Pocky And Rocky Will Never Ever Come To Virtual Console
Natsume is the game localization company that brought Harvest Moon to America. Their community manager, who calls herself CeeCee, requested questions for a Twitter Q&A earlier this year. Now she’s just beginning to post the answers people wanted, and one of them suggests Natsume is unlikely to rerelease any more of its classic SNES titles on Wii U Virtual Console than what it already has up.
Pocky and Rocky is a top-down SNES shooter starring a Japanese girl and her raccoon sidekick who hurl monster-destroying cards endlessly through the streets and bridges of medieval Japan. It got a sequel on the same console and has a cult following to this day. Pocky and Rocky was never rereleased on the Wii Virtual Console, and according to Natsume, it is unlikely to ever be rereleased on Wii U’s version either.
Will the two Pocky & Rocky SNES games ever be re-released on the Virtual Console?
– @ominiq (Twitter)
At this point, it’s unlikely we’ll see any other Natsume SNES games coming to the Virtual Console, as Nintendo’s interest has moved onto other classic systems.
As she explained in an answer to an earlier tweet, Nintendo has more control than third-parties in which games go on VC.
How does the virtual console porting process work? What are all the steps needed to put a game (Like HM2 GBC for example) on VC?
-Connor Nichols (Facebook)
The titles for Virtual Console are handled by Nintendo. The publisher and Nintendo discuss which classic titles would be a good fit and have the best potential to sell. Once a title is agreed upon, Nintendo and the publisher work together to bring that title to the designated system, with Nintendo doing the bulk of the work.
Natsume can’t rerelease Pocky and Rocky because Nintendo simply thinks it wouldn’t be worth the work on their end. What are the implications of this on a larger scale? Square-Enix still has yet to make any of their SNES games available on Wii U. Surely Nintendo would eventually feel Final Fantasy III would be worth the effort, but what happens to more obscure titles like the two Ogre Battle games? Will you have to put the system into Wii Mode to enjoy them indefinitely? I suppose it’s a better fate than nothing, which is what P&R got handed.
Pocky and Rocky is currently $129.99 on eBay.