23 Facts About Virtual Console

Virtual Console, abbreviated as VC, is a line of downloadable video games for Nintendo's Wii and Wii U home video game consoles and the Nintendo 3DS family handheld game console.

Virtual Console titles have been downloaded over ten million times.

The sale of past games through the Virtual Console is one of Nintendo's reasons for opposing software piracy of old console games.

On January 30,2019, the Virtual Console service was discontinued on the Wii, following the shutdown of the Wii Shop Channel.

The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console launched with 7 Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles.

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New Virtual Console software is added on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2:00PM JST and there are currently 659 titles for the Wii, 244 titles for the 3DS and 466 titles for the Wii U available.

The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console launched with 4 Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles.

Also in September Hudson announced that games made for the TurboGrafx-CD format would join the Virtual Console beginning in October 2007, with five titles to be released for the remainder of 2007 and ten titles for 2008, each priced at 800 points.

Neo Geo AES support was added on September 18,2007, for the Japanese Virtual Console, becoming the first addition to the list of consoles since the TurboGrafx-16 was added two days after the US launch.

All Virtual Console games have their buttons mapped to the respective buttons on the controllers in certain circumstances, users can use X and Y instead of A and B, if the original controller does not have X and Y buttons.

Virtual Console games are locked to the Wii on which they were purchased—they cannot be transferred to another Wii via an SD card, although it is possible to purchase games in the Wii Shop Channel and send them as gifts to people on their Wii Friends list.

Since Nintendo of Taiwan and Nintendo of Hong Kong never offered a Chinese version of the Wii console in Hong Kong or Taiwan, they have released Japanese Wii's in that region and by hardware extensions, the Japanese Virtual Console is available for customers in Taiwan and Hong Kong and like other regions are able to buy Japanese Nintendo Points cards at certain retailers.

Unlike other Virtual Console-branded releases, GBA games are not emulated, but rather they run directly on an ARM7TDMI processor core; the "AGB_FIRM" kernel running on the other CPUs is responsible for emulating the Game Pak, applying a video filter, and allowing the brightness to be adjusted or the game quit without manually rebooting the 3DS.

Virtual Console games are saved on an SD card and are accessible through the Nintendo 3DS home menu.

Wii U Virtual Console titles include the option to use Off-TV Play on the Wii U GamePad and Miiverse integration.

The UK Virtual Console service offers versions of games from both North America and Japan, in lieu of slower PAL versions.

On July 14,2016, TurboGrafx-16 support was finally added to the North American Virtual Console, launching with three games; Bonk's Adventure, New Adventure Island, and R-Type.

Virtual Console games are saved either on the Wii U's flash storage or can be saved on a USB flash drive or external hard drive.

Unnamed Nintendo employees have reportedly speculated that licensing issues will be a predominant factor in determining whether a game is available for Virtual Console, giving the examples of GoldenEye 007 and Tetris as games that might be too expensive to license for the Virtual Console.

Matt Casamassina of IGN reported that Rare titles absent of Nintendo-owned characters, such as Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark, would be unavailable for purchase due to Microsoft's acquisition of Rare; SNK has announced intentions to release the Samurai Shodown series and a few other games to the Virtual Console which has brought the Neo Geo AES to the list of consoles available.

Similarly, most N64 Virtual Console games have mapped the Z button to the L, ZL and ZR buttons and the C-buttons to the right analog stick on the Classic Controller, which some reviewers have described as awkward.

The Virtual Console release of StarTropics changes the name of one weapon from "Island Yo-Yo" to "Island Star", since Yo-Yo is a trademarked term in Canada.

Similarly, Nintendo DS games made available on Virtual Console are identical to their original release, complete with Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection set-up screens; however, as the wireless features are not emulated, attempting to use online play or local wireless multiplayer features will not function, especially as the original service had been terminated about eleven months prior to the Virtual Console debut.