Virtual Console Roundup Review

Gaplus

• Platform: Arcade
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 4.50 (approx)

The follow-up to Galaga, this single-screen shooter monkeys around with the details of Namco's beloved blaster but shmup addicts still argue as to whether the changes are an improvement or not.

As in the original game, tenacious aliens swoop around the screen and settle into formations if you fail to blast them in time. You now have freedom to move up and down the screen, rather than just left and right, and the tractor beam system is now reversed - rather than rescuing your own ships from being hoovered up, you can slurp up enemy ships to bolster your own firepower. There are also challenge stages, where you use your shots to spell out prize-winning words.

Gaplus is a weird one. On one hand it's incredibly similar to Galaga, right down to the same graphics, in that clone-happy style that early arcade cabinets so loved. On the other, it's different enough in the details that some will find the balance of the original has been lost, replacing a near-perfect learning curve with some of the most brutal gameplay of the series. One for the dedicated arcade buff, then, which is just what you'd hope from a dedicated retro arcade download service.

8/10

Mappy

• Platform: Arcade
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 4.50 (approx)

Mappy is a mouse. A police mouse, no less, and he's infiltrating the lair of a gang of light-fingered cats to retrieve the household appliances stolen by these feline felons, presumably from innocent mouse houses.

He's also a remarkably pacifist police mouse, given that he refuses to retaliate against the numerous cats who gladly kill him with a single touch. Evasion is the aim, as you use convenient trampolines to bounce to different floors of the buildings, where opening a door in a cat's face is the closest you'll get to self-defence. You're safe on the trampolines, but linger on them too long and they break. That kills you as well.

It's fast and, as with all coin-hungry example of early arcade gaming, pretty unforgiving in its gameplay. It's also reasonably good fun, once you adjust to its breakneck pace, and while it's hardly the most obvious choice for an inaugural arcade download, there are far worse choices.

7/10

The Tower of Druaga

• Platform: Arcade
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 4.50 (approx)

Notorious for its epic length and diabolically obtuse design, this sword-waggling maze game is interesting from a historical perspective but sadly not much fun to revisit.

You are Gil, a knight hellbent on ascending through all 60 floors of the titular tower. Every floor contains a maze, with both exit and key randomly placed each time you play. Monsters roam the narrow hallways, and later levels introduce wizards and other foes who lob fireballs and projectiles at you. Your shield will deflect them if you're facing the right way, but since you can only swap between sticking your sword out for attack and holding your shield up for defence - a motion that is just slow enough to prove problematic - it soon becomes fiendishly difficult.

The game also features a secret treasure on each floor, but the means of finding them are up to you (or Google) to discover. It's a neat idea, but since a lot of these treasures are power-ups that are absolutely essential to success, long-term progress is really only feasible for the incredibly dedicated player.

Sluggish and basic in execution, there are good ideas in Tower of Druaga but its main draw is to see where other, better, dungeon romps like Gauntlet and Atic Atac got their inspiration. As an actual game, it's a bit of a slog.

4/10

Star Force

• Platform: Arcade
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 4.50 (approx)

The only non-Namco game in the initial VC Arcade line-up, Tecmo's Star Force is a 1984 vertical scroller with very few frills. Clearly riffing on Xevious in appearance, it lacks the features that would make its caravan shooter peers stand out.

Your weapon can only be powered up once, and there are no additional modes of attack. No rockets or bombs, just a procession of floating islands spewing geometric alien foes at you.

That's not to say that it's a bad shmup, of course. It's smooth and fast and enjoyable enough, in a basic gets-the-job-done kind of way. There's nothing terribly wrong with it, but with so many better examples of the genre already available on the Virtual Console, it seems like an odd choice to launch with the new Arcade platform.

6/10

Super Punch Out!

• Platform: SNES
• Wii Points: 800
• In Real Money: GBP 6 / EUR 7.70 (approx)

Not all that different to the original NES game, itself based on Nintendo's early arcade cabinet, there's still something enduringly attractive about this bright and colourful bout of pixel pugilism.

The controls couldn't be simpler - left and right feint your boxer, down blocks, while the face buttons offer left and right punches, and the knockout blow. Modify those with directions and you can throw crosses and uppercuts and most other things you'd expect a boxer to do.

It's a game of reactions more than anything, really. As you work through the roster of unlikely opponents, they telegraph their moves less and do more damage with each attack. It gets quite tough pretty early on in Championship Mode, and those without the patience to memorise each boxer's telltale animations will soon grow tired.

Super Punch Out, therefore, is a purposefully shallow game but one that can be a lot of fun. It looks great, with big cartoon characters and plenty of wacky humour, and while only a few will relish the long haul of the high-score tables and time attack modes, it's worth a punt if you're that way inclined.

7/10

Mario Golf

• Platform: N64
• Wii Points: 1000
• In Real Money: GBP 7 / EUR 10 (approx)

The first of Nintendo's Mario-themed sports spin-offs, Mario Golf set the template for all the baseball, tennis and "soccer" fun that followed, offering a surprisingly solid recreation of the sport, livened up with a sprinkling of Marioesque elements.

Everything works much as you'd expect in a golf game, with the old power bar to determine your stroke. The inclusion of Power Shots mixes things up a bit, with six of these extra powerful strokes available at the start of each hole. Hit them perfectly and not only do you get a suitably bombastic animation unique to each character, but you'll be able to use the Power Shot again without dipping into your limited supply, which makes them a fairly strategic commodity.

There are, naturally, a host of party-style game modes where you hit the ball through hoops, play mini-golf or use a fruit machine to randomly assign your clubs. New characters are unlocked by beating them in the self explanatory Get Character mode, but they haven't jiggered about with the code to allow access to the bonus characters you could unlock by using the GBA.

It's a really good golf game, albeit perhaps never quite as great as you remembered. Last summer's We Love Golf came from the same developer and failed to set our world alight. Mario Golf is therefore, in many ways, still one of the best golf games on the Wii and well worth the asking price.

9/10

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

• Platform: N64
• Wii Points: 1000
• In Real Money: GBP 7 / EUR 10 (approx)

It's always a pleasure when a truly great game like this comes along. Not just being able to revisit the game itself, but the chance to write about it, to extol its virtues with a fresh perspective.

It's also pain in the arse when a truly great game like this comes along. There's a wealth of chatter already out there in the world, and what's one more voice going to say that hasn't been said already?

For the sake of formality, it's the sequel to the equally wonderful Ocarina of Time and it's a rare example of a videogame sequel that does more than simply repeat and refine a successful formula. An interactive Groundhog Day, the gameplay is constrained within three days of game time, or just less than an hour in real time. You relive these days over and over, changing things along the way, resetting certain things, nudging others into place.

You also have control over the weather and other variables, thanks to the Ocarina songs, while the idea of masks is developed from passing idea in the last game to full blown gameplay feature, allowing Link to change form into different creatures. It's undeniably a part of the Zelda universe, yet completely unlike any of the other games in the series. It's a bit odd, a bit sideways, a bit melancholy and, strangely for a game all about changing the past, rather fatalistic in its outlook.

Majora's Mask is brilliant. It is absolutely, categorically, worth the 1000-Point asking price. You should download it. That's all you really need to know.

10/10

Clayfighter

• Platform: Megadrive
• Wii Points: 800
• In Real Money: GBP 6 / EUR 8 (approx)

Along with Earthworm Jim and Boogerman, Clay Fighter represented part of Interplay's quest to be the wackiest games publisher of the early 1990s. However, while Jim and Boogerman managed to be passable platform games beneath all the silliness, the attempt to transplant the same goofy tone onto the fighting game template proved less successful.

Drawing its characters from a roster made up of circus freaks mutated by space clay, the hook was that the graphics were actual clay models photographed and digitised into the game. Such features were enough to distract The Kids back in an age when Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were considered to be some form of dark cinematic voodoo, but to today's modern eyes the effect is negligible. Rendered fuzzy by the 16-bit graphics, they just look like unusually lumpy cartoons.

Given the focus on crazy japes and outlandish characters it's no surprise that the actual fighting game stuff is laughably undernourished. It feels daft to even think of comparing it to Street Fighter or any of the SNK brawlers that are readily available on the VC, but if you're intrigued by plasticine punching it's unlikely that you're in the market for a seriously balanced fighting game experience.

For people who still think Steve Wright In The Afternoon is the height of wit, or that Bored of the Rings is timeless parody, this will no doubt be hilarious. It's not. It's a bit rubbish.

5/10

MERCS: Wolf of the Battlefield

• Platform: Megadrive
• Wii Points: 800
• In Real Money: GBP 6 / EUR 8 (approx)

Capcom's vertical scrolling classic Commando would have to wait five years for this rather obscure follow-up, but that's nothing compared to the 18-year gap between this 1990 entry and its 2008 follow-up.

Originally published by SEGA on Capcom's behalf, this Megadrive conversion ditches the multiplayer options of the arcade cabinet and instead offers "original mode" with new characters and content exclusive to the console.

Sadly, between the slow-mo bullet fun of the original and the giddy excess of the recent downloadable sequel, this is a fussy and unattractive port blighted by clumsy hit detection, ugly scrolling and a generally slapdash feel to the proceedings. Progress is a chore, and since the shoddy construction means that you'll take damage in ways the feel unfair while your bullets seem allergic to finding their targets, the frenetic pace is wearying rather than thrilling.

Horizontal spaceship shooters may outnumber vertical soldier shooters on the VC, but if you're desperate for something to scratch that itch you'd be better off hoping for Ikari Warriors to make an appearance.

3/10

Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair

• Platform: Megadrive
• Wii Points: 800
• In Real Money: GBP 6 / EUR 8 (approx)

Why do they keep doing this? Wonder Boy III is already on the Virtual Console in its Turbografx incarnation, and yet here comes the virtually identical Megadrive version, for no good reason. They did the same thing with Wonder Boy in Monster World, which also appears in the Turbografx line-up as The Dynastic Hero, while the original Wonder Boy is available in both its Master System and NES incarnations. Ooooh, it makes me mad.

So, once again, Wonder Boy uses all of three frames of animation to slide from left to right along mostly flat and featureless levels, picking up an endless stream of fruit and power-ups. Animal enemies block his path in a half-hearted manner - most simply sit there and wait to be shot - and the platform-leaping elements are so utterly pointless that the only reason to opt for a higher path is if you want to gather even more fruit to top up your meaningless score. Each platforming section is followed by a truly horrible side-scrolling shoot-'em-up stage. Given that Super Mario World originally came out around the same time, this sorry effort was already outdated way back in 1991.

Chintzy, twee and with a high pitched soundtrack that will make dogs scream, I apparently decided Monster Lair only warranted 5/10 when it first appeared but for the sheer gall of once again passing off a duplicate as a new download, I'm going to have to put my foot down with a firm hand. That's how I roll, yo.

1/10

Wonder Boy in Monster Land

• Platform: Master System
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 5 (approx)

Unlike the underwhelming Wonder Boy III, this title - which is technically Wonder Boy II - is bold, inventive and still surprisingly compelling. The guts of the gameplay are familiar enough - reach the end of the level, dodging or killing the various enemies in your way - but the addition of more varied free-roaming level design and even some RPG trimmings makes it more interesting than most of its cutesy platforming peers.

You collect coins from each enemy killed, and can visit various shops along the way to buy new equipment. Boots make you run faster and jump higher. Armour makes you less susceptible to attacks. Shields deflect projectiles. Basic stuff, but the freedom to choose what to buy opens up enough possibilities to maintain the illusion of a robust fantasy adventure.

Structurally, too, there's a refreshing change from the norm. Owing more to the likes of Metroid and Castlevania, levels can wander in different directions and the end-of-level boss doesn't always come at the end of the level. Exploration isn't mandatory, but it's always rewarded.

Where the game flounders is in its arcade cabinet roots. With a strict time-limit, limited lives and no continues it can be frustrating to amass an arsenal of items only to lose them all and have to start over from scratch. It just doesn't sit well with the long-term benefits of the role playing elements, rudimentary though they may be, and it's just enough to knock this otherwise charming effort down a point or two.

6/10

Sonic Chaos

• Platform: Master System
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 5 (approx)

Sonic Chaos was the first 8-bit game in the series to have Tails as a playable character. It was the last Sonic game on the Master System to get a European release. Er...the story involves Robotnik stealing Chaos Emeralds. Again.

Look, there's not much to be said about this unassuming entry in the sprawling Sonic series. It's much the same as the other Sonics of a similar early-nineties vintage. Level design is complex and varied, with the rush to the goal tempered by the urge to see if you can grab that cluster of rings tantalisingly visible on some apparently unreachable platform at the top of the screen. The spin dash attack is here, and proves handy for both speeding over obstacles and clobbering bosses.

The Master System hardware did a pretty good job of including the same features as the Megadrive versions, so all the loops, twists and other stunty elements are present and correct, if a little chunkier than in the 16-bit games. Collision detection occasionally feels off, especially when picking up rings, or not, as the case may be.

Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of Sonic Chaos is that it's a relatively unseen entry in a franchise where most of the attention was directed at the Megadrive titles. For Sonic fans who know most of the games inside out, this one will probably still seem quite fresh.

7/10

Clu Clu Land

• Platform: NES
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 5 (approx)

One of Nintendo's more obscure properties, this quirky 1984 effort has nevertheless managed to make cameo appearances in everything from Animal Crossing to Super Smash Bros.

You play as Bubbles, a blowfish who must retrieve gold bars from thieving sea urchins. Play takes place in a single screen dotted with pegs, and you uncover the missing ingots by passing between pegs. Urchins roam the screen as well, and can be zapped with Bubbles' huff-puffing ability. Shunting their stunned form into a wall kills them for good.

What makes Clu Clu Land stand out from all the other Pac-Man variants released in the early 1980s is the way you navigate the stages. The directional buttons reach out Bubbles' hands (or fins, presumably) and he then grasps the nearest peg and swings around and around. It feels weird to begin with, but once mastered it makes for an amusing wrinkle in an otherwise traditional maze game.

Like a lot of the NES games on the Virtual Console, there's nothing here that demands your immediate attention, but as a cute pocket money diversion it's more than acceptable.

7/10

Winter Games

• Platform: C64
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 5 (approx)

Hard to believe it's been a year since the Commodore 64 joined the VC line-up. In that time it's offered nineteen games, which seems like a fairly paltry amount considering the vast software library the platform offers. Four of those nineteen have been joystick-twanging sports games from Epyx, and this icy offering is the latest. Boasting seven events, it's neither the most varied nor the most impressive of the series.

Ski Jump and Hot Dog are variations on a theme, with a rush down the slope followed by some deft directional choices to maintain balance or pull off tricks before attempting (and often failing) a safe landing. Biathlon is an agreeable mix of marathon and shooting, as you hike up and down snowy hills, hopefully conserving enough energy to take a decent shot at checkpoint targets with your rifle. Speed Skating is a straight forward sprint event, while Bobsled simply asks you to use left and right to keep your hurtling metal coffin inside the track. That just leaves Figure Skating and Free Skating, which are basically the same, with the first insisting you follow specific moves and the second letting you do whatever pirouettes you fancy.

The game supports up to eight players, but most events only allow you to play one after another. As with the others in the series, some events - such as Biathlon and Bobsled - have aged reasonably well, and are still fun to play. Events like Hot Dog and Figure Skating, with their reliance on outdated rhythm reactions, are less than enjoyable in 2009. As always, then, another mixed bag that only entertains some of the time.

5/10