This is a game that was in low numbers. Not THAT low compared to some, but it fetches ebay prices even more insane than Earthbound.
They finally put it on 3DS, so I picked it up myself as I just didn't bother when it first came out.
One fair warning. They didn't make sure to enable the "Advance mode" features. Nothing that actually used Gameboy Advance hardware, but if it detected it was on a GBA, it would unlock some extras like an extra transformation. Rather pathetic that Nintendo couldn't work out how to get something as simple as a small flag in their Gameboy Color emulator. That really seems like a simple task. All the same, the rest of the game is intact and runs very well. (I also wonder if the Zelda Oracle games don't have the "advance rings" in them on 3DS.)
What, you're still surprised by missing features, DJ? I'd be more surprised if something like GBA integration actually had been included! I mean, their GB emulator doesn't have Super Game Boy support for no good reason (not even in disc-based collections... it's cool to have KDL2 in the Dream Collection since my Kirby 2's cart battery is dead, but it's pretty much useless without the awesome SGB support!), their N64 emulator never added controller or rumble pak support, etc. It's all pretty lame stuff, that Nintendo can't be bothered to include those important features, but ah well. Re-releasing them in weakened form is better than nothing.
And on that note, does the 3DS VC have link cable support for GB games yet? I remember hearing that it didn't, in the past at least. I imagine it'll never happen...
So yeah, I'd be shocked if the Oracles games had the GBA stuff in them! I don't know if they do or not... but it'd shock me if it was actually there. That'd go against everything else they have done, if they actually included that.
Anyway though, it's fantastic that Shantae has finally been re-released. Everyone should definitely buy it, now.
Everyone always thinks I'm "surprised" when I complain about something someone should have done. The fact that it isn't a surprise just makes me even more disappointed.
Nintendo generally does a pretty good job with their emulators, but only so far as basic features. To their credit, at least their N64 emulators simulate the expansion pack, but that's probably because some games flat out required it to run at all, like Majora's Mask. It seems they simply are not interested in anything too esoteric. There's still some extra blame to go around though. Games should never have been programmed with "exclusive content" only unlocked by playing on the GBA. Let me be clear, none of that content actually USED the GBA's hardware, they simply looked for a special flag indicating they were on a GBA, then gave you GBC rendered content that by all rights should have been available on the original version.
Also, no, there is no link cable support in emulated Gameboy games on the 3DS. Well, there's no link cable at all on the 3DS, so that's not a surprise. Handling link cable emulation would be one of the trickiest things to deal with, with even home made emulators still struggling on the best way to handle such cases. Simply put, there would need to be a way to discriminate between more than 2 people in a room as most games were only designed with the assumption that only ONE gameboy could possibly be available to connect to at any one time. There's also a certain built in latency in wifi that's all but absent on a link cable (I don't mean bandwidth, the bandwidth is obviously much higher on 3DS wifi than on a link cable, but the latency is a bit higher. Not enough for us to notice, but games designed for the Gameboy may not be able to handle the extra milliseconds, with no exceptions programmed into most of them for such a wait. Then again, maybe they CAN handle a slight delay, but it WOULD be something that would need to be addressed.
Assuming latency issues could be worked around, simulating a link cable experience would require a menu at the level of the emulator. One would "pause" the game and pop up the game's emulator menu (as is currently done by tapping the touch screen). When there, a menu option to "link together with another player" would appear. Two 3DS players would negotiate a connection through this menu first, completely invisible to the game itself. Once this connection has been established, anyone else in the room would be ignored automatically. This would also result in a forced restart of the game in question, to make sure they are synched correctly. At this point, the two player options should work. Again, this depends on the games being able to handle even the slightest delay.
Oh and yes, I posted something about how Dreamland 2 on the Kirby collection lacks Super Gameboy support. I'm not sure what the definition of depression is, but seeing Kirby summon the colors of the rainbow to make a rainbow sword... soaring across the sky to make a rainbow... in grey scale... probably gets close to it. The collection had a Super Nintendo emulator for fully two games in the collection, both emulating custom chips added to those games on top of that. They also clearly had a Gameboy emlulator on there. They had the pieces in place to get to work combining the two to emulate a Super Gameboy (which literally had the hardware of a Gameboy inside it, no emulation done at all). Proper emulation would require the Super Gameboy's built in firmware (or a modified version of that firmware), but that was all within reach of Nintendo if they'd taken the time or interest to do so.
I suspect at this point that memory paks for the N64 were never emulated because Nintendo figured save states were a "good enough" way to store saved data. As for the lack of Rumble... That's just confusing. N64 Zelda games on Virtual Console have harder to find secret areas because of that. At least the 3DS version of OOT added a visual indicator for the "stone of agony" to allow it to still be used to find hidden holes.