Nintendo talks about bringing EarthBound to the western Wii U VC
Last week’s Nintendo Direct contained a lot of exciting announcements. We found out about a new Yoshi’s Island for the 3DS. There was news about a new Mario Party. And, of course, a brand new Zelda game set in the Link to the Past world is making its way to Nintendo’s portable.
These were all great titles, but a bit unsurprising. What was surprising, however, was Nintendo’s announcement that EarthBound will be available later this year on the Wii U Virtual Console in both North America and Europe.
When asked what took so long for Nintendo to re-release EarthBound in the west, Nintendo of America’s PR Marc Franklin said:
“(Laughs) We did the Nintendo Direct in January, and Mr. Iwata announced to the Japan market that (Mother 2 was releasing on Wii U Virtual Console). People saw the reaction to that announcement in the United States and the reaction was very, very…well, they wanted to see the game. It brought up a lot of desire to see the game. So we finally found that it was the right time to bring it out. There’s a lot that goes into the decision of when to bring a game to market, it’s not as easy as saying “OK, well, let’s bring a game to market,” push a button and there it is. The time was right, and what’s most important is that we’re all excited about it. There’s a lot of fans within Nintendo just as there are outside who are just as eager to play the game. We’re just happy that it’s coming and we’re happy that the fans are excited.”
And Franklin said the following when asked if anything has changed:
“The game is going to be representative of Earthbound. In terms of anything else, we don’t have much more to announce right now. But since it’s coming through Virtual Console, you can expect to get a Miiverse community going and be able to play it off TV on the GamePad, which is pretty cool.”
