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VIRTUAL CONSOLE
Gareth: Right at the end of the Nintendo booth's spiral was the widely touted Virtual Console section. The demo on-show gave players the choice of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Sonic the Hedgehog and Bonk's Adventure. As neat as it was to see classic Sonic on the Wii, I wasn't terribly interested in finding out how the old 2D titles would play, because it seemed hard to screw up what is essentially the SNES controller for sidescrolling games. I picked Super Mario 64 and hopped straight over to Bob-omb Battlefield.
Initial impressions? The controls were tight, responsive, and the controller felt perfectly natural. But uh, wait, I hadn't played the game in a long time. How do you crouch? Z? Where's Z? I had to ask the Nintendo representative standing beside me and he pointed out the Z button hidden way out of sight besides R. Yikes. It's almost impossible to reach without moving your hand to another position. Definitely not something you'd want to do in a fast-paced action game. Not that SM64 is fast-paced or anything, but the point stands; I had genuine difficulty pulling off the long jump move. Something like Goldeneye would be completely unplayable.
I find it quite surprising that they'd overlook it, especially when SM64 was a demo game itself. The Nintendo rep informed me that the controller on show wasn't the final design, and they're planning on making some revisions, so hopefully they'll do something about the Z button. I'm afraid the majority of N64 games will be downright unplayable if it remains where it is.
Jared: What's there to say? Neither the finalized download format nor the selection screen were shown in the demo, so it's all about the control and graphics, right?
The control was... adequate. But I mean, when you're playing Super Mario Bros. what do you need? I played about 30 seconds of Super Mario World and decided that I'd have no problem playing any 2D game with the Classic Controller (unlike the jackass ahead of me in line who decided he was going to play the goddamn original Super Mario Bros. right up until the demo ended; he was at World 8-1 when the screen went black). With Super Mario 64 the Z-trigger-now-button's awkward placement (parallel to and slightly closer to the center of the controller from the R shoulder button) felt just that--awkward. But it was no impediment to my using the button. I would imagine children would have a hell of a time reaching the Z button though, so a redesign might be a good idea.
As for graphics, nothing's updated just yet, apparently. The Nintendo rep goaded me on as I played Mario 64, inviting me to take note of the "improved resolution". I told him it looked exactly the same, but just to be courteous I conceded that maybe seeing an N64 version side-by-side with the Virtual Console ROM would reveal a barely noticable difference. Actually, I think the Wii version looked worse; it appeared to suffer from the same problem that Master Quest did, in that there's a noticable line of separation where polygons converge in some of the architecture of Peach's Castle and Bob-Omb Battlefield. But otherwise everything pretty much looks and plays the same as the originals, which is good news.
Desiré: Pretty cool to be able to play old school games, but while the graphics are slightly cleaner, it wasn't like there was so much added that it was at all new. Using the new controller was obviously different, but once you got the hang of it, it was like playing any of your old consoles with your eyes closed; second nature.
Curtis: Emulates old games perfectly. Everything seems intact, though I was disappointed with the interface (I was promised that it will change shortly after my comment). My only real comment on the system was that the classic controller is basically a SNES controller with "Dual Shock". Unfortunately, this leaves zero room for the "Z" button, which finds its way as a little button to the left of the right trigger. Playing Mario 64 was atrocious. They really need a different controller for N64 titles, as hitting the Z button just simply doesn't work.
In the display case, Nintendo showed off the classic controller, and it was attached to a Wiimote. I hope Nintendo either rethinks their design of the controller, or moves to an N64 controller that can plug into the underside of the Wiimote.
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