That’s cool and all, Travis, but EARTHBOUND IS COMING TO VIRTUAL CONSOLE

I mean, don’t get me wrong, a new Zelda game in the same Hyrule as A Link to the Past? That’s pretty great. Truly. I emphatically look forward to it.

Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo EarthBound!

As the final announcement from Iwata’s worldwide portion of today’s Nintendo Direct the supreme lord and commander of Nintendo himself revealed that the classic Super Nintendo RPG, widely available in Japan but an eBay darling in the West, will finally be getting a rerelease before the end of the year on the Virtual Console in both North America and Europe. This will be the first time the game has officially been available in Europe, and the first time in a while that people who don’t want to pay $150 or more for a scratched-up, dead-battery, odd-smelling used cartridge will be able to buy the game in English. The game’s profile was significantly raised with each subsequent game in the Super Smash Bros. series, with the protagonist Ness appearing in all three and joined by the main character from the Japan-only GBA sequel, Lucas, in Brawl. As awareness of the game increased and people who grew up with the Super Nintendo suddenly had disposable income, the price of EarthBound went up, and the fire was only fueled further as the game saw a couple of rereleases on new platforms in Japan alongside rumors that the threat of legal action over copyright concerns were keeping it from ever seeing the light of day again in the US.

The Nintendo Direct broadcast was unclear on *which* of the three Virtual Console services would be receiving EarthBound, but the announcement came at the end of the reveal that the Wii U Virtual Console would properly be arriving next week. [EDIT: Nintendo’s Twitter feed confirms it’s for Wii U. They figured out how to get everyone to upgrade from Wii.] Now let’s all go watch the cartridge-only price fall on eBay to pass the time.