One of the best features of the Nintendo Wii in my opinion is the Virtual Console - the download service that will provide access to NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, and TurboGrafx games.

One of my hopes for this service has been some sort of feature that would allow the homebrew scene and other indie developers to develop “official” games for the console. Think about it - with no need to replicate discs, launch huge marketing campaigns, or have users willing to hack their game hardware, these developers could begin to bring all sorts of new games to us.

On the Hardware Information page about the Wii, there’s the following line about the Virtual Console feature:

It also will be home to new games conceived by indie developers whose creativity is larger than their budgets.

There really aren’t any details other than this, but how awesome would it be to be able to port some of your Flash games over to the Virtual Console? Or, how many of you have an idea for a game floating around that just isn’t feasible in Flash? I’ve heard it said that if someone pitched the idea of Tetris today, it wouldn’t happen for fear of it being too simple. If it’s going to be fairly simple to get your games on the Virtual Console, we could easily see another Tetris happen.

One of my favorite GameCube games is Alien Hominid, which many of you know, began it’s life as a Flash game, then eventually made it’s way to the various consoles. It’s a great game, that came out of a small independent studio. When this thing launches, it could open up a whole new market.