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News Nintendo Switch Online - Game Boy Advance March 2023 game is Metroid Fusion, out March 9th

There's 45 "viable" releases on the GBA released by Nintendo alone
  • 2 of which are licensed Hamtaro games
  • 5 are mainline Pokémon games
  • 2 have motion controls (which shouldn't really be a problem)
  • 3 which have or are getting remakes (Advance Wars + Pokémon Mystery Dungeon)
  • 3 are the Donkey Kong Country ports that weren't released on Wii U either

The most conservative estimate is that they have 30 GBA games that they can put on NSO, 6 of which are on the service already with Fusion being the 7th one. Does it sound reasonable to stretch this over two+ years?
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
The most conservative estimate is that they have 30 GBA games that they can put on NSO, 6 of which are on the service already with Fusion being the 7th one. Does it sound reasonable to stretch this over two+ years?
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There's the magic of a subscription service instead of al a carte releases showing its ugly face again. If you want to keep people subscribed, you have to hold back the stuff they want over said long period.

And it's compounded by hard limits in what you actually have to release since this service is purely about the back catalogue, which obviously isn't going to get much bigger with time.

Not to say I expect 1 title every month, but I bet you're only getting one major title a month at best and something small alongside it. Like, I doubt anyone expects the barebones super mario advance games, some of which are barely distinguishable from the already in the service versions, to carry a month alone.
 
I guess I'm OK with it cause it gives me time to play new games and fill gaps with old games. When I'm done a new game, an old one comes out and the cycle continues. I'm also way less annoyed because I pay $2 a month or something for my expansion since friends joined me. Crazy deal.
 
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Dardan Sandiego said:
Does it sound reasonable to stretch this over two+ years?
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To be honest, i think it does.

Based on the fact that Nintendo's intention is to make NSO an active service through the next console, i think it's safe to assume that the lastest emulators will have their library stretched easily through the last two or three years.

Linkstrikesback said:
There's the magic of a subscription service instead of al a carte releases showing its ugly face again. If you want to keep people subscribed, you have to hold back the stuff they want over said long period.

And it's compounded by hard limits in what you actually have to release since this service is purely about the back catalogue, which obviously isn't going to get much bigger with time.

Not to say I expect 1 title every month, but I bet you're only getting one major title a month at best and something small alongside it. Like, I doubt anyone expects the barebones super mario advance games, some of which are barely distinguishable from the already in the service versions, to carry a month alone.
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Eh, it's not like the Virtual Console was better in that regard. In the era of retro compilations and publishers realizing the value of their legacy, only thing that distinguishes NSO from VC when it comes to release pace is that nowdays the biggest third party publishers would rather profit directly from their library.

Even PS Plus Premium is keeping a glacial pace despite being also a regular a la carte system.
 
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The thing about Nintendo is that they're consistantly incosistant - it happens they release a single game a month but it's not the norm and one cant simply ignore launch periods when they boost with quite a bit of games. I feel looking at averages is more fair because launch lineup is supposed to last a while and that shouldnt be ignore. Now I clearly want them to be more consistant in terms on how they release games for their service and adding a game per system a month would have been sweeet - or something along those lines.

Since the expansion pack launched in October 21, looking at 6 month periods

Period: Oct '21 - Mar '22
Games released: 43
Avg/month: ~7
N64 - 13
MD - 22
SNES - 5
NES - 3

Period: Apr '22 - Jun'22
Games released: 17
Avg/month: ~3
N64 - 3
MD - 7
SNES - 5
NES - 2

Period: Jul'22 - Dec'22
Games released: 15
Avg/month: ~2.5
N64 - 5
MD - 7
SNES - 2
NES - 1

Period: Jan'23 - Jun'23 (assuming nothing comes after fusion ;P)
Games released: 17
Avg/month: ~3
N64 - 1
MD -
SNES -
NES -
GB/C - 9
GBA - 7

looking at this, even in non launch periods, there's 2-3 games per month so "just 1 game per month" is only try on the occassional month and not the norm.
 
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Reinhard Schneider said:
To be honest, i think it does.

Based on the fact that Nintendo's intention is to make NSO an active service through the next console, i think it's safe to assume that the lastest emulators will have their library stretched easily through the last two or three years.
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That's just the first-party games on GBA, not counting any potential third-party titles or games from the other systems that are available on NSO. Just from a cursory glance at what they released on Virtual Console, there's 30ish first-party games across GB and GBC that are also not on NSO. That's another two plus years that they could theoretically add. Where do we draw the line?
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
Where do we draw the line?
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I wish i could give you an answer lol. I made the argument before that library is more limited now thanks to third parties having discovered the value of their retro library, but then you have Konami releasing Castlevania Bloodlines after releasing the Castlevania Classic Collection

I think some third party series have a decent chance. Harvest Moon for example, and then there are the obscure third party releases, like some of the ones they got for SNES. GBA has quite a few of those, like Lady Sia.
 
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I wonder if, at some point, if switch online actually becomes a major source of revenue for Nintendo they would shell out some more money to get more third-party games on them
 
While I figured monthly releases would happen, I think it's also worth waiting to see if any other NSO systems have an update this month.

N64 got nothing in February, for example, so let's say we get an N64 game plus GBA in March. Maybe N64 then skips April, so Nintendo do two GBA releases in April instead. Or maybe this month is 1 each for GBA and N64, plus a Mega Drive update (which hasn't happened for a while). GBA then gets 2 games in April and perhaps there's a GB update, too.

I thought monthly releases were the most likely plan because I have low expectations for how Nintendo will handle NSO. But this is the first 'regular' month after NSO got new systems, so we can't say for sure how things will go.
 
Rooster said:
Or they compensate by giving the west some obscure game no one really cares about.
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Obscure GBA games no one cares about have an exponential chance of being an amazing game, at least. I'm very excited for the less obvious releases in this catalogue, can't wait to try new hidden gems.
 
ehluigi said:
Still puzzled why they didn't go with Zero Mission first.
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To go with the physical release of Metroid Prime in Japan and PAL regions which releases today. To do it like back in the day when they released together.

Also, Fusion released first so it doesn't surprise me. They don't release NSO games by release order, but I'm not surprised why they would release Fusion first. If it was me, I would have put both Wario Land 4 and Metroid Fusion at launch on the service, as they're for me the two biggest "early GBA" games.

Zero Mission definitely feel like a game you release later down the line, because it'll bring a lot of excitement among the fan base.
 
Dang, Nintendo ain't holding back with this the same day as MK8 wave 4. Was really hoping this would come sooner rather than later so that's nice.
 
SpaceGodzilla said:
I wonder if, at some point, if switch online actually becomes a major source of revenue for Nintendo they would shell out some more money to get more third-party games on them
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This will surely happen and they already did it with the Sega VC. I think they will first finish up their first party offerings and move to third party from there. They already have millions of subscribers so they have enough money to pay up.
 
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SpaceGodzilla said:
I wonder if, at some point, if switch online actually becomes a major source of revenue for Nintendo they would shell out some more money to get more third-party games on them
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My main doubt regarding third parties is whether or not they would actually be okay with having their classic games available on NSO permanently.
It's obvious that Nintendo wants to keep everything there indefinitely. (Mario 35th is the exception due to it being an anniversary product)
 
Homura said:
My main doubt regarding third parties is whether or not they would actually be okay with having their classic games available on NSO permanently.
It's obvious that Nintendo wants to keep everything there indefinitely. (Mario 35th is the exception due to it being an anniversary product)
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I think it would be cool if they adopted a more classic subscription service approach, with third parties being available for a period of time and first parties constituting a permanent catalogue. I wouldn't mind it if that meant we could get games we otherwise aren't getting.
 
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Just one game? ... Come on!

What does Metroid even have to do with Mario?

Brock Reiher said:
Not happy with one GBA game a month, but Fusion is great! Colors look horrible in NSO sadly.


Metroid NES is already on NSO
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I'm in firm disagreement there. Fusion in it's "normal" palette is garish and too colorful for the atmosphere it's providing.

Dardan Sandiego said:
There's 45 "viable" releases on the GBA released by Nintendo alone
  • 2 of which are licensed Hamtaro games
  • 5 are mainline Pokémon games
  • 2 have motion controls (which shouldn't really be a problem)
  • 3 which have or are getting remakes (Advance Wars + Pokémon Mystery Dungeon)
  • 3 are the Donkey Kong Country ports that weren't released on Wii U either

The most conservative estimate is that they have 30 GBA games that they can put on NSO, 6 of which are on the service already with Fusion being the 7th one. Does it sound reasonable to stretch this over two+ years?
Click to expand...

With their current relationship with Rare/MS, I don't think these ports are as out there as you may think, even if they may come extremely late. It took a good while for DKL to ever come to VC
 
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Homura said:
My main doubt regarding third parties is whether or not they would actually be okay with having their classic games available on NSO permanently.
It's obvious that Nintendo wants to keep everything there indefinitely. (Mario 35th is the exception due to it being an anniversary product)
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I really do hope the deals for the NSO games are an “in perpetuity” thing. I like this service as an existing, never-shrinking, always-expanding classic games library.

I think one thing that would maybe help the service is if users could purchase classic games via the eShop, and, instead of having those classic games on my Switch in a separate app, it simply added them to my NSO apps. For example, I bought the Castlevania GBA collection and, while that emulator is great and all, I think there’d be an appeal to having those GBA games slotted into the GBA app instead. If I unsubscribe in the future, well, I can always just download the original Collection I purchased from the eShop instead, so it’s not like I would lose access.

I suppose the downside to this would be, once Nintendo is even slightly approaching the concept of a la carte purchases, the question of “what about my Wii U VC purchases” will inevitably rear its head.
 
Homura said:
My main doubt regarding third parties is whether or not they would actually be okay with having their classic games available on NSO permanently.
It's obvious that Nintendo wants to keep everything there indefinitely. (Mario 35th is the exception due to it being an anniversary product)
Click to expand...

For GBA, they just might be ok with in perpetuity deals if they don't see much value in these games on their own. Remakes and compilations of these classic handheld games have been pretty few and far between and I don't even think many of these companies see value in rebranding some of these into compilation packages like Capcom with Megaman BN or Konami with Castlevania.

Like, it's possible we just randomly get all the Crash and Spyro GBA games dumped during some brand new release, whenever that happens.
 
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Mer.Saloon said:
With their current relationship with Rare/MS, I don't think these ports are as out there as you may think, even if they may come extremely late. It took a good while for DKL to ever come to VC
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I only excluded them because they were never re-released, though we obviously don't know for what reason. It's possible that they would have showed up on the Wii U Virtual Console eventually.
 
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I kind of want to be on the team making trailers for these NSO games. I can imagine making new trailers for old games could be a lot of fun.
 
Red Monster said:
out of curiosity, how do you number Mario and Zelda? Is Mario 64 “Mario 5”? What about Zelda? Is OoT “Zelda 5”?
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Super Mario World (4), Super Mario World 2 (5)
LttP (3), OoT (4), MM (5)

All available on the NES 7 / Game Boy 6
 
Mer.Saloon said:
I'm in firm disagreement there. Fusion in it's "normal" palette is garish and too colorful for the atmosphere it's providing.
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This is the garish palette, as if the game was being played on a gba sp. you can tell because nightmare is visibly purple and you can easily see area 6 outside of the spotlight
 
Brock Reiher said:
This is the garish palette, as if the game was being played on a gba sp. you can tell because nightmare is visibly purple and you can easily see area 6 outside of the spotlight
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There was no GBA SP when Fusion was made, so many of its colors were saturated extremely to make up for it. And even later on, colors were oversaturated for those who didn't upgrade. I can't explain the Area 6 thing though, since it's been a while since I looked at specific segments of fusion.
 
Mer.Saloon said:
There was no GBA SP when Fusion was made, so many of its colors were saturated extremely to make up for it. And even later on, colors were oversaturated for those who didn't upgrade. I can't explain the Area 6 thing though, since it's been a while since I looked at specific segments of fusion.
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Yes, that's why the colors look bad lol. Fusion is best played on a non-backlit gba or with a filter to replicate that, otherwise it looks bad.
 
Spikeylord said:
There were 48 GBA titles that weren't in the initial batch that were either localised to all regions, or wouldn't require a single change to be released outside of Japan (this last part just covers the bit Generations games). If we got two of these at a time, once a month - they would run out in March 2025. That doesn't seem like running out way too early to me, and that's not even counting any of the Japan-only stuff (of which we already have at least one confirmed with FE6) or anything from the safe-to-assume third party contributors (Sega/Atlus, Konami, Capcom, Koei-Tecmo among others).

The N64 rollout didn't have people as worried with being 1 a month, due to how much smaller the N64's library is but I think the frustration is at least in part understandable, because the GBA's library (even just first party) isn't really small by any stretch.

lKHDklS.png
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broke: waking up to a tweet from Nintendo: "Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen are now available on the Game boy Advance app for Nintendo Switch Online."

woke: waking up to a tweet from Sega: "The Sonic Advance trilogy is now available on the Game Boy Advance app for Nintendo Switch Online."
 
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Yeah both the GB/C and GBA emulators color-correct, though if you have Vivid mode enabled on the OLED Switch (or have showroom TV settings) that may undo some of it.
 
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Spikeylord said:
There were 48 GBA titles that weren't in the initial batch that were either localised to all regions, or wouldn't require a single change to be released outside of Japan (this last part just covers the bit Generations games). If we got two of these at a time, once a month - they would run out in March 2025. That doesn't seem like running out way too early to me, and that's not even counting any of the Japan-only stuff (of which we already have at least one confirmed with FE6) or anything from the safe-to-assume third party contributors (Sega/Atlus, Konami, Capcom, Koei-Tecmo among others).

The N64 rollout didn't have people as worried with being 1 a month, due to how much smaller the N64's library is but I think the frustration is at least in part understandable, because the GBA's library (even just first party) isn't really small by any stretch.

lKHDklS.png
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You’re missing Super Robot Taisen OG Generations 1/2. Worldwide and Namco/Atlus
 
I would love Banjo Pilot and Grunty's Revenge getting added, Would make for some fun online on Pilot.
 
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Metroid Fusion is one of the best games of all time, y'all have to play it. I'll renew my subscription on NSO+EP towards the middle of the year and will definitely play the whole Metroid timeline.

Also the trailer they've made for it was just epic!! Hope that people that play it get tempted to get Dread and Prime Remastered. We need a lot of new Metroid fans on board for Prime 4.

Wish they've made something like a "3DS Classics" line on the eShop, with upres ports for 29,99, starting with Samus Returns.
 
Mer.Saloon said:
I think I misunderstood your first sentence. I thought you said the NSO filter was bad when it's trying to replicate that.
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Yes, the way it looks on NSO is bad. It's replicating GBA SP, not GBA.

Edit: Actually, nvm. I'm talking about the trailer, haven't played the game on the switch yet obviously. Maybe it look different with that filter on, I hope so!
 
Brock Reiher said:
Yes, the way it looks on NSO is bad. It's replicating GBA SP, not GBA
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Fair enough. I don't think it looks bad, but if you're gonna filter these games, may as well try to go for the experience on both machines. Certainly better than their previous attempts at darkening Fusion.
 
If we were to get 1 GBA and 1 N64 every month, I can live with that. Ideally we would also get something from the NES/SNES/GB lineup monthly as well.

The good news is that we should be getting a Sega Genesis update this month if they continue with the "once every quarter" schedule that they have been on.
 
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Gay Bowser said:
Yes, we want everything now, but you know damn well that if we got everything now, people would just start complaining about months without new games instead. There is sort of a finite amount of games they can add to NSO as we know it and this is a platform that Nintendo wants to last for years to come.
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Yeah I agree with this. They put out most of the SNES heavy hitters early and there weren't many significant updates afterwards besides DKC I believe? It's not like Netflix, where they can somehow produce new ROMs to add to the service. Those SP romhacks don't cut it.
 
Nice! I actually finished Fusion for the first time back in 2021 since Dread was announced then. I'll probably play it again though.

Suddenly the Wii U as a Metroid machine may be dethroned in the near future.
 
Jahranimo said:
Nice! I actually finished Fusion for the first time back in 2021 since Dread was announced then. I'll probably play it again though.

Suddenly the Wii U as a Metroid machine may be dethroned in the near future.
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the only metroid games Wii U has over Switch now are Zero Mission, Prime 2 and 3, and Other M. And three of those are likely to come over! (rip Other M. maybe a Switch port with analog controls would have fixed it)
 
Red Monster said:
the only metroid games Wii U has over Switch now are Zero Mission, Prime 2 and 3, and Other M. And three of those are likely to come over! (rip Other M. maybe a Switch port with analog controls would have fixed it)
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Prime Hunters too, right? I think it was on Wii U VC.
 
Red Monster said:
the only metroid games Wii U has over Switch now are Zero Mission, Prime 2 and 3, and Other M. And three of those are likely to come over! (rip Other M. maybe a Switch port with analog controls would have fixed it)
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Yeah I'm expecting ZM, Prime 2 and 3 to come over at some point in the next year or so.

and I forgot about Prime Hunters (again), they should try that again but in a bigger fashion imo.
 
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