Once again, the secret best Nintendo Direct announcement was purely for retro sickos like me: The Virtual Console dream isn't dead on Switch 2

It feels like Nintendo Direct presentations are squarely targeted at the sickos these days, and if you happen to be a fellow retro sicko, today's presentation brought the goods. The highlight was the reveal of Hamster's Console Archives line of emulated re-releases, which seem to be the one thing keeping the Virtual Console dream alive on Switch 2.

For years, Japanese publisher Hamster Corporation has been putting out classic arcade titles on modern platforms under the Arcade Archives banner. The line includes hundreds of games, ranging from household names like Pac-Man and Space Invaders to much more obscure, but historically significant gems.

Now, Hamster is expanding to console games. The first two Console Archives titles are available today in the form of 1996 extreme sports game Cool Boarders and 1990 action platformer Ninja Gaiden 2. The respective store pages amusingly only make vague references to "a 32-bit home console" and "an 8-bit home console," but make no mistake – these are the PS1 and NES games you remember.

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Ninja Gaiden 2 is particularly notable, since that game just came to the Nintendo Switch Online Classics library in November. That subscription-only library has been the primary way of getting hold of classic games on the modern eShop, and retro fans have been practically begging for Nintendo to introduce a way to just straight-up purchase these games for ages.

In a roundabout way, Console Archives looks like the proper successor to the Wii Virtual Console – a lineup of classic games that you can just buy access to without having to worry about keeping a subscription going.

The question now is simply what console games Hamster will be able to license. The Arcade Archives series is already pretty far-ranging, and even includes Nintendo titles like the coin-op versions of Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. If Nintendo OKs a third-party dev to release first-party NES games on its own eShop, we'll well and truly be in a new era.

These are the best NES games of all time.