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Zelda: Twilight Princess HD headlines Wii U eShop update

By Danny Cowan Published March 4, 2016

Zant walking with minions at his side. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nintendo has updated its eShop with a variety of new digital releases for its Wii U console, including an HD upgrade for its classic action-RPG The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and a little-seen SNES spinoff in Namco’s Pac-Man series.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD updates Nintendo’s 2006 Wii launch title with a number of additions and improvements, including higher-resolution textures, faster character transformations, and a new “Ghost Lantern” item that eliminates much of the tedium associated with one of the game’s more infamous sidequests.

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Twilight Princess HD also arrives at retail this week in a boxed edition that includes an amiibo figurine featuring protagonist Link in his wolf form and companion character Midna. Players can scan the amiibo using the Wii U’s GamePad in order to unlock “a brand-new set of challenges you’ll take on as Wolf Link.”

This week’s launch of Twilight Princess HD follows up on a similar remake for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker released exclusively for the Wii U in 2013.

Also arriving on the Wii U eShop this week is Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, a Virtual Console adaptation of Namco’s 1994 adventure game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Pac-Man 2 shifts away from the series’ arcade origins, offering up a side-scrolling adventure in which players guide Pac-Man through multiple gameplay chapters.

In an unusual twist, Pac-Man 2 does not grant players direct control over Pac-Man himself. Instead, players can issue commands and direct Pac-Man’s attention to specific spots in his surrounding environment in order to solve puzzles and progress through tricky level layouts. Pac-Man’s mood also plays a significant role in how gameplay unfolds, and player actions can impact how the character reacts to his surroundings.

Other Wii U eShop releases for this week include the zombie-themed first-person shooter Chasing Dead and Street Rivals, a one-on-one, weapons-based fighting game. Nintendo 3DS owners, meanwhile, can expect to see the block-breaking action game The Hand of Panda and the escape-the-room puzzler Parascientific Escape Cruise in the Distant Seas.

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Nintendo’s eShop closures are a necessary, but messy move

A Nintendo Wii U gamepad flat on a table.

Nintendo last week announced its intentions to shut down the Wii U and 3DS eShops, the systems' digital storefronts, in March 2023. This decision was disappointing for hardcore fans who stuck with Nintendo during that rocky era and extremely worrying as many of the games available on the platforms won't be preserved.
More significant Wii U games and a handful of 3DS titles were ported to Switch, but many titles are still stuck on those systems and can’t be ported. Once the digital storefront shutdowns, digital-only titles will be gone forever, and physical copies of these titles will get more expensive and harder to experience. Fans and game preservationists have not been pleased by this decision, with the Video Game History Foundation giving the most candid response.
https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1494398068346654720
Following this announcement, Digital Trends spoke to an industry analyst and game preservationists to get a better idea of what exactly caused Nintendo to shut down these stores and to learn how it could do a better job at preserving its legacy.
Why is Nintendo shutting down the 3DS and Wii eShops?
Officially, Nintendo’s FAQ on the eShop closures says “this is part of the natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." The answer doesn’t get into specifics and might confuse those still playing games on the system or fans of games only available on Wii U or 3DS. Omdia Principal Analyst Matthew Bailey explains Nintendo’s user base argument in more detail, highlighting the massive gap between the number of people playing the Switch as opposed to the Wii U.
“While Omdia expects the number of Switch consoles in active use to exceed 90 million on a global basis this year, the Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022,” he explains. “Even when you include the more enduring 3DS family of consoles into the equation, the Switch still comfortably accounts for over 90% of Nintendo’s total active console install base.”
If one is going off just the numbers, it’s sensible that Nintendo would want to focus on the majority of its players. Bailey admits that “Switch users are already reaping the benefits of Nintendo’s singular first-party development focus on one platform.” Still, one might argue that Nintendo should just let the eShops remain up even if it isn’t actively updating or maintaining them.

Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t see that as possible due to cost and security issues. Game Over Thrity, a Twitter user with over 20 years of experience working on IT projects and infrastructure, shed some light on what might have influenced Nintendo’s decision-making in a thread.
“As these systems age, they require patches, security, special contracts, updates, and personnel that know how they were built (and maintained),” his Twitter thread explains. “As time goes on, there are security holes, servers, code, infrastructure, etc., that can’t be brought up to modern standards. It becomes a constant struggle between maintaining legacy systems, paying people to do so, and trying to keep up with global regulations. It’s not cheap by any means. They can’t just ‘leave the lights on’ and stop supporting them. What if someone hacked the payment processor?”
With every passing year, the Wii U and 3DS eShops likely became more expensive to maintain and an increased security risk for the video game publisher. Instead of investing the time and resources into pleasing a smaller amount of players, the easier option is to turn everything off entirely. While he isn’t affiliated with Nintendo, Game Over Thirty’s assessment aligns with what we’ve heard from Nintendo and Omdia.
"The Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022."

Gaming

Nintendo is ending Wii U and 3DS eShop service

Photos of the 3DS eShops

Nintendo has announced the end of its eShop service for the Wii U console and 3DS handheld. The eShop will stay live on those devices until late March 2023, after which players will no longer be able to purchase games or download eShop apps and services for those devices.

After the closure, players will still be able to redownload games and DLC that they already own, use online play, and download software updates.

Gaming

New Atari 50 DLC shows the Intellivision acquisition is already paying off

An Atari 2600+ sits on a table.

Digital Eclipse's Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is an excellent and comprehensive look back at the company's now classic video game lineup, with games to play and extra content to interact with. So far, it's gotten one DLC: The Wider World of Atari, that added even more titles. Now, it's about to get its second, thanks to an acquisition it made earlier this year.

Atari announced The First Console War on Friday, and it's about, as you can guess, the company's first console war with the Intellivision, although it'll touch on a specific element of it. In the 1980s, Mattel was publishing games on the Intellivision. At some point, it decided to release versions of these console exclusives for its main competitor, the Atari 2600, under the M Network label. There are 19 of these games coming to Atari 50 with The First Console War, which is set to launch on November 8 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4 Atari 50 owners.