5th October 2012, 5:47 AM
The upcoming Prof. Laton and Paper Mario Star Sticker are examples. Nintendo is really pushing people to download the games instead of getting the retail versions, so the only games this applies to are ones you can also get in retail, not download exclusives.
What do you get? Not the arcade game exactly, but instead a modified version of the NES port. This had also been released in PAL format in Europe on select Wiis and as a reward for downloading NSMB2. As you may already know, the NES port of the game lacks the conveyer belt level of the original arcade release, which was apparently due to initial NES games having extremely limited storage space even compared to later NES games (Donkey Kong Classics would later stuff all of DKJr in there but didn't code back in that missing level). Other than this, certain animations are missing like the classic DK bouncing up the girders and knocking them out of alignment and a number of missing sound effects. The core game is basically the same, though at an easier difficulty curve. So, this version codes the conveyer level back into play using that engine.
It's a fun reward, but their advertising is misleading. It's not actually "original edition" since it isn't a port of the arcade version. (Actually, they legally can't do that, because a different company is responsible for actually programming the original game, and Nintendo burned bridges with them by releasing the game boards themselves without paying them for it, so they can't get the license back now. http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/134790...hp?print=1 ) Further, they advertise it as "never before released in America". While strictly speaking, this IS true of this particular version (it had only been released in Europe as I had said), it isn't true of the conveyer belt level, which obviously had been released in America, both in the arcade and later on with Donkey Kong 64.
That brings me to my last point. How exactly was Rare able to get away with putting that port of DK Arcade in DK64 without getting Nintendo into trouble? Is it technically good because the game was actually rewritten and ported to the N64 hardware, or is it shady because it was actually the arcade game being emulated? I can't say because I don't know. In any case, one would think Nintendo could rewrite the code from scratch these days exactly matching the arcade original and go ahead and release THAT as the "original edition".
Well, either way it'll be fun to play something pretty close to the original version and it's not a bad little "extra" for downloading certain games. However, I may stick with DK64 when I'm at home for the genuine article. (Not as genuine as you might expect though. The DK64 version unlocks all 4 stages from the start. The original only had two stages in the first "loop", then the bouncing spring stage added in loop 2, and by loop 3 they add the conveyer belt stage to the loop. It doesn't quite end there though, as later loops add repeats of some of the stages to get even "higher" on the "how high can you go?" screen. Still, it's as close as any home version's ever been, short of actually buying an old DK arcade machine.)
What do you get? Not the arcade game exactly, but instead a modified version of the NES port. This had also been released in PAL format in Europe on select Wiis and as a reward for downloading NSMB2. As you may already know, the NES port of the game lacks the conveyer belt level of the original arcade release, which was apparently due to initial NES games having extremely limited storage space even compared to later NES games (Donkey Kong Classics would later stuff all of DKJr in there but didn't code back in that missing level). Other than this, certain animations are missing like the classic DK bouncing up the girders and knocking them out of alignment and a number of missing sound effects. The core game is basically the same, though at an easier difficulty curve. So, this version codes the conveyer level back into play using that engine.
It's a fun reward, but their advertising is misleading. It's not actually "original edition" since it isn't a port of the arcade version. (Actually, they legally can't do that, because a different company is responsible for actually programming the original game, and Nintendo burned bridges with them by releasing the game boards themselves without paying them for it, so they can't get the license back now. http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/134790...hp?print=1 ) Further, they advertise it as "never before released in America". While strictly speaking, this IS true of this particular version (it had only been released in Europe as I had said), it isn't true of the conveyer belt level, which obviously had been released in America, both in the arcade and later on with Donkey Kong 64.
That brings me to my last point. How exactly was Rare able to get away with putting that port of DK Arcade in DK64 without getting Nintendo into trouble? Is it technically good because the game was actually rewritten and ported to the N64 hardware, or is it shady because it was actually the arcade game being emulated? I can't say because I don't know. In any case, one would think Nintendo could rewrite the code from scratch these days exactly matching the arcade original and go ahead and release THAT as the "original edition".
Well, either way it'll be fun to play something pretty close to the original version and it's not a bad little "extra" for downloading certain games. However, I may stick with DK64 when I'm at home for the genuine article. (Not as genuine as you might expect though. The DK64 version unlocks all 4 stages from the start. The original only had two stages in the first "loop", then the bouncing spring stage added in loop 2, and by loop 3 they add the conveyer belt stage to the loop. It doesn't quite end there though, as later loops add repeats of some of the stages to get even "higher" on the "how high can you go?" screen. Still, it's as close as any home version's ever been, short of actually buying an old DK arcade machine.)