All right, third mailbag! This Sunday, we look at the potential of handheld games on the Virtual Console, language games, EA Sports, and WiiSports online. I was going to include an e-mail I received concerning my article about the golden proportion in Zelda music, but then I just kept getting so much e-mail that I decided to write a separate follow-up article.

This leaves the rest of the mailbag a little thin, but that’s okay. Hopefully you find it informative. Check it all out after the break.

–Christian

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What are the chances of Handheld games ever making there way to the VC. There are amazing classic Gameboy/Gameboy color/Gameboy advanced games that I’d like to play again on the big screen as well as Sega Game Gear and Neo-Geo Pocket color. It would be a great addition to the VC. Another Question I have is what are chances of us seeing capatibility between the Wii and the DS like what we saw with the gamecube/advanced. They could sync them wirelessly to create usage during games or even allow for a blank game chip with memory on it to bring some of the VC games on the go. We all know that the DS can pretty much handle the graphics of those older systems. Just a thought. Wondering if anyone else was wishing for the same thing.
–Maverick

Christian: Game Boy games on the VC will always be a possibility until it either happens or until the Wii is retired. However, I don’t think it will be happening anytime soon if it happens at all. With old games still playable on the Game Boy Advance, it will be a while before Nintendo decides the public doesn’t have a machine to play those games on. Perhaps once gets a DS channel on the Wii allowing game downloads to your DS, they might offer Game Boy games for you to store on the Wii but play on your DS. As for the Game Gear and Neo Geo Pocket, this would depend on whether or not Nintendo can reach a deal with Sega and/or SNK, and whether or not these companies think it’s worth bringing these games to the VC anyway. On a good note, though, all these companies are on good terms, as Sega Genesis and SNK’s Neo Geo games are already on or coming to the Virtual Console.

As for Wii and DS connectivity, it’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when. Nintendo stressed in the past that they want to take advantage of connectivity. Since the DS should have a much higher penetration rate than the GBA and the Wii will have a much higher penetration rate than the GameCube, it should be much easier for consumers to take advantage. Also remember that you no longer have to buy a rare cable to connect the two. If I recall correctly, Square-Enix was extremely interested in using the Wii/DS connectivity in games as well.

As for downloading games to your DS, Nintendo has only mentioned downloading demos from the Wii to the DS. However, if Nintendo ever releases a way to store downloaded games, you may see full games downloadable to the DS via the Wii in the future. I wouldn’t hold your breath for it though, as Nintendo would really have to find a way to do this without inviting mass piracy.

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Hello, I was checking out some of the news on the main page when I saw the topic involving a japanese game that teaches you english. Now I know that most japanese games don’t make the jump to the US but I couldn’t help but think how awesome the concept of learning a language on the DS would be. What are the chances of having some sort of bilingual game developed here in the good ol’ US of A?
–Nick

Matthew: It really just seems like matter of time before a language teaching tool hits the DS. All we need is just one decent language game to be released. Once that happens, I can guarantee we will see a plethora of language games flooding the DS. Just look at all the clones that spawned from Nintendogs and Brain Age!

Christian: This depends on whether or not developers think English speakers, specifically in the United States, want to learn another language and will page $35 to do so. Taking this into consideration, a Spanish-learning DS title seems much more likely than a game teaching French, Latin, Japanese, Chinese, or even Tagalog. But developers need to see a demand for it first before spending the money to develop it.

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I’m holding out hope that EA’s new commitment to the Wii includes its Sports division. That was my #1 disappointment with the GCN; I still play NCAA Football 2005. Would it be possible for EA Sports to port over NCAA Baseball (assuming they make it for the next-gen console), NCAA Basketball, and NCAA Football? So my question is two-fold: is EA Sports going to come back to Nintendo? and will companies with tried and true franchises make use of the classic controller to seamlessly move the franchises to the Wii?
–Russell

Christian: EA Sports has already published Madden NFL ‘07 for the Wii. However, this game was not developed by EA Tiburon (in Florida) as most of the games are - the project was deferred to EA Canada while Tiburon focused on the game for other platforms. The reason for the split development was due to the Wii’s differences in graphical ability, storage capacity, and most importantly the control mechanism.

EA now realizes, though, that the Wii should be a much larger part of their strategy, and many of their resources that were devoted towards primarily PS3 development are being redirected to Wii development. Will you see more EA Sports games on the Wii? Yes. But for the time being, it will take some time as EA has to reshuffle everything. Don’t fret though, you’ll be seeing them in quantity in the future.

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With about 5 NDS games and a few more GBA games to boot, I was wondering what imports for NDS you guys recommend.
–Chris

Christian: I’m honestly very sorry to disappoint you, but neither Matt nor I import games. We can’t read foreign games, and we have a hard enough time finding enough money to buy domestic games. However, I can’t speak for our entire community. Head to The Tanooki Forums and see if anyone there has any recommendations for import games.

As for domestic games, it really depends on what types of games you like. If you’re a musician like me, you might like Elite Beat Agents or Electroplankton. Or if you like classic-type platformers, New Super Mario Bros. and Sonic Rush (which I’m finally getting to play) are amazing. For some multiplayer and online fun, you might want to try out Tetris DS, Animal Crossing: Wild World, or Mario Kart DS. Or if you like promoting the DS to non-gamers like I do, bring around a DS Lite with Nintendogs and Brain Age.

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Is there anyway for Nintendo to go back in time and put online play into Wii
Sports, through a firmware upgrade or a software download or something? Talk
about a no-brainer!
–Russell

Christian: Haha, unfortunately I doubt such a huge component of a game would be available for an old game like online for WiiSports would require. If Nintendo were to add online play to the WiiSports game, it would have to be in a re-release or a sequel. I wouldn’t worry too much about an awesome online experience in the future, though. With so many delays to Nintendo’s online gameplay on the Wii, you’d have to expect a darn-good flagship online title. We’re talking bigger than Mario Kart DS for the DS was. I’d be cautiously optimistic about it, but we’ll see some online sports compilations in time, no doubt.

Well, that’s it for this mailbag. Seriously, we really want to beef these up a bit. Send us your questions or comments for the next mailbag, we’ll honestly tackle nearly any subject or type of question you throw at us. Please specify it as a mailbag question for the time being, until we can come up with a new mailing system. See you around!

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