Marcel Winatschek

The Console That Would Inherit Everything

The rumor going around in early 2006 was that Nintendo’s upcoming Revolution—still known by that codename before it became the Wii—would include Sega Mega Drive games in its download store, alongside the already-announced back catalog from the NES, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64. Which meant Sonic the Hedgehog. Which meant Shining Force. Which meant the entire history of games I grew up with, theoretically available on one machine.

Whether the service would be free or paid wasn’t settled yet. It turned out to be paid, obviously—it became the Virtual Console and it cost real money per game, which felt like a minor betrayal at the time. But the idea still carried weight: a console that understood it was inheriting something and was making that inheritance explicit. You could argue about the pricing model. The gesture itself was honest.