25 Games We'll Never See on the Virtual Console

Synopsis: The Super Scope 6 was the pack-in game released for the Super Scope, a collection of two different games with three mini-games each. As you might imagine, these mini-games revolved around you using the bazooka-like Super NES accessory to shoot at the screen. One game had you blowing up missiles and moon creatures, while the other was a strange Tetris/Duck Hunt hybrid.

What's the Hold Up? At first glance this Super Scope pack-in seems like the perfect game for the Wii. It's a collection of mini games, you control it by using a gimmicky device, and it's all about getting new gamers involved. Unfortunately it's the Super Scope 6 that you are talking about. While I'm sure the Wii's remote control would be great for these shooter mini games, it's hard not to notice how limited this collection really was. This collection of six games is so bare that it makes Wii Sports look like Gears of War. It might actually be worth a few dollars to check out Blastris, Tetris' lowest point.

Synopsis: In the arcades, Mortal Kombat was the game to beat, a brutal fighter with tons of blood and some of the craziest fatalities we had ever seen (well, the ONLY fatalities we had seen). On the Super NES Mortal Kombat was a joke, featuring none of the aspects that made the arcade game such a smash hit.

What's the Hold Up? Mortal Kombat was the original poster boy for anti-game legislation. It was the Grand Theft Auto before Rockstar had ever dreamed up the idea of a sandbox game. But that controversy didn't stop Acclaim from bringing this brutal 2D fighting game to the Super NES. Unfortunately the SNES version had to be slightly edited in order to get the okay from the Big N. Out were a lot of the fatalities and blood. Instead we were given less gruesome finishing moves and see-through sweat. Fans of the arcade game flocked to the uncensored Genesis port, a game that looked worse but played better. Of course, it didn't take long before Nintendo completely switched their position and allowed blood and gore in Mortal Kombat II. Either way, this game will never hit the Virtual Console for a number of reasons. The list is long, but the problems include the fact that there are licensing problems, Acclaim sold off all of their past games, and nobody wants to play a Mortal Kombat game without blood. Seriously, Mortal Kombat without blood is just Street Fighter II with bad control.

Synopsis Fighting Street is the TurboGrafx-CD port of the original Street Fighter, the game that started Ryu and Ken's fight against the evil Sagat. While this fighting game may have had some of the same moves as its popular sequel, all it takes is one sitting to understand why this game isn't considered the grandfather of fighting games.

What's the Hold Up? Until recently the original Street Fighter was one of those games Capcom didn't talk about. They wouldn't add it to Street Fighter collections, it was never brought up in the literature and Capcom would look the other way whenever somebody asked them about the title. This TurboGrafx-CD version of Street Fighter is known as Fighting Street and is even more obscure. While it looks good for a TurboGrafx-16 port, Fighting Street is nowhere near arcade perfect and doesn't deserve your attention. While Capcom will no doubt release as many Street Fighter II ports as they can on the Virtual Console, I suspect they'll leave Fighting Street alone. And maybe that's a good thing after all.

Synopsis Conker's Bad Fur Day was everything the rest of the Nintendo titles weren't. It was twelve solid hours of bathroom humor, profanity and drunken characters. This was one of the only Nintendo 64 games to offer an M-Rating. Nintendo saw this as a liability and decided to wash their hands of Conker, leaving Rare to publish this moderate success all by themselves.

What's the Hold Up? There once was a time when Conker was an inoffensive 3D platformer hero for the Nintendo 64. But that's not the Conker the Wii owners are begging for. They want the rude and crude Conker that Rare released towards the end of the Nintendo 64's life cycle. Chock full of R-rated movie references, toilet humor, and other obsenaties, Nintendo took a hands-off approach to the game. Seeing as Rare is currently owned by Microsoft it seems unlikely that Nintendo would get the thumbs up for a Conker port on the Virtual Console. If anything Microsoft (and Rare, to a lesser extent) would gain more from getting people to buy the underrated Conker game on the original Xbox. Nintendo didn't know what to do with Conker back at the turn of the century, and seven years later they still don't have a clue.

Synopsis: Back in the late 1980s there were a lot of versions of Tetris to choose from, including one published by Nintendo themselves. But while the Bulletproof Software developed Tetris was fine and dandy, it was Tengen's stab at the puzzler that left the biggest impact. To this day Tengen's Tetris is one of the most sought after video game, the type of game you can expect to pay hundreds of dollars for on eBay.

What's the Hold Up? It's the rarest of all of the Tetris games, and for many it's the best NES Tetris game ever made. It's Tengen's Tetris, a game that enjoyed life both as both a licensed Nintendo product and not. These days this fabled Tetris goes for big bucks on eBay, so one might hope that Nintendo would be so kind to release it on the Virtual Console. But don't get your hopes up, because there's no chance in Hell that Nintendo would ever allow Tengen's one true classic on their Wii. Oddly enough it has nothing to do with whole Nintendo license controversy (though, that can't help matters any), instead Nintendo will never give you this version of Tetris when they have their own version released on the NES. If Nintendo is going to give you any version of Tetris it's going to be their own, plain and simple. Perhaps one day Nintendo will allow us to have a side by side comparison, but sadly those days aren't in our immediate future.