Without question, Nintendo has been doing a lot of things right over the last few years. After a big misstep with the Wii U, the company has turned things around in an almost startling way with the Switch. One area many aren’t too enthused about, though, is the system’s backwards compatibility situation. Not only are older games locked to the online service now (the company has seemingly abandoned the Virtual Console where you could buy classic titles carte blanche), the content release has been a slow drip… very slow. Could that be about to change? Well, the slow drip probably won’t unfortunately, but it at least seems like Nintendo is putting thought into more platforms.
As it stands now only NES titles have been available through Switch Online. At the annual general meeting of shareholders Nintendo President, Shuntaro Furukawa, was asked about reselling games from other systems (specifically the shareholder was asking about Nintendo 64 and Gamecube titles). He responded by saying that discussions are ongoing about putting software for post-NES on the service (as translated by Japanese Nintendo).
“At this place we cannot tell new information about future classic hardware among others, but we are thinking about providing an extension of the online service which is currently providing Famicom [NES] software, as well as other methods of providing them,” he said. “We also recognise that there are opinions wanting to play past titles.”
While there are great titles on the NES, and several classics have made their way to the Nintendo Switch via the online service, it is a bit odd. The Virtual Console between the Wii U and 3DS before it had games from all the past systems barring the Virtual Boy. Couple that with the slow pace of releases, it is, no doubt, frustrating to fans looking for a retro fix. Hopefully, we’ll see more classic titles from other platforms on the Switch soon.
