Retro Reviews
Review Anne's Doll Studio: Princess Collection (DSiWare)
Evil princess
Gamebridge's Anne's Doll Studio: Princess Collection is one of several titles in the Anne's Doll Studio "series," and like the other entries is a complete waste of time and money. A simple application in which you can dress up a doll and save it as an image file, users will find all there is to discover as soon as the title menu is...
Review Ufouria: The Saga (Wii U eShop / NES)
A Ufouric experience
Retro-style indie platformers are all the rage these days, so you'd be forgiven for thinking Sunsoft's Ufouria: The Saga is simply another in the long line of 2D NES-inspired modern titles on the eShop like Shovel Knight, 1001 Spikes, and Insanity's Blade. Released in 19
Review Mega Man 6 (Wii U eShop / NES)
Let battle commence. Awooga!
Arriving on the same day as Mega Man 5 on the Wii U Virtual Console, Capcom has decided to grace us with the final NES entry to wrap up that era of the franchise. Released in 1993, when the SNES was already out and Mega Man X was on the verge of release, Capcom just couldn't let itself say goodbye to the NES and made one...
Review Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (Wii U eShop / GBA)
Full of promise, or just hot air?
Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is in fact a remake of Kirby's Adventure, Kirby's first outing on the NES from 1993. While it isn't his original adventure (that honour goes to Kirby's Dream Land), it is the first instance in which he was able to use his now classic copy ability. The remake — which originally...
Review Mega Man 5 (Wii U eShop / NES)
Proto Man problems
Over a year ago, the first four Mega Man games were released on Wii U Virtual Console in quick succession. We don't know exactly what took so long for the remainder, but the fifth entry is finally here. As you might expect, Mega Man 5 is quite similar to the four games before it; eight new Robot Masters have appeared, and it's up...
Review Bases Loaded (Wii U eShop / NES)
America’s 8-bit pastime
Is there anything more American than hotdogs and apple pie? Yes. Yes there is. It’s baseball. The answer is baseball. It’s a game that has permeated the American culture and inserted itself firmly into so many of our lives. As such, it comes as no surprise that there are a plethora of video games available based on the...
Review Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (Wii U eShop / NES)
Blood relative
After the success of the original Castlevania title on the NES system, Konami decided to change things up quite a bit for Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Gone was the straight-ahead platforming action of the original, replaced with a much more rpg-flavored approach that placed more emphasis on item collection and exploration. While...
Review Bases Loaded (3DS eShop / NES)
Can this old timer still make contact?
Back in the mid-to-late 80s, when the NES was the dominant force in video games, cyber sporting wasn’t exactly the complex affair that it is now. With modern controllers having about a dozen buttons and joysticks to manage, it’s common for every one of those to be utilized for numerous functions —...
Review Pop'n TwinBee (Wii U eShop / SNES)
WinBee
It's not particularly well known outside Japan, but for a while TwinBee was one of Konami's main shoot 'em up series. A lot more cutesy than Gradius and the like, its colourful graphics and characters were its biggest appeal. A while back the original TwinBee was remade as a 3D Classic, but now here we have Pop'n Twinbee, one of the few...
Review Anonymous Notes Chapter 4 - From the Abyss (DSiWare)
Four-ev-urrr
The Anonymous Notes series is pretty meta, in a way. For games about eternally slaying monsters in dungeons, they never seem to stop emerging from the eShop themselves. If you’ve been following along with our reviews, it probably won’t surprise you to know that Anonymous Notes Chapter 4 - From the Abyss is very much like Chapter 3,
Review Mario Power Tennis (Wii U eShop / GBA)
Raising a racquet
Originally released on Game Boy Advance in 2005, Mario Power Tennis is unusual in that it takes the tennis simulation genre and embeds it into a role-playing game experience. It’s a combination that works surprisingly well, with the biggest success being a player progression system which allows you to level up your character and...
Review Adventure Island (Wii U eShop / NES)
Skate and die
Adventure Island started life as the SEGA-produced arcade title Wonder Boy, which itself was ported to several different home consoles and spawned a popular series of sequels with show-stealing box art. NES-owners missed out on the title, and would have to wait until Hudson Soft teamed up with original developer Escape to release a...
Review Mysterious Stars: The Singer (DSiWare)
Only connect...
Connect the dots, dot to dot, join the dots...whatever you called it growing up, the odds are pretty good you didn't think the game would be improved by a storyline. That's unfortunate, because that's the one thing Mysterious Stars: The Singer has to differentiate itself from an inexpensive book of similar puzzles. Well, no, that's...
Review My Aquarium: Seven Oceans (DSiWare)
Fishing for something more
Back in the heyday of the WiiWare service, an application titled My Aquarium was made available to all Wii owners through the digital distribution platform. It was so well received — as is evidenced by our review — that a second version was soon developed, appropriately and unsurprisingly titled My Aquarium 2. Now,...
Review ATV Quad Kings (DSiWare)
ATZzz...
Some forms of racing get a bad rap for looking too “simple” but, in reality, require a great deal of strategy and focus. It should never be as simple as holding down the accelerator until the finish line, which seems a lesson unfortunately lost on ATV Quad Kings. Quad Kings is a purely single-player run with three modes. The largest of...
Muddy goings
ATV Fever is at its best when machines hit the dirt and one gets into the zone of navigating a track’s turns and bumps. It’s a good way to distract oneself from the strange choices made in the organization of the game off the track. But first, the racing. ATV Fever has a pretty simple control setup. There are no tricks; no...
Review Pac-Land (Wii U eShop / NES)
Pac your bags, man
Never before released for the NES in the west, Namco has dropped its Pac-Man platformer Pac-Land onto the eShop to celebrate the announcement of Pac-Man in the new Super Smash Bros. games. A departure from the simple, addictive gameplay the Pac-Man series is known for, Pac-Land attempts to expand the scope and appeal of its iconic...
Review Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain? (Wii U eShop / DS)
Brain food
It seems like only yesterday that we got Game Boy Advance games on the Wii U Virtual Console, but now DS games have also joined the party. Curiously enough, Nintendo has chosen not to start off with one of their classic franchises, like Mario or Zelda, but has instead opted to go with one of their best-selling titles, the original Brain...
Review Pac-Man Collection (Wii U eShop / GBA)
A Pac-aged deal
Pac-Man is a creature of classic longevity. We kindly submit as evidence to this claim the fact we’re reviewing a 13-year-old game compilation for a character who was a spry 21 at the time. The question now is how well the four games of Pac-Man Collection have held up since its 2001 GBA release. Do Pac-dots even have expiration...
Review Soccer (Wii U eShop / NES)
A well timed blast from the past
Just in time for the World Cup this week, Intelligent Systems' Soccer arrives on Wii U Virtual Console – but all is not well. One of the early titles in Nintendo's "Sports Series" on NES, Soccer seems to garner boatloads of hate from players compared to companions like Golf and Ice Hockey. These detractors are not...
Review Super Dodge Ball (3DS eShop / NES)
Super Lag Ball
Many people are familiar with River City Ransom, the cult classic NES game, but what you might not know is that it's actually part of a series with many, many more titles. Of course, that can be hard to figure out when those that were localized all got completely unrelated names. Interestingly, while the series is mostly known in the...
Review Mega Man Xtreme 2 (3DS eShop / GBC)
An Xtreme Improvement
Mega Man Xtreme left us feeling a bit underwhelmed. While its intentions were certainly good, the execution was lacking and the experience felt like a far clunkier retread of levels we've already played before, rather than much of a game in its own right. However it's worth noting that the game was originally released for the...
Review The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Wii U eShop / GBA)
Capcom pulls a hit out of the hat
If it weren't for the fact that the Capcom logo appears each time you boot up The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell that it was in fact developed by a third-party company. That’s because this particular Legend of Zelda title – which originally released on the Game Boy...
Review Mr. Driller 2 (Wii U eShop / GBA)
You know the drill by now
The re-release of classic Game Boy Advance titles on the Wii U eShop marks the first opportunity many new players will have to take on a variety of really substantial experiences, short of retroactively buying the system itself. Many have made the transition to the TV screen look easy, but some are detrimentally anchored by...
Review Double Dragon II: The Revenge (3DS eShop / NES)
Now actually living up to its name
As one of the first scrolling beat 'em ups ever made, the original Double Dragon became a smash hit when it was released way back in 1987, and like most arcade games at the time quickly received a port to the NES. A single year later, Double Dragon II was released in arcades and, as was to be expected, it was also...
Review Mega Man V (3DS eShop / GB)
There's a Stardroid waiting in the sky
The handheld Mega Man games, up until now, have been remixed mashups of two NES titles each. Some of them hewed more or less closely to the source material, while others were emboldened to evolve the original ideas is exciting new directions. Mega Man V, however, throws the very concept of "source material"...
Review Street Fighter Alpha 2 (Wii U eShop / SNES)
Akuma Matata
Street Fighter II casts an indelibly long shadow over the rest of Capcom's fighting games from the 1990s. First launched in 1991, SFII in all its Super and Turbo varieties has become synonymous with the Street Fighter franchise, a cultural touchstone the series wasn't truly able to move past until the launch of the successful Street...
Review Klonoa: Empire of Dreams (Wii U eShop / GBA)
Wahoo!
Starting life on the PlayStation in 1997, at a time when Super Mario 64 had just brought the gaming world triple-jumping headlong into the era of 3D platforming, Namco's Klonoa series has always done things differently. Klonoa's first outing, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, was a pioneering foray into 2.5D, mixing polygonal backgrounds with...
Review Deep Sea Creatures (DSiWare)
Shallow waters
Collavier's Deep Sea Creatures, a slow-paced sim about deep sea fish and tank management, is not for everyone. While there is nothing particularly wrong with the game, its leisurely pace, lack of immediate challenge and poor instruction will likely turn off players looking for a more satisfying experience. For players genuinely...
Review Adventures of Lolo (Wii U eShop / NES)
YOLO, Lolo
HAL Laboratory's 1989 puzzler Adventures of Lolo falls into the same category as titles like Mach Rider and Clu Clu Land: C-list NES classics that are often overlooked today but provide an arcade-like fun experience for those searching out Nintendo's "deep cuts" from the '80s. Adventures of Lolo is probably best remembered these days as...
