I feel like there's something going on with the licensing for the NES version of Contra, because from what I can tell it hasn't shown up for purchase anywhere in a long time. It's not on Virtual Console, either. It seems the last place it showed up was as a bonus in the Contra 4 DS game.
As far as the tiny Nintendo stuff goes, it seems like a really smart product.
They keep claiming that Final Fantasy VII is just too big of a game to put out as a single game now, with modern visuals, but I don't believe that's true. The actual explorable area in that game is not out of line with other large open-world or RPG titles that get released today. That game was one large town, a few medium sized ones, a few small ones and a 3D world map. That's all. Yes, the game was long, but that's because it was a JRPG. There were loads of battle screens and cutscenes and text to read through. It wasn't long because it was unmatched as far as the raw amount of assets in the game.
I think the problem is that Square Enix (the Japanese side anyway) isn't actually a AAA development house any more. This is why they're having so much trouble getting all of their console games out the door. When is the last time that Square had a major console RPG project that wasn't delayed five years or restarted in development or something along those lines? They did the XIII sequels to capitalize more than once on all the work they did on that game, I suppose, but development on that first game took a long time. FF XIV was such a failure on launch that they essentially had to shut it down and restart it. And then of course there is the "Versus XIII" to Final Fantasy XIV saga.
@noelveiga: yeah but the wiiu doesn't come with a sensor bar, and this game makes heavy use of the IR tracking part of the wiimote(to point at stuff), so it would force people to buy a third party sensor bar just to play this thing.
nmarchan's comments