Nintendo Switch vs. Virtual Console
I’ve already been writing about Nintendo’s switch online service and the games it provides, in particular the more obscure titles on the service that are worth checking out. In conversations about the service and the retro games on it, I often come across the sentiment that Nintendo needs to “bring back the virtual console”, since that service was superior by far. Doubtless, there were more games for sale on the virtual console than are included with the NES and SNES apps for switch online., but that did not seem a proper comparison to me. The virtual console was the one place on wii to buy digital copies of retro games, whereas on switch they are found on the NSO apps as well as listed individually on the eshop, or as part of collections. What we really want to compare is how many retro games are available on switch vs. the wii, wii U, and 3DS. Such a comparison would need to include all the other ways of buying classic games on switch, from collections like the Mega Man Legacy Collection, to eshop releases such as the sega ages line, and of course the NSO apps. So, I started making a list.
It’s a long list.
The virtual console titles were easy enough to catalogue. That work has already been done for me. A Wikipedia page already exists with a chart of all the (northa titles along with their release dates, original platform, publisher, developer and ESRB rating, and could readily be copied into my google sheet. For the switch titles, it gets trickier. The 101 total games on the NES and SNES online apps is just the surface of what is available on the platform. The rest had to be added manually. There’s sega’s offerings: the Sega ages line of standalone eshop titles as well as Hamster corp.’s Arcade Archives lineup. Then there’s collections like the Atari Flashback Classics, and Contra Classics collection, as well as various remakes and remasters. While I did not include every remaster on switch in the list, I felt it necessary to include those that could be seen as a suitable replacement for the original: the presence of titles Okami HD and the remake of Panzer Dragoon deserves consideration. I opted not to include any Wii U titles in the list, as such games were still widely available at the time of the switch release. Some remakes of Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 games did make the cut, since those often get marketed as “remasters” rather than ports or deluxe versions. While many will disagree with some of the titles I chose to include in my total, either because they are remakes or are of games too recent to be considered “retro”, the edge cases are not so many as to throw the final number off by much. It’s also possible I missed some, and no doubt the switch total will become obsolete (I only just added the newly announced wave of n64 and genesis titles), but I don’t claim this list is exhaustive, just a useful metric for comparison.
Of course, including remakes, remasters and collections outside the NSO service for Switch means that a fair comparison would include the same for Wii, Wii U and 3DS. The practice of giving such things a standalone physical or even digital release was nowhere near as common then, but I made sure to add in things like Kirby’s Dream Collection on Wii, and the various Namco Museum titles. I did not include the 30 Wii games available on the Wii U eshop on the same principle as excluding the Wii U ports from the Switch List. Wii discs were still playable on Wii U, as were Gamecube discs on the Wii, so if we have to cut off what counts as “retro” a single generation back seems like a good place to stop.
One difficulty with putting the switch list together is that the various compilations overlap, featuring the same game in multiple places. I had to go back through the list and delete any redundancies in the “Title” column to make sure I was not double listing anything. While some of these repeat entries are different versions of the same game, reflecting its presence on multiple platforms, such as the arcade and NES versions of Donkey Kong, I did not think it valuable to list the same game twice. On doing this for the 3DS list, I had one title that I spared: Donkey Kong for the GameBoy, which I know to be distinct from the arcade and NES games.
When all is said and done, I had a big google sheets document with a tab for each platform listing every retro game title available, along with its original platform and publisher, pruned of any duplicate title entries. This also gives me the ability to sort and count the total number per platform and publisher. I’ll talk more about the breakdown of that other info in a future post. For now, let’s take a look at the grand total across all 4 platforms.
Unique Titles
As it turns out, when it comes to the total number of titles, the switch blows even the Wii number out of the water! 784 titles on switch compared to 445 on the Wii, 311 on the Wii U, and 210 on the 3DS. Hard to believe, isn’t it? So why do people say we were better off with the virtual console? Well, of those 780 titles, only 131 can be found through the switch online app.
Nintendo Switch Retro Game Availability
Part of it is that on Switch, not everything is found in the same place. While I added in a few titles from compilations, the Virtual Console was really the one stop shop for all things retro on the platforms that had it. The comparison is usually made to the Switch online app, which by comparison is less than 17% of the titles on my list! In contrast, 45% of those titles are inside collections or compilations of some kind, meaning they may not appear in a simple search by title of the eshop. Virtual Console also brought a uniformity of features and pricing to digital retro-gaming. On Switch, publishers may include more or fewer features such as save states, active rewind, or CRT filters and may charge a different prices from one another, whereas with virtual console, had the same features and price (mostly) for all games from the same original platform.
Secondly, while the switch may have more unique titles, there are some very important ones missing that were on the virtual console. Somebody who is looking to play Metroid Fusion will likely not be any less disappointed knowing that they can purchase over 100 Atari 2600 and 5200 games. I don’t want to ignore the gaps in the switch retro library, but to draw more specific attention to it. It’s not that there were more retro games on the Wii, it’s that there are specific games that we miss having available. This becomes even more obvious when we break the data out by original platform and compare it across these 4 systems, which will be the topic of my next post.
