Nintendo: Exclusive Products Nintendo Could Bring Back To Help Sales This Winter

Zero to hero in a matter of days. That is how some could explain the week for Nintendo. Exclusive use of past products and an app phenomenon has helped Nintendo turn the tide on what many felt would be a disappointing year. It shouldn’t surprise most people. Nintendo seems to be at its strongest when its back is against a wall.

Pokemon GO continued to perform well ahead of even the best of expectations. It’s meteoric rise to the top of mobile charts is second-to-none. In fact, Survey Monkey christened it “the Biggest Mobile Game in U.S. History.” The Augmented Reality app has added billions of dollars to Nintendo’s market share, and it doesn’t seem to show any signs of slowing down.

On the heels of GO’s monumental success, Nintendo kept the ball rolling this week with the announcement of the NES Classic Edition. The Classic Edition is a miniature version of Nintendo’s first system released worldwide, the Nintendo Entertainment System. The retro console will feature 30 built in games many exclusive to Nintendo including The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. 1-3, and Metroid.

The announcement shocked most people who thought Nintendo had opted not to make any major announcements prior to the information regarding their next presumed home console codenamed the NX. This drums up thoughts of what other exclusive announcements could Nintendo pull from their bag of tricks to help the company continue to make money between now and March 2017.

More Pokemon Virtual Console Games

In 1996, Nintendo released a game to the world that had been insanely popular in native Japan. Simply translated as ‘Pocket Monsters,’ Pokemon allowed the player to catch, train, and trade mythical creatures. With a 150 creatures (Pokemon) to collect, it brought hours of entertainment to a group of kids looking for a game that would define their generation.

The first game came for the Gameboy came in three flavors initially, Red, Blue, and Green (Japan only). Two years later, Nintendo released a version of the same game for the Gameboy Color. This time, it would be Pokemon Yellow featuring the now iconic Pokemon, Pikachu. In total, the four versions sold a total of 46 million copies according to information obtained by Vox.

In honor of the 20th anniversary, Nintendo re-released the original game for the Nintendo 3DS via its Virtual Console Platform in February. The game quickly became the number one game downloaded for the system. To date, it has sold well over 1.5 million copies.

One of the interesting aspects added to this version of the game was to allow the player to transfer the Pokemon obtained in the game over to the new Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon games that will be available November 18. This is done by making use of the PokeBank subscription service. Currently this is the only Pokemon game that allows this.

Why couldn’t Nintendo do the same thing with all generations of Pokemon Games? There are 12 more Pokemon games that encompass another five generations that Nintendo has exclusive rights to. Adding in the ability to transfer caught Pokemon to Sun and Moon would be enough to keep the money rolling in well into 2017. At the moment, no announcements have been made on whether the company is planning to do this.

SNES Classic Edition

While the original NES brought gaming back to the masses, the Super Nintendo is what made many people fall in love with gaming. The second home console enjoyed stiff competition from Sega’s own 16-bit system, and in the SNES case, competition bred excellence. Many consider the SNES to still be one of the greatest systems ever released.

The toughest question to be answered would be the titles packed in with the system. Great exclusive content was what the SNES was all about. Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past are just a few of the titles that come to mind. With the addition of titles like Chrono Trigger, the SNES would sell easily, as well as the NES Classic Edition.

These Nintendo exclusives alone would go a long way into increasing the already mountain of cash they are sitting on. They would still have other classic systems like the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube to bring out in a similar format. Both systems have proven difficult to emulate, so they might be as good of pick for retro treatment as the one mentioned.

Is there a Nintendo exclusive we failed to mention? Do you plan on picking up the NES Classic Edition? Let us know below.

[Image via Nintendo]