It seems the Australian Classification board has just outed some of the next games coming up on Wii U’s Game Boy Advance Virtual Console. F-Zero GP Legend and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow just received ratings from the board.
If true, F-Zero GP Legend is prepared for release not too long after F-Zero Maximum Velocity has been scheduled (which will be this coming April). This game was actually developed by the now defunct Suzak, not Nintendo, and was based on an anime, and so, it has a story mode. This game has been rated G for general audiences.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is perhaps the boldest of Koji Igarashi’s Metroidvanias on GBA, and is obviously timed to strike while the fire is hot on news of Igarashi leaving Konami. In Aria of Sorrow, the lead character was not a whip wielding Belmont, or even a supernatural creature at all, but a young Spanish boy who received a curse on a horrible night. This game has been rated M, but we doubt any censorship will occur in Australia.
With the source, a release seems highly likely. While we have seen game ratings come up before only for nothing to come of it, Australia’s board is relatively new, and the games they have rated have eventually come up on release as expected. Nintendo seems vulnerable to leaks over others because they submit their games to the board earlier than to other ratings organizations in other countries. Of course, the point of revealing the ratings early is for the game companies to know if they need to adjust, so there’s nothing they can do about it.
This is an instance where Nintendo’s secretiveness is working against them, but considering gamers have shown an eager willingness to double dip on PS4 and Xbox One, it’s time Wii U got in on some of that action too. We look forward to seeing more 3rd party GBA games come up on VC, as a lot of them are definitely worth revisiting.
