Classic games on next generation gaming consoles

One of the best features of next generation gaming consoles is often one of the ones that’s overlooked the most.  It isn’t the graphics, motion sensing controllers, or high definition television capability.  The feature I am referring to is that you can download classic video games through the online stores that the manufacturers provide and play them on the new systems.  Nintendo’s Wii has a feature called the Virtual Console, Microsoft’s Xbox360 has Xbox Live, and Sony’s Playstation 3 has the Playstation Network.  All of these online networks have stores associated with them that allow you to download classic video games and sometimes also arcade games.

The Nintendo Wii seems to have the most complete online store in terms of downloading and that is probably mostly due to the fact that Nintendo simply had so many popular classic games with its older systems.  Not only does Nintendo take advantage of its own classic games, but it also takes advantage of many classic Sega titles.  Nintendo’s online store has classic games to download from the NES, SNES, N64, Arcade, Commodore 64, NEOGEO, Sega Genesis, and Sega Master System.  One could argue that either the NES, SNES, N64, or Sega Genesis was the greatest system of all time.  While Wii’s native controller is based on their new motion technology, they also created a classic looking controller to be used for the classic video games you download from their online store.

Both Xbox and Playstation 3’s online networks are really designed to play their current games online.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, the Xbox360 is only their second system so they don’t really have a lot of classic games that they can release for you to pay for and download.  They do release some arcade games and have a lot of other options of simpler games to download through their store which is still pretty interesting.  They also have some virtualization software that allows you to play most original Xbox games on the Xbox360.  Playstation 3’s store is very similar to Xbox except they allow you to download some original Playstation games to play them on their new system.  Playstation originally planned on making the Playstation 3 compatible with all Playstation and Playstation 2 games but they eventually scrapped that after their first batch of systems to cut costs.

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~ by Aidan on December 15, 2009.