Virtual Console Roundup Review

This brings us to the end of these bumper weekly roundups, since we've now covered every single sodding game on the Virtual Console. Next week sees normal service resumed, with reviews of the new releases to tease your Wii money from your Wii wallet. Until then just loosen your belt, keep the Gaviscon close at hand and stuff your dirty face with pocket-sized Wiiviews (oh yes) until you cry for mercy...

MegaMan

• Platform: NES
• Wii Points: 500

While it's great to finally see a new game series debut on the VC, newcomers to the MegaMan series will probably find his debut outing a frustrating experience. And, while the purist in me (his name's Jurgen, by the way) appreciates the notion of starting in chronological order, I can't help wishing they'd started with one of the later, more refined iterations of the formula.

Gameplay is no more or less complex than a-leaping and a-shooting across flip-screen platform levels to find and defeat eight enemy Robot Masters, each with self-explanatory names like Bomb Man, Fire Man and, er, Guts Man. Power-ups beef up your arm-cannon and health, but where soft nougat-centred modern gamers will struggle is in the ferocious difficulty, with almost every stage opening with some fist-clenching sequence of pixel-perfect leaps or hyper-aggressive enemies.

You can choose to tackle the stages in any order you please, though, and you do get a generous health bar rather than the old one-hit-kill approach. Once you grow accustomed to the unforgiving level design, you'll discover a rather nice little platform adventure full of clever ideas. Whether or not you make it that far is up to you. Be warned.

7/10

China Warrior

• Platform: TurboGrafx-16
• Wii Points: 600

While other consoles had to make do with boasting "arcade-style" graphics, in much the same way as cheap pies contain "meat-flavoured pieces", the TurboGrafx-16 had no such limitations. It could proudly claim true arcade graphics, the visual equivalent of a proper steak and kidney with lovely thick gravy.

Where it often fell flat was in the gameplay department, with its enormous and colourful sprites frequently used to mask shallow or downright dull gameplay. This is certainly the case with China Warrior, a beat-'em-up which features some of the largest sprites of its time as well as some of the worst fighting action you're ever likely to witness.

Your towering Bruce Lee lookalike minces across the screen, and you prod the buttons to punch or kick approaching enemies out of the way. Monks, wasps, fireballs - the usual everyday obstacles when out for a stroll. Yet the whole thing is so stiff and monotonous that you'll grow bored way before the end of the first level. While such shortcomings were papered over by the OMG factor of the graphics way back when, such basic trickery falls flat in 2007. Download this at your peril.

1/10

Galaga

• Platform: NES
• Wii Points: 500

Not to be confused with Gallagher, the hastily shelved 1994 shoot-'em-up in which you must repel a steadily advancing horde of shaggy-haired Mancunians, Galaga is best described as Space Invaders - But With More Going On. Enemies swoop into formation, and then begin their downward march, occasionally breaking rank to divebomb you and pull scary faces. As always, you retort with slivers of vertical pixel destruction.

With such simple gameplay it's hard to go wrong, and if you enjoy the spartan aesthethic of classic arcade games then you'll find plenty to enjoy here. Where the recommendation falls short is in the way titles like this shine a harsh spotlight on the VC's no-frills approach. Galaga is also available on Xbox Live Arcade, for much the same price, in a version that boasts polished visuals, online leaderboards and other funky additions from our modern world. Taken just as a VC offering, Galaga is hard to criticise. Taken as a purchase in the broader gaming market, its value diminishes accordingly.

7/10

Gradius

• Platform: NES
• Wii Points: 500

Horizontal rather than vertical shooty-shoot fun is the order of the day here. Pre-dating the suspiciously similar R-Type by a few years, you pilot your ship through wave after wave of weird blob-shaped things and enemy cannons, collecting power-ups and avoiding bullets for as long as possible.

It's all perfectly acceptable stuff, and rather ground-breaking in its own way, but you can't ignore the fact that the vastly superior R-Type III is also available for 300 points more. It's also annoying that this isn't even the best version of Gradius - the TurboGrafx-16 also hosted a conversion with better visuals and slicker play. Why we only get this, the most basic version of an otherwise decent game, is one of those mysteries that only the great god Nin-Ten-Doh can answer. Pray to him now, lowly dog, and hope for enlightenment.

6/10

Kid Icarus

• Platform: NES
• Wii Points: 500

I think they've got a little confused here. They've mixed up Icarus, the young Greek lad who stuck feathers to his arms with wax and then flew too close to the sun, with Cupid, the archery-loving Roman cherub who ascended through platform levels, shooting blue snakes and flying red eyeballs.

Because that's what you do. Up, up, up you go and twang, twang, twang goes your bow. It also features a wraparound screen, so that if you exit stage right, you appear on the left hand side of the screen, turning what was previously an impassable ceiling into a delightfully solid floor. It's all quite sweet and fun, a bit like Rainbow Islands but not as interesting or colourful. File it alongside all the other titles that have made me say "Not the sort of game to rush out and download, but worth the points all the same".

6/10

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• Platform: NES
• Wii Points: 500

Ooh, crikey. I once made a lot of people VERY VERY ANGRY when I suggested that, compared to the side-scrollers that preceded it, the "classic" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade fighting game was a mindless sack of rancid amphibian muck. How they wailed and gnashed their teeth. Don't mess with nostalgia, kids. It's like a razor, and it'll cut you wide open.

So, here are the half-shell heroes once again. Dare I go for the double? Well, this apparently equally beloved home console outing has more going for it than its braindead arcade cousin, but it still hasn't aged all that well.

You start off guiding your turtle from above, like a green Gauntlet clone, and then switch to side-on platforming when you drop into a manhole. At the other end you pop out of another manhole, hopefully closer to your goal. Free-roaming, in a restricted retro kind of way, and with plenty of brainwork required to figure out how to escape the maze-like levels, I can see why it holds a place in the hearts of those who played it as kids, but the rather poor design of the platforming stages ultimately makes it more of a slog than it should be.

6/10

Final Fight

• Platform: SNES
• Wii Points: 800

I held off on reviewing this seminal brawler, mostly because I was trying to spread the wheat amongst the chaff during these lengthy roundups, but also because each week seemed to feature another scrolling fighter thus making coverage of this a repetitive proposition.

As it turns out, leaving it until the end has proven rather useful. In my youth I was an avowed Final Fight fan. After all, what boy could fail to be bowled over by Haggar in all his majestic glory, bare-chested and sporting the kind of bushy 'tache that a humble teen could only dream of?

I remembered it as a larger-than-life experience, full of enormous characters using enormous moves to crush enormous enemies. Playing it again a decade and change later, it's still a lot of fun - but not quite the epoch-making masterpiece I once believed. Most notably, playing it alongside Streets of Rage I realise that I pinned my flag to the wrong mast. For all its bluster, Final Fight is something of a lumbering behemoth alongside SEGA's nimbler offering.

And let's not forget that this is the SNES version we're talking about here, not the arcade original. Playable characters are reduced to just two, so it's goodbye to Cody and tousled blond locks. There's no two-player co-op, and an entire stage has been removed to squeeze it onto the console.

All told, while Final Fight as a series is well worth your time - if only to see how its parallel development with Street Fighter II helped shape the beat-'em-up genre - but you can safely download Streets of Rage (or its equally groovy sequel) rather than this half-baked port.

6/10

Bio-Hazard Battle

• Platform: Megadrive
• Wii Points: 800

Yet another horizontal shooter, few bothered to check out Bio-Hazard Battle when it slapped itself gently against the Megadrive back in 1992, and the only reason to do now is because a) it's a lot cheaper and b) it's a bit weird.

The game asks you to help save a biologically knackered planet by shooting lots of things. To do this, you can choose from four organic "bioships", each offering different speeds and power-ups. One looks like an insect, another a bit fishy. That sort of thing. Enemies are equally squishy and odd, undulating through the sky towards you in a freaky manner. The bass-heavy soundtrack adds to the rather uncomfortable mood, throbbing your speakers in such a way that your bowels give a little quiver as each new boss lumbers into view.

Think of it as David Cronenberg's R-Type and you'll be within spitting distance of understanding what the flipping crikey is going on.

7/10

Soldier Blade

• Platform: TurboGrafx-16
• Wii Points: 600

Probably the fastest vertical shooter on the VC, Soldier Blade is as generic as they come - colour-coded weapon power-ups, hovering support pod, manga styling - but that's not to say the casual blaster fan won't get their money's worth from its relentless (yet surprisingly easy) combat.

Hold the button down, avoid the enemy projectiles peppering the screen and point your nozzle of white hot laser death in their direction. Pick up the floating canisters left behind, beef up your weapons into a mesh of deadly destruction and...keep on going.

It's twitch gaming in its purest, most basic form, and while I'm sure there are experts (nerds) who can debate long and hard as to which shooter is superior, this will more than satisfy most of us.

7/10

New Adventure Island

• Platform: TurboGrafx-16
• Wii Points: 600

By looking at the VC line-up, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the TurboGrafx-16 was home to mostly manic shoot-'em-ups and cartoon platformers in which prehistoric children threw things at naughty animals. It's not true, of course. The platform hosted some great sports games, some interesting RPGs and a pretty great version of Chase HQ.

Having said that, here's a cartoon platformer in which a prehistoric child throws things at naughty animals.

Admittedly, he does get to ride a skateboard as well, but while everything looks very jolly and chunky, there are only so many times you can throw a boomerang at unmoving snakes and snails before it all starts to merge into one generic splodge of fruit pick-ups and palm tree backdrops. However, New Adventure Island is brighter and easier than most of its platform peers, so if you've got younger kids to placate this is probably worth adding to your collection.

7/10

Battle Lode Runner

• Platform: TurboGrafx-16
• Wii Points: 600

There are few multiplayer games on the VC, outside of the expected two-player modes, so this deathmatch flavoured rejig of the popular Hudson Soft ladder-climbing platformer is a welcome addition.

If Dig Dug got tipsy and had an illicit evening with Bomberman, Battle Lode Runner is what the eventual mewling child would look like. You scamper around the levels, picking up gold and digging holes in the floor to stymie or ensnare the other players (or monsters, if you're playing the single-player game - also included here).

There are several different four-player modes to try - from last-man-standing Survival rounds, to score-based competitions where your race to rack up the most points. From the password-based continue system to the polished controls and cunning level designs, Battle Lode Runner makes a fine addition to your Wii menu. Give it a try.

8/10