Wii Virtual Console Reviews
Review Detana!! Twinbee (TG-16)
It's the popular vertical-scrolling shooter renowned for its cute and comical world.
The Twinbee series of shooters hasn't seen a lot of action outside of Japan, so it should come as no surprise that this PC Engine version of Detana!! Twinbee was never released outside of Japan and marks yet another import release for Hudson on the Wii Virtual...
Bomberman has arrived to restore peace on the planet
Bomberman has seen a release on just about every console out there over the years, and while you'll definitely get contrasting opinions on which version of the game is the best, it's pretty indisputable that Bomberman '94 is one of them. Bomberman '94 was never released outside of Japan for some...
Review Super Punch-Out!! (Wii Virtual Console / Super Nintendo)
Return of the Mac
Punch-Out!! on the NES has plenty of fans. For some reason, though, a lot of them seem to be completely unaware that there’s a second game in the series available on home consoles – this is rather strange, because Super Punch-Out!! is easily as good, if not better than the NES original. The main objective of the game is still...
Review Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars (SMS)
Help Alex Kidd in a race against time
Before Sonic came along and propelled them into the big time, the world identified a big eared lad by the name of Alex Kidd as Sega’s answer to Mario. Alex Kidd in Miracle World was a worthy alternative to Super Mario Bros in the mid 80s and when bundled with the Sega Master System in Europe it helped shift...
Review Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair (MD)
The once quiet town of Xenobia is under attack by fierce, gruesome monsters and no one can stop them!
Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair might seem incredibly familiar to Virtual Console addicts because the game has technically already been released on Nintendo’s download service – in the guise of Monster Lair on the TG-16! The complexities of the...
Review Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen (SNES)
You must succeed in ousting the evil usurpers - your fate, and that of the entire population, depends on it.
The Ogre Battle series has long been a favorite among hardcore strategy fans and it won't take you long to see why that is once you begin playing any of them. This Super Nintendo release of Ogre Battle has become quite a coveted game...
This is the winter portion of the world's foremost amateur sports competition, matching skills against the top athletes from one hundred countries.
It was inevitable that after two batches of events from the summer side of the Olympic festival that the third entry in the Games series would concentrate on the winter side instead. Offering seven...
Review Life Force (Wii Virtual Console / NES)
Use the force!
For those not in the know, Life Force started out life known as Salamander in Japan and was renamed for Western audiences. The Salamander series is a spin off to Konami’s famous Gradius franchise of shooters; the main differences in Salamander are the introduction of a simultaneous 2 player mode, vertically scrolling stages in...
Review Wolf of the Battlefield: MERCS (MD)
Join a group of professional mercenaries to undergo secret missions, battling through enemy lines to go where no ordinary soldier would dare to go.
Once upon a time, back before Capcom officially started supporting the Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega acquired licence to reprogram various arcade classics produced by the developer. Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts,...
ClayFighter is a 2D fighting game in which the characters, as the name suggests, are made completely out of clay.
When Clayfighter was first released on the 16-bit consoles in 1993, claymation had never before been used in video gaming. While television shows and motion pictures had experimented with the technology to varying degrees of success, it...
Play as Sonic or Tails
For those gamers in 1993 who were still unfortunate enough to not have not upgraded to the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis this third 8-bit Sonic adventure might hold some memories. It is unlikely that many will remember this Master System swansong however. That nasty piece of work, Dr. Robotnik is up to no good again and has...
Review Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Wii Virtual Console / Master System)
Ale or mead?
Sega’s follow-up to the legendary Wonder Boy on the Master System took our hero Tom-Tom out of his former prehistoric setting into a medieval fantasy world. This game started out life as an arcade machine and also got ports to home computers and the Japanese PC Engine (TG-16) under the name of Bikkuriman World. Wonder Boy II really...
Review MUSHA (Virtual Console / Sega Mega Drive)
We've got much love for MUSHA!
Mention the name Compile to any serious shooter fanatic and you’re likely to be faced with a barrage of nostalgic ranting. The now defunct company was responsible for some of the finest blasters the video game industry has seen, including Super Aleste (also known as Space Megaforce), Gunhed and Zanac. Surprisingly,...
Review Kirby's Dream Land 3 (Wii Virtual Console / Super Nintendo)
Kirby for beginners
Kirby's Dream Land 3 obviously had a lot to live up to - It was released not long after the amazing Kirby Super Star (Kirby's Fun Pak in Europe), which is still regarded as the greatest Kirby game ever. The game returns to the gameplay from the second Dream Land game for Game Boy - It's got rather standard Kirby platforming, but...
Review Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II (NES)
Revenge of Zoda
While the original StarTropics was a great game, it did have some nagging problems. In 1994, after the SNES was already out for 3 years in the US, Nintendo saw fit to finally make a sequel to one of the (sadly) most underrated games on the NES. But they didn't make it for the SNES - They actually made it for the NES as well! In...
Review Enduro Racer (Virtual Console / Master System)
Enduro Racer takes you on an intense set of adrenaline-designed courses
Enduro Racer started out life as an arcade machine by Sega; it was a normal racing game like its better known stable mates Hang-On and Out Run. The idea was to ride your dirt bike through the rocky roads pulling wheelies over jumps. It was quite a popular game at the time and...
Review Impossible Mission II (Virtual Console / Commodore 64)
Elvin Atombender is up to his old tricks again!
As soon as Impossible Mission II loads up, the improvements are immediate and obvious. The producers clearly went to work on almost every aspect of the original game, polishing, adding and fixing until this sequel was the result. There are no great changes to the concept; players familiar with the...
Review Last Ninja 3 (Virtual Console / Commodore 64)
Epic fail...
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that we have revised this review in light of the game-breaking bug which prevents the player from progressing beyond level one in the game. We raised this with Commodore Gaming at the time of release and was assured that a patch would be made available ASAP. As this patch is still not available we did...
Review Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Virtual Console / Master System)
Sonic is back for a second 8-bit outing
In 1992 if you weren’t lucky enough to have upgraded to a Sega Mega Drive / Genesis system and still had a humble Master System you might have picked this up. Interestingly the Master System version was released slightly earlier than its 16-bit counterpart so no one can accuse this of being a soulless...
Review Metal Slug 2 (Virtual Console / Neo Geo)
More run and gun fun
Not many games at the time could go toe-to-toe with Konami's Contra series quite like the Metal Slug titles. Not only did they feature the same run-n-gun arcade action of Contra, but they also took things to new levels of intensity and sported some of the largest and most creative boss encounters ever seen in a game of their...
Review Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure (Virtual Console / Sega Mega Drive)
While investigating Professor Stinkbaum's lab, Boogerman stumbles upon a strange machine that opens a portal to another dimension.
Almost everybody knows Earthworm Jim - But Boogerman, which was created inbetween the first two Jim games, is much less familiar. This is a bit unjust, as it's every bit as quirky and fun as the aforementioned series...
Review Forgotten Worlds (Virtual Console / Sega Mega Drive)
You will never forget this one!
Forgotten Worlds was an interesting shoot-em-up arcade game back in the days. Not only was it developed by Capcom, it featured 2 player simultaneous play and a innovative control system were you rotated a second joystick on a 360 degree axis to determine what direction you wanted to fire in. On the shiny new CPS-1...
Review Space Invaders: The Original Game (Virtual Console / Super Nintendo)
Experience one of gaming's iconic franchises
In 1978 Space Invaders was the talk of the town, people were lining up in their droves to part with pocket change for a turn on this new groundbreaking videogame from Taito. Of course as videogame technology moved on this humble game was surpassed by many cocky new contenders to the shoot-em-up throne,...
Review Phantasy Star IV (Virtual Console / Sega Mega Drive)
In the year AW 2284, planet Motavia is once again plagued by strange biocreatures.
After two successful Phantasy Star releases, Sega decided to change things up a bit for their third release in the series Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom. The game featured more of a medieval look to it instead of the science fiction theme that had been such an...
Review Mega Man 3 (Wii Virtual Console / NES)
Good to be three
After two successful Mega Man releases on NES, Capcom decided to upgrade the series with a few new twists for Mega Man 3, adding a little more variety to an already amazing series. With eight brand new Robot Masters for players to take on, the game would prove to be a huge success and went on to become a fan favourite among gamers...
Review Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (Wii Virtual Console / NES)
Drac's back!
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 Devil World (Wii Virtual Console / NES)
A devilish Pac-Man clone from Miyamoto
Devil World is one of extremely few Nintendo titles that was released in Europe, but not the US. Most likely this was due to Nintendo of America's strict rule not to feature any "religious" factors in games, and seeing as the game includes a devil, that just wouldn't slide with them. It's actually a pretty fun...
Review Mayhem in Monsterland (Virtual Console / Commodore 64)
Mayhem is an unhappy dinosaur, as Monsterland is an unhappy place, due to an apprentice magic dinosaur who decided to practice some of his master's spells, after drinking too much cactus juice.
The year 1993 saw the last of the full-price commercial games for the C64 hit the shelves as the market for 8-bit fare was finally grinding to a halt. In...
Review Space Harrier (Virtual Console / Master System)
Blow your mind in a fantasy zone
When Sega released the Master System back in the ‘80s the company was facing an uphill struggle against Nintendo’s NES. The NES had the software support and thanks to Nintendo’s nefarious practice of making developers agree to keep their titles exclusive, it left Sega with little in the way of third party...
Review Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition (Virtual Console / Sega Mega Drive)
Street Fighting SEGA style.
Back when Street Fighter II-mania was gripping the global gaming community, Capcom’s decision to release the first home port of the game on Nintendo’s SNES spoke volumes. This move showed that the company was backing Nintendo in the 16-bit war (up to this point all of Capcom’s Megadrive/Genesis games had actually...
