
- WHY CAN'T I FIND ANY WII U ROMS PS4
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Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Pearl were announced alongside Legends: Arceus for the series’ 25th birthday, but aside from that there was radio silence in terms of preservation efforts for the series’ existing games. Donkey Kong’s 40th was basically ignored. Zelda got nothing for its 35th anniversary. Or does it? It’s all so unpredictable right now. I mean, the Wii U virtual console supports games right up to and through the DS era - given the fact both the NES and SNES emulators exist on Switch, hoping for N64, GBA, and DS doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch. The only partially refreshing thought I’ve had about this entire fiasco was, “Maybe Nintendo is going to finally get that N64 classics library,” or, as I’d personally prefer, a whole host of Game Boy games. You can’t get them digitally and they’re not on Switch - not yet, at least. Once credit card support goes for Wii U and 3DS, your only option will be to hunt down extremely expensive physical copies of games. If you own the copyright to games and you want them to be purchased via the correct channels, you have every right to enforce that - but they’re not even purchasable, for the most part. The sourest part about all of this is that Nintendo actively denounces emulation, which, sure, it’s not legal. It genuinely is like consciously choosing to ditch a platform that was current-gen until very recently.
WHY CAN'T I FIND ANY WII U ROMS PS4
When we see Nintendo culling support for its second and third-most recent platforms, both of which are the immediate predecessors of each of the Switch’s hybrid forms - home console and handheld - it’s like Sony saying, “Sorry buds, you can’t buy PS4 games anymore.” If you think I’m exaggerating, the PS4 came out in 2013, one year after the Wii U. Hell, even the Switch OLED, which retails for an extra $40 despite minimal improvements, is, ultimately, an anti-consumer gimmick. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was an anti-consumer gimmick. The limited availability window for Super Mario 3D: All-Stars was an anti-consumer gimmick. But to me, it just seems as if it’s all in service of yet another anti-consumer gimmick.

The people making these decisions are much smarter than I am and obviously have a more nuanced understanding of what works both commercially and in terms of maintaining what is probably the single most ubiquitous brand in video games. Nintendo has, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most impressive oeuvres in gaming history - so why does it seem as if it doesn’t care?
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Also, this is before we even talk about other Nintendo series like Metroid, F-Zero, Super Smash Bros., Kirby, Earthbound, and so on.

In isolation, all of these things seem like minor grievances, but if you combine each issue and examine the collective whole in context, it quickly becomes ridiculous. The Switch has Breath of the Wild, Link’s Awakening, the recently released Skyward Sword HD, and three NES Zeldas, one of which is the highly contested Zelda 2. I mean, the Wii U is a bona fide Zelda machine. Mario has admittedly enjoyed relative comfort on the Switch compared to Pokemon and Zelda, but there are still quite a few games missing - games that could be played on one of the consoles Nintendo is ditching support for. As I mentioned earlier, Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy were there for a while, but they’re gone. You can’t play Pokemon Red & Blue, nor can you boot up the much newer Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon.

Put it this way: you can’t play Ocarina of Time on Switch. That last point makes the closure of the 3DS and Wii U eShops particularly ironic. Essentially, if you want to be able to play Wii U or 3DS games after that date, you’ll need to either a) buy them digitally beforehand and have the memory necessary for storing them, b) purchase pricey physical copies of the games, c) circumvent the lack of credit cart support using bureaucratic money circulation techniques, or d) emulate them, which is illegal. Nintendo has announced that as of January 2022, credit card support for the 3DS and Wii U eShops will be shut down. What’s that? Not anymore, you say? Do explain. Related: Pokemon Gen 2 Is One Of The Best Designed RPGs Of All Time All in all, it’s a fairly poor selection of iconic entries from three of Nintendo’s most illustrious flagship series - at least we’ve always been able to play the rest on older machines. Obviously this doesn’t include Super Mario 64, Sunshine, or Galaxy, all of which were temporarily playable on Switch prior to the removal of Super Mario 3D All-Stars a few months ago.

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Those are the numbers of mainline Pokemon, Zelda, and Mario games that are currently available to download on Switch, respectively.
