Japan-Only games on VC

As you know, I never post about the Wii's weekly Virtual Console releases. But this week is a bit more notable. Why? Well, this week's releases confirm that Japan-Only games are being ported for the Virtual Console.

This week, we see Super Mario Brothers 2 and Sin & Punishment coming for the Virtual Console. But since, the "Americanized" version of Super Mario Brothers 2 was already released on the Virtual Console, they're calling it "Super Mario Brothers: The Lost Levels". Now, this brings about an interesting story from the 80s....

After the monstrous success of Super Mario Brothers for the NES, Nintendo decided to make a sequel to the game. It was released as Super Mario Brothers 2 (easy enough title to choose) and after it was released in Japan, Nintendo of America was about to release it here, when some smart guy had to open his mouth and say "Hey! This is waaaay to hard for those Americans to handle!" And so, they created another game that was nothing like the original and much easier, and gave it the same title. And so, this is the 1st time the Japanese version of the game has ever been released in the USA.

The other release was Sin & Punishment for the Nintendo 64, but I don't have any notable stories about that game.

What is notable though is the price of this week's releases. Rather than the traditional 500 Wii Point price tag, Nintendo jacked up Super Mario Brothers: The Lost Levels to 600 Wii Points. And they also decided to make Sin & Punishment 1,200 Wii Points.

These prices are probably only like this because it's the first time these games have been released here. And we will probably see this from any other Japanese titles we receive on the Virtual Console, but considering we finally get SMB2 at all after a 20 year wait, I'm not in the position to complain about it.


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