Another month, another few weeks closer to the launch of the 3DS, and another snippet of information comes out about Nintendo's new handheld. In fact, this time, it's a lot more than a snippet, as Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has spilled a whole vat of beans in his keynote at GDC in San Francisco.
As one of the main announcements of the evening, Iwata confirmed that when the 3DS's Virtual Console launches this May, not only will there be Game Boy and Game Boy Colour classics available for download, but the store will also be populated by games from the TurboGrafx 16, and SEGA's ill-fated handheld, the Game Gear.
The Game Gear - oh so 90s.
Launching a year after Nintendo's own Game Boy, the Game Gear greatly out-specced and out-powered the Game Boy, sporting a backlit, full colour screen (which was highly impressive, especially when compared to the Game Boy's black and white, non-backlit dot-matrix screen), and games that were surprisingly close to their home console counterparts. Though it was on sale for 7 years, the Game Gear was plagued by a poor battery life, and only managed a fairly pitiful 11 million sales. Although individual sales figures for the Game Boy is hard to come by, the Game Boy and Game Boy Colour together sold 118.69 million units up until 2003 - and even if you halve the number, it's clear to see the Game Boy won.
Makings its triumphant return to gaming's present, SEGA have announced the first five games that'll be available to download as soon as the Virtual Console goes live this May, with the Bejeweled/Tetris combo Columns, Ninja platformer Shinobi, handheld role playing game, Dragon Crystal, traditional Sonic platformer Sonic Triple Trouble, and kart game Sonic Drift 2 making up the line-up.
The Turbo Grafx-16 - the 90's precursor of "txt spk".
The TurboGrafx-16, on the other hand wasn't technically a handheld console at all - that was the TurboExpress, a handheld version of the TurboGrafx-16. Seeing a release in the US and Japan at around the same time as the Game Boy, the TurboGrafx-16 was a 16 bit home console, which suffered an equally untimely demise due to poor marketing, and the unavailability of games which weren't designed for its expensive CD add-on. The console was discontinued in 1994/5, without seeing a release in Europe, but remains famed for its side-scrolling shooters.
Along with the two handheld consoles, Nintendo also re-iterated its plans to bring 3D versions of its own games to the Virtual Console, which remains something we're very, very excited about. Adding stereoscopic 3D effects to Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and presumably NES and SNES games, we're eagerly awaiting details of the first titles to be receiving the treatment - and you'll know as soon as we do.
Although it's undoubtedly a good thing that Game Gear games will be offered for download on the 3DS, it's almost ironic that the games should be seeing release on another console which is plagued by the same problems that afflicted the Game Gear. Criticised on its release for having a low battery life (5 - 6 hours) on 6 AA batteries, and for costing too much, the Game Gear was chastised for exactly the same flaws the 3DS itself now faces - here's hoping, for Nintendo's sake, that history doesn't repeat itself. For more information on the Virtual Console, and to read what we thought when we went hands-on with the retro download service, you can find our hands-on impressions here.
