console, 2 channel for controller
*512 MB separate on-board flash storage for the OS only

Now, there is a reason why this article started out with specs of both systems. One of these two systems is regarded as one of the greatest systems ever made and contained one of the greatest video games ever made known as Link to the Past. Now, for those that have yet to know this, Link to the Past was not only arguably the greatest game ever made up to that point, but was also the biggest game to ever be released. It was leagues ahead of anything we had seen before way back in 1992. As a matter of fact by the time I got my first Super Nintendo back in 1995, the game was still the biggest and baddest in the market.

So now we are flash forwarding to today, with Link to the Past 2 finally being announced. But it won’t come out for the WiiU, a powerful system that can really use some good news and a way to make use of its weaker graphical capabilities when compared to the upcoming systems. Instead, its coming out for the Nintendo 3DS. Now about a year ago I would have agreed with this decision since the 3DS was needing some good news. But now, the 3DS is on the right path with a good variety of games that had come out and are on the way.

The Nintendo WiiU is in trouble. Not 3DS trouble, but deeper trouble. It is threatening to become the next Dreamcast if something doesn’t change soon. What better way to bring the WiiU back into the spotlight than getting a sequel to one of the most beloved adventure games in history? What better way to make the WiiU relevant than releasing a sequel to a beloved game that has a mere 1 MB in memory?

Nintendo, think of the possibilities! Think of just how much content you could pack into a 2D-action adventure game on an HD/Blu-Ray Disk system! You have the chance to take the already-long adventure of Link to the Past and quantify its length and depth by an exponential amount. You can make a Zelda game that can contain 15 Link to the Pasts and then some. I am pretty sure the entire world would prefer a 2D Link game on a blu-ray-like disk as opposed to a smaller cartridge. You can include all the necessary enhancements like day/night, month/year features, etc. P.S. the controller would have been perfect for item movements and the monitoring of maps.

You guys used to be about pushing the envelope and seeing what you can pull off with what cards you are dealt with. I had discussed this before, but Nintendo used to have the biggest games around, from the original Mario Bros. to the original Zelda to Link to the Past to Mario 64 to Ocarina of Time, and lastly Wind Waker. Notice most of our "larger" titles had been Zelda games. But in recent years, this envelope hasn’t been pushed. Even if the hardware isn’t that much stronger than the PS3, New Super Mario Bros. U could have been much bigger (My idea can be found here), and the same goes with Nintendo Land. Link to the Past 2 with the minimal graphical requirements could have been a 100-hour adventurous marathon. Instead, it’s a 3DS title as the WiiU winds up with a Wind Waker remake being one of their biggest releases of the upcoming holiday season.

Nintendo, you dropped the ball here. Link to the Past 2 should have been a massive, massive 2D adventure that is worthy of carrying the legendary Link to the Past title.

Instead, it will just become another handheld Zelda game that will make us ponder how much bigger it would have been if it had gotten the upgrade.

Nintendo's Backwards Compatibility is Still....Backwards

So the Nintendo WiiU’s sales have been quite dismal in these opening months. A promised excellent opening lineup has been reduced to pure nonsense as most of the games got delayed, pushed around, or maybe even cancelled. Pikmin 3 got cancelled, Rayman got cancelled, Lego City Stories just came out when it was promised at launch, Virtual Console and Nintendo TV got pushed back and we will not be seeing any traces of heavy-hitters until the summer with E3---an E3 that Nintendo desperately needs to win for momentum.



Rock Band unveiled its final song for downloadable content, which is the humbly overrated American Pie. This song will follow the 2,000+ songs that were available to download for the Guitar Hero-killing video game that has aged gracefully because of its arsenal of DLC and because of tis budding list of music to choose from.


Now, while these two previous paragraphs may hold no correlation, there is one indeed embedded within the sentences. There is a reason why Rock Band continued to hold an audience despite being 5 years old, and there is a reason why the Nintendo WiiU is having such an atrocious start even though it has such a great chance to succeed: downloadable content. Rock Band managed to outgross Guitar Hero in the long run even though it was nowhere near as popular with the pop culture. And this was because they managed to utilize its potential and continued to pour on the new songs bringing classics and mixing them up with newer rock songs to play.


The WiiU on the other hand, there is no excuse. The first HD Nintendo system still doesn’t have Virtual Console games and it has been out for several months. The first high-definition system, the first to emphasize downloadable content and external/internal hard drives has yet to truly branch off and offer an exclusive massive lineup that would combine the classics along with the modern-day games. We have progressed far, far too much in technology to see only one or two classic games a week being released on the console. This is inexcusable.


Newsflash: The Nintendo 3DS and PS3 were two major systems with very slow launches and first years that are now flourishing because the games were being released in a consistent pace. If you release the games, they will come, it is a very simple strategy. The original Playstation took down the (superior, don’t deny this) Nintendo 64 simply because it released an abundance of games that overwhelmed gamers and the competition. Now let’s talk about the WiiU.


Nintendo WiiU, you should have had hundreds of games ready and available at launch through the Virtual Console. All they had to do when the plans were set for this system ions ago was to figure out a way to bring all the arcade, NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube gems into the Virtual Console and make them available as soon as humanely possible. Who can possibly deny the chance to re-play SNES games in an HD system by Christmas? Who could deny the opportunity to download games like Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Smash Brothers Melee at launch? The backwards compatibility potential is strongest for Nintendo not just because it has the richest history of the current systems, but up until this past year they have the best first-party games out there. Third-party runs Xbox 360, but the first-party is what saved and allowed the Nintendo Wii to win. Not to mention, the first-party is what prevented the Gamecube from becoming another Dreamcast.


I had discussed this way before the release of the Nintendo WiiU, SNES and N64 classics getting the HD touch was a major requirement to win back the hardcore fanbase while trying to maintain the mainstream audience that had gobbled over the Wii. Just thought of Majora’s Mask HD and Yoshi’s Island HD makes me salivate. And they don’t even have to be HD, if you offered over a hundred Nintendo classics over its long history at less than $10 its hours upon hours of potential gameplay appealing to the old-schoolers and the new-schoolers that weren’t around when the games originally came out.


However, with a piss-poor online shop and now with the game lineup stretching quite thin until this winter, the WiiU is slow on sales and eating away at Nintendo’s profits. If it weren’t for the torrid resurgence of the Nintendo 3DS, who knows where Nintendo would be right now.



All of this could have been avoided if Nintendo had planned ahead, reached into the past, and found a way to have a massive and extensive lineup from the getgo. Nintendo had the chance to own Christmas. Now, they have to fight the PS4 next holiday season for any chance of winning the war.



Never underestimate the power of downloadable content. Just ask Angry Birds, Rock Band, and the IPad.

The Potential Epicness of SNES HD

The Super Nintendo we all know is arguably the greatest system ever created. All the forces of nature were working in its favor, as the first-party games of Nintendo were almost all masterpieces, and the company even got a slew of instant classics from second and even third-party developers. IGN even managed a list of the 100 greatest SNES games, and as of now have not included a title that felt like just filler to complete the ranking (except for that one unicycle game). In my personal ranking of the 20 greatest video games in history, a good percentage of them are on the Super Nintendo. And in terms of musical soundtracks, the SNES occupies the top titles on the list. The Super Nintendo has handed us a better controller, and a more consistent (in terms of quality not quantity) and varied library of games than any other system out there. The XBox 360 was closest, but failed to deliver enough RPGs and (great) platform games to take the crown.


Part of the appeal of the Virtual Console when it was announced was that we gamers could purchase SNES gems at a cheap price to enjoy and to introduce them to a new generation of gamers. Years after the Virtual Console debut, check out these pitiful numbers: only 94 SNES titles for the Japanese gamers, and only 71 for the United States. Now keep in mind IGN has a list of the 100 best games for the SNES. These numbers are ridiculous, and totally unnecessary. Even the Playstation 3 has schooled Nintendo in terms of bringing back classics wither plethora of PSOne titles that are available for purchase online. Check out these lists—although the Japanese once again get triple the content that the Western Hemisphere gamers get. You would think that Nintendo would be the company shelling out and whoring out their greatest hits. The WiiU can change this unfortunate predicament. While the WiiU has been rumored to focus on re-releasing Gamecube titles, I think they should go a step further by creating the SNES HD.


Picture this: taking all of the classic SNES titles that we all know and love, clean up the graphics, enhance them a little, widen the screen ratio to match those of the HDTV around the world, add a few nice touches and surprises, and re-releasing them yet again for the WiiU. This also gives Nintendo a second chance to unleash the full potential of the Virtual Console, and gain support from the third-parties that helped shape the Super Nintendo so long ago. It would be the section of the Virtual Console we're definitely going to visit the most.


Can you imagine Super Metroid HD? Super Mario World HD? Earthbound HD? Mega Man X HD? Contra III HD? Donkey Kong Country 2 HD? Link to the Past HD? Super Mario RPG HD? Mortal Kombat II HD? Yoshi’s Island HD? Turtles in Time HD? Super Mario Kart HD? Now if the game already looks stellar, we don’t have to add any 3-D or other effects to the game, but instead clean the frame rate, clean any potential glitches, and give it the widescreen support. And for most of the games I’ve mentioned, that’s all you need.

With most SNES games, a small high-definition clean-up is all you have to do to make that $10 purchase a good one. A great one actually. We can even take it a step further by offering an enhanced soundtrack to most of these games. Can you imagine playing Super Metroid with one of several OCRemix songs playing in the background? Street Fighter II Turbo for XBox Live did that and look how well it turned out. Now this would work on the WiiU not only because it’s a more powerful system and the demand for HD versions of classic games remains decently high (See: Marvel vs. Capcom 2 HD), but also because the WiiU controller and its massive screen in the middle would be utterly perfect for playing Super Nintendo games. Now for those pondering, it wasn’t totally my idea—the idea stems from the XBox Live recent support of adding a nice HD touch to games from the past like Street Fighter II and Perfect Dark (my favorite example—still the best shooter of all-time).


Bottom Line: Nintendo can really step up to the plate and deliver next year if they can do what they did with the SNES games on the Wii—except offer much more than a measly 71 games out of a potential 700+, and then add some HD abilities to most of their games. While this is indeed a long shot, if games like Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy III, and others can receive the HD treatment and attention that HD remakes like Street Fighter and Perfect Dark had gotten, we could see a major reason why it would be worth getting a WiiU.

An idea like this can definitely get the blessing of third-party companies, as I’m sure they’ll love to have their classics enhanced for a new audience. Companies like Sega and Capcom can definitely benefit from a linking to the past for the WiiU. Come on now, wouldn’t you fork over a cool 10 bucks to replay a Super Metroid game with cleaned-up graphics and HD-widescreen support? I am sure there is a league of gamers that would. These classic games stretched the hardware and software limitations of the Super Nintendo. With the WiiU, that limit has been stretched much farther, and its time for these games' full potential to be reached.