Virtual Console Roundup Review

Throughout last September, Nintendo celebrated the Hanabi Festival with weekly offerings of games that had never reached Europe on their original release. Mostly cult Japanese titles, with a few US games as well, it was a nice idea and one that added rare gems like Sin & Punishment and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels to the VC. Except they took The Lost Levels off again at the end. For no reason.

Well, with surprisingly little fanfare, the Hanabi Festival is back, which at least means we get two weeks on the trot with three games to choose from. Admittedly, this week that means two shoot-'em-ups and a puzzle game, but as always with the VC, let's not look a gift plumber in the mouth.

This also means, sadly, that the utterly random and pretty much unjustifiable price hikes have returned. Yes, an extra 100 points has been slapped onto the cost of each game, presumably because they games are foreign and therefore the ROM file is heavier and costs Nintendo more to post down the internet wires. Or some such bollocks. With grumbles about the VC price structure forming an ever-present background murmur, these craven shenanigans aren't likely to cheer the fans up.

And on that sour note, here be the games!

Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou

• Platform: TurboGrafx CD
• Wii Points: 900
• In Real Money: GBP 6.30 / EUR 9 (approx)

There are two shooters on offer this week; one vertical, one horizontal. This is the horizontal one and it is, as they say, strictly for the hardcore. For one thing, it has the sort of convoluted background that trivia-obsessed enthusiasts love. Gradius is also known as Nemesis but this version was released as Vulcan Venture for US arcades, but only available in Japan as Gradius II. There are elements taken from Gradius spin-off Salamander which was also called Lifeforce which, if I'm following this correctly, would make Gradius II its own grandfather and wife all at the same time. Dirty.

It's one of those shmups where you get to choose from a selection of weapon sets at the start, as well as one of two shield options. As with most hardcore Japanese blasters, it's all about memorisation and pattern recognition, boasting an onslaught that will leave most casual players blistered and sore in all the wrong places.

For this console version Konami pushed the boat out with a stereo soundtrack, a new animated intro sequence and a whole new level not seen in the arcade. It's an Egyptian temple sort of affair, suspiciously similar to the first level of Gradius III. Other than those additions, it's pretty much arcade perfect - although the absolutely purest of purists will no doubt find the frame-rate implications of going from Japanese arcade to 1988 console to the PAL Virtual Console rather annoying.

But how to mark such a thing? For all its narrow appeal, and despite being yet another shoot-'em-up on a service now home to 7,324 of the things, it is a pretty great shoot-'em-up, albeit one that is really only of interest to the handful of shmup fans collecting all the entries in their beloved genre on the VC.

8/10

Final Soldier

• Platform: TurboGrafx 16
• Wii Points: 700
• In Real Money: GBP 4.90 / EUR 7 (approx)

This is the vertically-inclined shooter of this week's pair, and also the one that will be of more interest to those outside the frighteningly focused shoot-'em-up hardcore lobby. The main reason for this is that it's not freakishly hard, increasing your firepower with a generous number of floating letter power-ups while taking its time to ramp up the enemy attacks.

In a genre where simply getting to the end of the first stage can be an achievement, this gentler approach (assuming you opt for the normal mode) makes everything much more accessible to mere mortals who don't have super-powered thumbs.

The downside is that there's not much in the way of surprise or innovation along the way. Turrets pop up and down, enemies swoop and swirl from the side of the screen just as they have since Galaga was a baby, and the bosses are inevitably large mechanical tank things that shuffle about at the top of the screen lobbing reams of bullets at you but always leaving convenient gaps to slip past.

On a normal week I'd probably be quite forgiving to such a game, simply because shoot-'em-ups are fun and while the VC is overpopulated with the things, too few of them are really geared towards the mainstream player. However, thanks to the ludicrous price inflation for the Hanabi wotsit, this decent effort is rendered less appealing.

6/10

Columns 3: Revenge of Columns

• Platform: Megadrive
• Wii Points: 900
• In Real Money: GBP 6.30 / EUR 9 (approx)

I'm almost tempted to give this 10/10 just for the awesome title alone. What next? Vengeance of the Buttresses? The Proscenium Arch Strikes Back? Unfortunately this isn't an epic saga of architectural intrigue but yet another of those block-dropping puzzlers that mysteriously sprouted everywhere when a certain Russian game became a phenomena.

Clearing the screen of coloured blobs is the inevitable aim of the game, though in this variation on the theme the blobs descend in vertical groups of three. You can scroll the blobs up and down to change their position, but there's no way of rotating them sideways. Form lines of three - up, down or diagonally - and they vanish. That's pretty much it.

Tacked on around this core concept is a story mode which finds you venturing inside a pyramid and challenging the various creatures and monsters within to blob-swapping matches. Using certain magical gems delivers negative status effects on your opponent so, yeah, it's a little bit like Puzzle Quest only not nearly as funny or interesting. As the whole game is centred on this competitive play, the best reason to pick this up is for the spread of multiplayer options which can allow up to five players at once.

The best reason to not pick it up is, once again, the price. It's the sort of puzzler that would be fine as part of a compilation, but even at 800 Wii Points this would be dubious value. There's therefore nothing here to justify the additional 100 points on top. It reminds me most of the recent XBLA offering, TiQal, and that wasn't worth the price either.

5/10