Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
But You can play every vc game you own on your wii u at no charge, the upgrade fee is for additional features
The "You can play them in Wii mode for free" argument is pretty thin. Rebooting into Wii mode (and back when you're done) takes a pretty significant amount of time. It's fine if you're playing one game straight through, but it doesn't work if you're just looking for a little 5 minute jam session.
The "it's only 30 cents" argument works for some and not for others. On one or two games, those charges are not substantial. On the other hand, if you have many VC games (and many on GAF do--I stopped buying around 2007-2008 and I have 35-50 VC games), it adds up. It's more of a principle thing. The most direct comparison is the quality upgrade/de-DRM fee on iTunes, which also sucked for the same reason, except the old iTunes songs still worked fine and didn't require a segmented BC mode like the VC games in Wii Mode would.
I'd also add that most of us re-bought a lot of physical games on VC. I mean, I own SMB on NES. I rebought it on VC. Nintendo is now reselling it on 3DS VC. Can I have an option, even if it costs more, to just buy SMB once and for all?
I think it gets a little more problematic when you look at the big picture. I have maybe 1500 games right now, across all platforms--and probably almost 1000 of them are digital. That ratio is going to keep getting more lopsided. So I'm extremely nervous about trends in digital content which require me to spend more to "maintain" the games I own.