Like most retro gaming fiends, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol were eating well in the Wii era. Better known as Nirvanna the Band, the two uploaded comedy shorts online before landing a TV show and hit feature film. This included a musical tribute to all the games you could play on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. 15 years later, one fan has edited the catchy jingle to exclude all the games unavailable on current gen switch.
Updating “Update Day,” or the Wii Shop Wednesday song, the bossa nova ode to the Virtual Console runs a little shorter. McCarrol still croons out the names of F-Zero, ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron and Donkey Kong Jr. Math, but it’s hard not to wince when his lyrical rendering of the Ninja Gaiden and Adventures of Lolo series ends abruptly.
This version of the song is walled in by the Nintendo Switch Online program, which is part of a paid subscription bundle but offers the game collections as an added bonus, a la Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. NSO’s collection is currently limited to titles off Nintendo consoles from the NES through GameCube, plus the Sega Genesis. The Virtual Console library offered each retro games at a traditional one-time purchase, but had a vast collection, including deeper cuts off the Turbografx, Neo Geo, MSX, Commodore 64 and arcade. Even as a premium freebie, NSO has often been criticized for paling in comparison to the Virtual Console’s troves.
If we’re being pedantic, and it’s a pedantic subject so hell why not, the edited jingle doesn’t tell the whole story. Certain games are available elsewhere on the Nintendo eShop, such as Mega Turrican, Fatal Fury, and more. Curiously, the Namco classic Dig Dug is not available on NSO, but the less popular Dig Dug 2 is. NSO seems openly crafted around deals Nintendo has struck with certain publishers, such as Koei, Sunsoft and Interplay. Noticeable omissions are likely better leveraged for a standalone purchases as remakes or remasters, such as Nintendo’s own Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Nirvanna the Band’s Update Day is one of their more persistently beloved clips, right up there with “genderless burger experience.” Matt Johnson has found himself a successful career as a director, helming Blackberry, the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic and developing a film based on Magic: The Gathering. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie released earlier this year and became an unsuspecting hit. Johnson, a big dork, based the film on the Super Nintendo classic Chrono Trigger. Which, surprise, was available on the Virtual Console but is not on the Switch.