10 Games Nintendo Needs to Publish on the Virtual Console Like, Right Now

Nintendo has a great opportunity in its Virtual Console platform, but it's one that the legendary gaming company has so far mostly squandered.

Here's a digital marketplace where Nintendo can re-release its many, many classic titles—and even other companies' classics—with minimal to no changes for premium prices.

And what does Nintendo do with the Virtual Console? It lets it stagnate.

The VC really hit its stride on the original Wii, when a steady stream of games was coming out. But the Wii U has been out for well over a year and only the tiniest fraction of VC games have been ported to the new platform. The ones that have made it over are great, with GamePad controls, off-TV gameplay, and save states that make punishing retro games easier.

But that just makes it all the more galling that Nintendo refuses to keep up with its fans' demands for digital retro games. Some of the games on this list have never been released on Virtual Console; others, we just really want to see on the Wii U's GamePad.

Either way, Nintendo could do its fans (and itself) a favor by putting them out stat.

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Yoshi's Island was already released on 3DS, but through the early adopter Ambassador program, not the Virtual Console. And that was the Game Boy Advance version.

Further, the GBA version is confirmed to be in the batch of games hitting the Wii U's Virtual Console in April. But what about the original, superior SNES version of this gorgeous game?

Nintendo has never announced that it will bring Gamecube games to the Wii U's Virtual Console, but it hasn't outright denied it either. With the Wii U lacking hardware support for Gamecube games it seems inevitable, though. There may be Nintendo engineers working it out this very moment. Hopefully, at least.

And if/when Gamecube games do make it to the VC, the underrated Super Mario Sunshine had better be one of the first games made available. With a steep learning curve and unfamiliar mechanics, some players wrote it off, but in reality it was a great follow-up to Mario 64.

While we're talking about Gamecube games on the Virtual Console, how could we leave out Luigi's Mansion? This was supposed to be the year of Luigi, after all, and yet we didn't hear a peep about this classic.

Not that the 3DS follow-up Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon wasn't appreciated—it was a great tribute to the original and a ton of fun. But you know how it is with the classics—we can't get enough!

Talk about a pipe dream. With the licensing for Rare's old games thoroughly muddled since Microsoft bought the famous studio, there's about as much chance of seeing the N64 classic Goldeneye on the Virtual Console as there is of getting Banjo-Kazooie.

Speaking of which, might as well add that to the list as well.

Banjo-Kazooie is another victim of the Rare-Nintendo split, and it's unlikely this game (or its sequel) will ever be released on Nintendo's consoles again. Luckily this classic platformer is at least available on Xbox Live Arcade, so it's not exactly lost to history.

The original three Donkey Kong Country games may not have had the mechanical purity of the Super Mario Bros. series, but they were still classics that are remembered fondly.

In truth these games are already available on the Wii's Virtual Console; but given the recent release of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Wii U, we were disappointed to find that they haven't yet been ported to the Wii U's Gamepad.

Get on this, Nintendo! Get those SNES games onto Wii U already!

Everyone remembers the Game Boy Zelda games like Link's Awakening and Oracle of Seasons/Ages most fondly, but The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap was a great little mobile Zelda game as well. Interestingly, it was developed by Capcom, and they did a fine job.

Luckily The Minish Cap and several other GBA classics, including Metroid Fusion, are confirmed to be hitting the Wii U's Virtual Console in a couple months. But why not put them out on 3DS, where they're already available to people who bought their systems early on, as well?

The original Pokémon games aged poorly in some areas, especially considering all the awesome features found in the more recent games. But there's still something about those original 151 that will always keep us coming back.

Too bad, then, that Nintendo has yet to release Pokémon: Red and Blue (or Gold and Silver, while we're on the topic) on the Virtual Console. This seems a travesty to us, but what do we know? We're just the fans.

Now here's an interesting one. Hey You, Pikachu! came with all sorts of doo-dads on N64, like a microphone that let you talk to the virtual critter. Considering Siri still can't tell us what day it is half the time, you can probably imagine how good the voice recognition was in this game. But it had its charm.

And you wouldn't need any extras to get the game up and working on Nintendo's modern 3DS and Wii U hardware, so why not?

The original Mother, the predecessor to what would become Earthbound in the U.S., is like the holy grail for Virtual Console fans. Despite demand from Nintendo diehards, this series has been mainly neglected by Nintendo of America, but isn't it about time that changed?

It wouldn't be the first Japan-only game Nintendo released elsewhere thanks to the VC, and it's even already been translated. So what do you say, Nintendo?