The second (and final) wave of free Virtual Console (Game Boy Advance) games for the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Program have been released. And it includes some AWESOME games.
The 10 titles are:
The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Mario Vs Donkey Kong
Kirby & The Amazing Mirror
Metroid Fusion
WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$
Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 (YES!!!!)
Wario Land 4
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
F-Zero Maximum Velocity
Be aware that these 10 titles will only be available to the Ambassador Program. According to Nintendo they will NEVER be released to the general public via the Virtual Console.
Also it should be noted that these titles do not show up in the eShop in the normal manner. In order to receive these games follow these steps:
Step 1: Be a Nintendo 3DS Ambassador. To do this you must have purchased the 3DS before the price cut from $250 to $179.
Step 2: Launch the Nintendo eShop
Step 3: Go to the Settings/Other tab in the shop, usually to the far left of the start-up location
Step 4: Scroll down to the “Your Downloads” tab in the History section
Step 5: Scroll through the list to find you games – the Ambassador games will have a “redownload” option if you haven’t downloaded them. Select that button.
Step 6: Go through the download steps until the game is finished downloading. Then hit continue. At this point you can either exit out of the store to see your new game, or continue scrolling through the list to download the rest of the games.
Step 7: Play the games!
Those are some sweet old games. But they're never going to released again? That's just crazy talk, even for Nintendo.
While I'd expect Nintendo to stick to their guns for the first year or 6 months, those are some major GBA titles, ones that a lot of people will be calling for. I'd suspect that Nintendo will eventually release them all to everyone and then claim that they meant that the Ambassador Only label was meant for a "limited time only".
3DS GBA games Update:
The 3DS displays the GBA games in their native resolution. Which means that the games will appear smaller on the 3DS screens (they fill aprox. 2/3 of the screen). However - if you DO want to play the games in on the full screen simply hold down the "START" button as you launch the games, this will trick the resolution to fill the entire 3DS screen.
Awesome, I was beginning to wonder when they'd show up.
(also, I wish Superstar Saga was one of the games, but considering Minish Cap made it in I'm not going to complain too much)
Guess I'll see if they've streamlined the download process or if I have to dig around in my history and download them one by one again.
Limited availability digital content.
It's a pretty decent list, all told. I'd like to play through Fusion and Minish Cap again, but I'm really excited for Yoshi's Island, because I never really played it and I understand it's fantastic.
Wow.
Compared to the 10 NES games, that is a fantastic list. I mean outside of Mario vs Donkey Kong (which is considered by many to be just fine, I just thought it was a disappointment compared to Donkey Kong 94 on Game Boy) that list includes some of the best games the GBA had to offer.
All downloaded now, haven't had a chance to fire any up yet though.
I'm looking forward most to Yoshi's Island (already played it a ton of times on SNES, GBA, and emulator, but it's so fantastic I'll do it again), Minish Cap (also played it), and Metroid Fusion, which I didn't get around to on the GBA.
I expect Mario Kart and F-Zero will feel a bit dated, with neither really having the nostalgia of the originals but still using that weird mode 7 type effect.
I know next to nothing about that version of Kirby, that Fire Emblem,or Wario Land 4, so those will be exciting too.
The others I can take or leave, I've played them all but while they're solid games I don't see myself digging them out again (especially after what I feel is a superior version of Mario vs DK in the DS game).
But still, a fantastic list, and it makes the NES one look pretty pathetic outside of Mario and Zelda. And even they don't offer much but nostalgia.
I played Yoshi's Island, Wario Land 4 and a bit of WarioWare Inc - the games held up beautifully. I didn't even have to hold down "Start" on them after doing so on Yoshi - it seemed to reset the new full screen mode to all the GBA defaults just doing it once.
A kinda odd thing though - in both Yoshi and Wario Land you are required to use the R bumper (in Yoshi to throw eggs, in Wario to do a charge move) yet for some reason the R bumper wasn't working, it was defaulted to the L bumper. It wasn't a game breaker (as it kinda felt more natural in Yoshi), but its kinda odd when the on-screen tutorials tell you to use R.
Also - there was some kind of rumor going around that you weren't going to be able to "save" your data in these games. I don't know where it came from (I think there was something about the first 10 NES games not saving properly without an update - but that didn't apply to these GBA games). Anyways - I have tested and confirmed for myself that the games DO save. Well at least Yoshi and Wario Land. Each game was saved to a slot, and when I quit out of the game and reloaded it the Slots were still occupied. I even quit out, shut down the entire system, waited 30 seconds, then started it all up again - and viola! the saved game state was still there and able to be accessed.
I don't know why people would doubt you could save in these games, since GBA made it pretty standard to auto-save most everything directly to the cartridge. The NES games I can understand, as a lot of those didn't really have save features, but not the GBA games.
Like I said though - I tested them out and I'll go out on a ledge and say all the new GBA games should be able to save properly. I mean otherwise what would be the sense of Nintendo releasing a game like Fire Emblem if you weren't able to save???
Minish Cap is a fantastic game.
Minish Cap is one of those games I got on clearance for like $10, but never opened it, and occasionally want to play, but at this point, it seems kinda silly to open it. It's the kind of mentality that Pat Mifflin would wanna strangle me for.
I have all those games on my netbook running on emulators, so it doesn't affect me that the 3DS downloads will never be available to me. I'd rather play them with a 360 controller anyway.