That’s the truth, that’s what they actually believe. They don’t sell
you the games, they sell you games bound to emulators. If the emulator
improves, they don’t hesitate to charge you again for the same game.
So, on the Virtual Console you do not buy games, you buy games bound
to emulators. It’s a joke.
You go on and on about how much you want a Nintendo game account
system. I tell you something. In Germany we have such an account
system for ten years. TEN YEARS! And nothing counts there. Nothing.
It’s the Club Nintendo account, which started with the GBA and GCN.
It’s an email based account on the official Nintendo site and you can
register your games on it. Each game comes with a little code inside
the box, which you can use to register it online. Originally you would
get little virtual goodies for each game like wallpapers and so on,
later only points (“Stars”), which you could use to buy some cheap
merchandise, usually not worth it. By now you should have something
similar in the USA, but we have this for ten years now.
I registered all my retail games and you can also connect your account
to the Wii Shop and the eShop, which automatically registers all your
downloaded games. So, on the official Nintendo site I have an account,
where my entire GBA, GCN, NDS, Wii, 3DS, Wii Virtual Console, WiiWare,
DSiWare and eShop library is listed! All of it! It’s what you’ve
dreamt of, but even better!
And you know what? Nothing counts! Nothing. They KNOW that I’ve
already bought Zelda I and II for the GBA and the Wii Virtual Console.
They know I already own both games (at least) twice, but they don’t
care. If I want them for the 3DS as well, I have to pay for them
again. And why? Because the 3DS Virtual Console games now have save
states. You can save everywhere and reload it any time. Common for
every emulator on the PC, but Nintendo acts like its special and a
reason to charge you again for a third time.
On the Wii U it seems to be similar. If you want the games to run with
HD resolution, you need to buy them again. Every emulator out there
can handle some simple linear interpolation to upscale NES or SNES
games. But Nintendo charges you for it. They don’t sell you the games.
They sell you “better” emulators. And they don’t want to change this.
They want you to buy SMB and Zelda again and again and again and
again. If they really would be interested in a customer friendly
account system, they could already use it here in Europe, where we
already got everything needed for it!
We have Club Nintendo here in the United States.
I guess I expected user accounts since every other modern electronics has them and the president of Nintendo of America said they were coming.
There is no point in transferring your Wii VC games since none of it plays on the Wii U. It plays only in the Wii mode of Wii U which is not actual backwards compatibility.