10 titles being removed from the Wii Shop

nitromaster

Thought i'd just give a heads up in case anyone had any interest in any of these titles.
9 virtual console titles + 1 wiiware title are due to removed this month. Irem/hudson titles mostly i think...the wiiware title is by hudson.
3 on the 14th, only one notable is Bloody Wolf i think (7/10 on nintendolife, the other two got 3/10)
Links/review scores below:

14th March
VC - Bloody Wolf (TG) 7/10
VC - Drop Off (TG) 3/10
VC - Silent Debuggers (TG) 3/10

31th March
VC - Legend of Hero Tonma (TG) 5/10
VC - Ninja Spirit (TG) 7/10
VC - R-Type (TG) 8/10
VC - Super R-Type (SNES) 6/10
VC - R-Type III: The Third Lightning (SNES) 8/10
VC - Vigilante (TG) 6/10
WW - Military Madness Nectaris 8/10

Will probably pick up Bloody Wolf before it's finished...dunno about the other two. Had no interest in any of these titles before this :pac:
Can be re-downloaded once purchased, etc. :cool:

Banjo

have a tonne of points languishing on my account, might burn 'em up on these babies. Cheers! R-type III and Ninja Spirit for me, I think.

I take it Nintendo would never dream of dropping the price on these games to boost interest?

Wolverine359

Why would they remove games from the shop anyway?

Banjo

There are suggestions that this is a licensing issue - the games will continue to be available for download for those who own them, so they're not freeing up space on the servers or anything, they just won't be selling them any more. There's at least two Data East titles in there and 3 IREMs (the R-Types) so maybe they only had a license to sell them for 4 or 5 years which seemed like plenty at the time?

Retr0gamer

It's more than likely licensing issues. Irem shut their doors shortly after the Quake last year and Hudson since March 1st are now no more after being gobbled up by Konami.

nitromaster

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's more than likely licensing issues. Irem shut their doors shortly after the Quake last year and Hudson since March 1st are now no more after being gobbled up by Konami.

Exactly this.


This is more worrying though...Sega removing 4 Sonic titles in Japan.
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/03/sega_drops_four_sonic_games_from_japanese_vc

Fysh

Dude, Ninja Spirit is available on the Wii? Awesome!

I remember playing that game on one of those arcade units where you paid your money and got limited-time access to a bunch of games, and it was excellent! Unlike most games (*cough* Ninja Gaiden/Shadow Warriors *cough*) I remember playing from back then, it also stands the test of time (as I discovered via MAME some time ago).

I'll be buying it when I get home so

Banjo

Have to say, not exactly blown away by Ninja Spirit. It powers you up to full quadroppleganger (2xDopple=Quadropple?) bubbley-sword after about 90 seconds of game play, then drops a boss on your face. Didn't give me the one-more-credit feeling. It's not a bad game but it's not Shinobi (or Kung Fu Master, for that matter, which it has more in common with).

R-type III on the other hand is a blast, and has lots of 16bit magic going on that was probably eye-melting in it's day but just looks sort of cute today (like watching a child pretend to be an adult on an imaginary phone call).

Fysh

I like Ninja Spirit, the first level seems easy and you power up quickly - but the challenge is to hold onto all the power ups through subsequent levels and figure out the right weapon for each stage (it's not always the recommended one, eg for the first level boss you're best off powering up the explosives and using them). Once you've lost your power-ups part of the way into the game it becomes a lot tougher.

If you've not played it before I can see it being less compelling, but I still find it more compelling than most 8- or 16-bit games that had anything to do with ninjas. It's second only to Shadow Dancer and Shinobi 2 or 3 for my money, and even then it's close (in part because I've never completed it, while I found it comparatively straightforward to complete both SD and the Shinobi games).