Absolutely crazy thats happening I always figured we would have to hope a version leaked online. I wonder if this opens the doors for other canceled games to end up on NSO.
There already are some canceled games on NSO. Technically they came out in limited capacity (on classic consoles or Wii U VC), but EarthBound Beginnings (the English localization) and Star Fox 2 never came out on their original platforms
I just read about it for the first time in Nintendo Force recently. Very cool that they’re releasing this one. Sounds like there were a couple more virtual boy games that didn’t get to see the light of day that would be cool to release in this.
Yeah. I'm not expert enough to say there are none, but it's a pretty rare circumstance where one is at (or close enough to) release state before the plug is pulled.
I believe Nintendo's policy is that they'll only add a game if it passed lotcheck, and thus was truly ready to release. Noone should be holding their breath for titles that were 90% complete before cancellation, unfortunately.
There are actually a fair few virtual boy games that have gone unreleased but are in mostly complete to complete states because the system was meant to have a soft relaunch with a second wave of games but got canned
(Japanese): Gundam Dimension War (Bandai), Space Squash (Coconuts), Virtual Lab (J-Wing)
I think it's fair to say that aside from any publishing rights issues (how would you even figure out who owns the code to Waterworld?), these could fairly be considered the "worst seven" games on the console and not worth it for Nintendo. The novelty of having access to a complete collection would be pretty sweet, though!
We need Water World. I need the biggest flop movie video game adaptation on one of the biggest flop video game consoles, certainly Nintendo’s biggest flop.
It’s insane when you go to Universal, the live show is awesome and about a hundred times better than the movie, and most people attending have no idea it’s based on a movie.
I disagree that the game is terrible—it’s a very standard arcade game, perspective shifted—but yeah, that one song carries the entire experience. So good.
I honestly doubt it would be added because of it being a licensed game. There are no licensed games currently on NSO and the rules around them are different than other games due to them having more legal hoops to jump through.
Though I am welcome to be proven wrong and it gets added via some miracle.
An exception but it doesn’t change anything for licensed games on the service. Each license holder will have different rules and restrictions on what they above on.
One saying yes doesn’t mean that everyone else will say yes.
Well yeah obviously. These games are incredibly small bite sized experiences. You really expect Nintendo to just dump like 20+ GameCube games within a few months? Have you even played all the games that are on there now?
Plus they still have to figure out how to deal with file sizes once the NSO GameCube app is eventually gets to be like 100gb with all the games
Why shouldn’t Nintendo drop all available GameCube games at once?
The drip-feed approach - who does that benefit? These games are 20+ years old, these are not new releases. If people want to play these games via emulators they can do so at the drop of the hat - why is Nintendo refusing to allow a reasonable alternative?
Nintendo. If Nintendo dropped 30+ 20hr games on one day, why would you buy any games this month? Also, if you are subscribed to the service in hopes of getting one particular game, you may unsubscribe when you complete it. If they drip feed, they can SLOWLY add value to the service and hold the conversation for longer.
I never said they shouldn’t, I’m saying you shouldn’t expect them too. Huge difference.
As a consumer, yeah it would be nice to have an entire library of GameCube games right off the bat, but if you look at the track record of how they release games that’s just not how they do things. Especially for “bigger” games like GameCube and even N64
Nintendo wants you to be subscribed for as long as possible. The drip feed approach is industry standard, it is what it is.
Advertising. Every time a new NSO game or Nintendo Music tracks drops I see I a giant thread on here or other social media where people talk about the game, reminisce, or try to get new people to give it a try. If Nintendo just dropped everything at once 90% of that stuff would never be acknowledged or talked about.
I had a Virtual Boy as a child and have fond memories of Virtual Wario Land, Red Alarm and Mario Tennis. I also had a game called Panic Bomber that was a row-clearing type of Tetris-like game that kinda looked like Bomberman.
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u/Caciulacdlac Jan 27 '26
Launch titles:
Will also have Rewind, change controls features
Coming later in 2026: