The 3DS’ eShop site has launched in Japan with a handful of games and the first Virtual Console Game Boy Games, and… well, it’s a whoops from us so far.
First things first. The good news is that almost all the games that you downloaded onto your DSi via DSiWare will be able to be transferred over. There are a couple of exceptions, though. The following games (just listing the ones available in English) cannot be moved over:
Art Academy
Earthworm Jim
Ashphalt 4
Real Soccer 2009/2010
Flipnote Studio
DSi Browser
Sudoku (The ones by Hudson)
But the big whoops from us is the price of the Virtual Console games. Nintendo is charging 300-400 yen for each Game Boy Game.
So you’re all aware. 400 yen is about $4 in terms of value. So what you’d expect to cost $1 in the US/ Australia costs 100 yen in Japan.
And it’s worth noting that I was buying full, new, DS games in Japan for between 500-1000 Yen.
So I was right in assuming that the virtual console stuff is going to be insanely expensive for the content. Well done Nintendo in playing on nostalgia to gouge people there – you’ll buy one or two of these and quickly realise that most of the Game Boy games had less content than the likes of Angry Birds.
But at least now Nintendo has a platform to work with. Fingers crossed it turns out to be better than both WiiWare and DSiWare.
