Nintendo 64 games now on the Wii U!

So, I hope you all remember that we had a post a while back talking about how Nintendo 64 games were soon going to arrive on the Wii U, and it turns out, that now they’re here! Goddamn, it’s been almost a year since the announcement at E3 and I can finally talk about it a little bit.

It was announced as part of this month’s Nintendo Direct, along with the initiation of Nintendo DS games for the virtual console as well. For the time being, we have Super Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64 available on the e-shop, but later this month, Paper Mario will be released.

I haven’t bought the games (seriously, I can play them on the original hardware) but from the look of the previews, the output resolution doesn’t seem a lot higher than on a regular N64. If you’re looking for a better quality version of the N64 classics, you’ll have to stick to emulators. Funny thing is that the 3DS, a much less powerful console has ports of N64 games (Ocarina of time and Majora’s mask), and they look much better than their original counterparts. I guess that it’s because these Virtual console games are just emulated ROMs and the 3DS games are properly ported but still, come on.

It’s also worth noting that if you have the games already on the Wii Virtual Console, you can re-download them at a discounted price. That’s nice to have. Also, they contain a full digital copy of the N64 manual rather than the typical bullet-pointed manual that games have nowadays. It’s not printed, but it’s the next best thing.

Screenshots of Super Mario 64 on the Wii U:

Here’s some screenshots from my Wii U to tickle your fancy. Note that only SM64 and DK64 are out now, so that’s all I can provide so far:

Blowing bowser away

Hitting the switch

Meet the eel!

Sliding down the slope

Climbing Whomp’s tower

Jumping along moving platforms

Kicking King Bob-omb’s butt

Climbing the Bob-omb mountain

Whomping a whomp

In the front garden

Coins on the platforms

Face to face with bowser

On the squiggly lava platform

Screenshots of Donkey Kong 64 on the Wii U:

Again, here are some more screenshots, this time of DK64.

Hitting some beavers in the arena

His coconut gun will fire in spurts

Climbing a tree