Yeah, my friend Robbie revealed they were on the eShop when he posted on facebook for his gaming site yesterday. He never played them, which surprised me.
Donkey Kong Country is back!!
On 02/27/2015 at 11:23 AM by Jamie Alston See More From This User » |
This month I've been completely absent from blogging. Sorry I couldn't participate in BaD this year. But I just had to share this in case others aren't aware yet. Last night, I was treated to a nice surprise upon booting up my Wii U and visiting the eShop. I saw the following:
Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble
Donkey Kong Land (3DS eShop)
Donkey Kong Land 2 (3DS eShop)
Donkey Kong Land III (3DS eShop)
this was a huge deal for me because I had been interested in getting the DKC games on the VC because the physical cartridge versions tend to cost more money than I'm comfortable paying. But as most of you may remember, the DKC series was removed from the Wii Virtual Console store in 2012 without any explanation from Nintendo whatsoever. One theory holds that this may have been Microsoft's doing since they now own Rare (developers of the DKC series), but nothing was ever confirmed.
In any case, I wasn't aware that the series had been de-listed when I started getting back into retro gaming last year. I had no reason to look into back when it first happened because I still had the cartridges back then. so you can imagine the shock and bewilderment I felt when it dawned on me that I had missed the boat by a long shot. Researching the issue on Google just depressed me more because I saw news that Europe and Japan saw re-releases of the DK Country and Land series in October and November of 2014 on the eShop for those regions. Yet, nobody seemed to know if or when it was coming to North America for the Wii U.
Nintendo wasn't saying squat about it and just left us eagerly awaiting customers to wonder. Now I have an idea of how EarthBound fans felt over the years. It's really odd how they love to play coy with the North American audience like that. Anyway, I was quite delighted to see the DKC trilogy available, and I promptly got all three of them. The characters in the game look a little pixelated in HD, but you can tell they were really meant to be played on Wii U gamepad because they look perfect on it. I'm mad about it though. Still beats buying on eBay and Amazon in my book. I'll probably get the Land series on the 3DS at some point too.
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