Virtual Console: The Most Wanted Article

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NES Most Wanted

Metal Gear (Konami)

Hideo Kojima was less than pleased with this NES remake of Solid Snake's original MSX2 adventure, apparently dubbing it "complete garbage". Probably not enough poop and boobies. With the MSX2 absent from the VC line-up, however, it seems silly to dismiss this actually-pretty-good makeover just because it mucks about with Kojima's vision. You'll certainly be surprised at how familiar the stealth gameplay is, even when viewed in top-down NES-o-vision.

Karnov (Data East)

Because who doesn't love a game about a fire-breathing Russian strongman fighting dragons and flying eyeballs? It's not just about the weirdness, though. With its large inventory of support items and colour-coded health system, it's a compelling action platform game. Think of it as the Ghosts 'N Goblins you might actually be able to complete.

Spy Hunter (Midway)

Definitely the coolest arcade game of 1983, and one of the few games which ported brilliantly to almost all 8-bit platforms. Top-down driving and, err, speedboating were as much of an unlikely alliance then as it is 25 years on, but with the addition of the Peter Gunn theme tune, smoke screens and oil slicks, classic status was assured.

Battle Chess (Interplay)

How do you get gamers interested in the stuffy world of chess? Simple. Just take the implied violence of the venerable game of military tactics and make it gloriously obvious! The beauty of this is that you don't need state of the art graphics for chess, so there's no reason why this can't appeal to everybody. It's also a bit like that game Chewbacca plays, which always helps.

NeoGeo Most Wanted

The Last Blade II (SNK)

It seems a bit weird to be demanding yet another NeoGeo fighting game, given how many of them have already kick-punch-chopped their way onto the Virtual Console, but this is widely regarded as one of SNK's best. With a deep and rich technical fighting style, and a historical setting livened up by the expected arcade flourishes, its arrival on the VC is long overdue.

Turbo Grafx-16 Most Wanted

Strider (Capcom)

With so many cute platform games on the Virtual Console, it's time to add one of the great action platformers from Capcom's heyday. That we have multiple versions of Ghouls 'N Ghosts but no Strider is a crime that will not stand. The children of 2008 need to know the fear of facing a Soviet cyborg caterpillar in deadly combat.

Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo (Konami)

While the Virtual Console has been slowly and methodically adding the early NES versions of Castlevania to the Virtual Console, we can't help but wish they'd skip the numerical order and jump straight to this far more enriching and impressive Japan-only sequel from 1993. Far better than the Americanised SNES port, this is one game we'd happily pay inflated Hanabi Festival prices for.

Most Wanted Platforms

Classic Arcade

It's always hugely disappointing when a lame port of a classic arcade game goes up on Virtual Console - especially lame ports of Nintendo classics. It's like a band putting a bad cover version of one of their treasured crowd pleasers on a Greatest Hits compilation and expecting people to be happy with that. Why not, Nintendo, have a chat with those amazing MAME coders and sort it out once and for all. We would actually pay for the proper versions of Donkey Kong and Punch Out, you know, not to mention all the classic SEGA, Namco, Capcom and Taito stuff.

Commodore Amiga

We've got the C64 and that is good and lovely and thanks. Now it's time to bring out the big guns - let's get the Amiga on the Virtual Console. Not only does it have a huge library of classic games, many of which were exclusive or never came within sniffing distance of a console, it's also the greatest home computer ever. All you ST owners? Shush.

ZX Spectrum

So why is the C64 on the Virtual Console but the wonderful Speccy isn't? OMG BIAS. Seriously, it's stupidly easy to emulate, it's got an enormous library of games and you can guarantee every dad in every Wii family will go all gooey at the prospect of Sabre Wulf and Manic Miner. I'm sure Alan Sugar still has the rights to the Spectrum somewhere in his cupboard. Pester him for them.

Dreamcast

Perhaps a little fanciful, this one, but wouldn't it be glorious to see the Dreamcast back on the scene? And on a platform that is comfortably outselling the latest PlayStation, no less. Weird and wrong though it may be for SEGA's greatest console to rely on Nintendo for a sort of Trojan horse victory, it would be such poetic justice.

Atari Jaguar

A controversial pick, perhaps, given the short lifespan of this misbegotten console. Maybe Nintendo don't want to remind people that the N64 wasn't the first 64-bit console, since the Jaguar beat it to the shelves by three whole years. Maybe nobody cares. It's not got the sort of library that would keep the VC stocked for years to come, but it'd definitely be nice to play Alien vs Predator and Tempest 2000 again.

GameBoy

Apart from the aesthetic problem of blowing up those grey sprites to telly size, there really is no logical reason why Nintendo has yet to bring its world-conquering handheld back into the family fold. At the very least, now they've dropped the cartridge slot from the new DS, why not split the difference and maybe put some classic GBA games on the Virtual Console? Go on. Please?