Nintendo announced last week that, at some point in the near future Europe will be receiving an update to their Virtual Console catalog that will include Commodore 64 (C64) games.

It’s really is great news for them, but it leaves the U.S. now behind in the VC exclusivity market, and there should be some way to rectify that - we want our own exclusive console!

It was easy to miss this news amid the flurry of information coming out of GDC. It may even make sense for the Americans among you not to care but C64 games going to Europe is, in fact, a really big deal. This, coupled with the fact that Japan will soon receive MSX games exclusively leaves the U.S. consumer wondering where is our exclusive console? There are a small handful of console that would really fit the bill, and fill this gaping hole, but will they ever happen?

1) The first candidate that came to my mind was Panasonic’s 3DO, the console brainchild of EA Games founder Trip Hawkins. It was the perfect contender since it was an American made console that pretty much no one got to play the first time around due to the console’s exorbitant cost. This meant that it has an entire library that many gamers have never even seen.

The only problem with 3DO games is that since they were CD based games they may start eating up space on your Wii’s tiny flash memory. However, there are already other CD based games that are available for download, so it shouldn’t be that big of a problem. With only about two million consoles sold originally back in the early 1990s this would be a great way to preserve one of the strongest attempts for a U.S. company to enter the console market, prior to Microsoft.

2) If Nintendo decided to pass on 3DO there is one other company that would fit (and could probably use the extra revenue right now): Atari. The first company that was really successful at putting consoles in people’s homes, but was also blamed for the great video games crash in the early 80’s would be a perfect fit for the Wii’s Virtual Console. Atari has not just one, but at least six different platforms that they could choose from. The 2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar and their PC platforms would all be perfect offerings for the Virtual Console, as long as they were conservatively priced.

Atari has begun to release some of their original titles (”Asteroids,” “Centipede/Millipede“), with updated ports on XBLA, so there really isn’t any reason they shouldn’t make some of these same games available on the Virtual Console. In fact, if they were to release the same titles on the VC it would be more beneficial for them since it would allow them to make money off of games that are already produced, without having to alot additional costs for creating an “updated” HD version. Also, much like the 3DO, the 5200, Lynx and Jaguar have extensive catalogs that most gamers may have missed out on while they were playing competing machines.

3) Some of the other contenders fall into the really retro category, predating the NES. Mattel’s Intellivision, Magnavox’s Odyssey and Odyssey2, and Coleco’s Colecovision (interesting side note - Coleco stands for Connecticut Leather Company) could all be put on the list as possible additions, however, the overall quality of these games might have gamers pondering just how badly they need to spend 400 points on “Boxing” for the Intellivision, when they could just buy “Punch-Out!!” for 500. In the end it really all comes down to a matter of value; what’s worth your Nintendo points?

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So which console should the U.S. VC get?