Virtual Console Reviews - Page 8

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 different events, Winter Games features the ubiquitous..

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 series of shooters, the main differences in Salamander are the introduction of a simultaneous 2 player mode, vertically scrolling stages in addition to the usual horizontal scrolling ones and a..

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, Strider and Forgotten Worlds were all brought to the..

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 wasn't until the guys at Interplay decided to make..

Play as Sonic or Tails in Sonic Chaos, which was originally made for the Sega Master System.

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...

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...

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, MUSHA (which stands for 'Metallic Uniframe Super..

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...

Take on the role of Mike Jones, intrepid hero of the StarTropics universe.

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!..

Enduro Racer takes you on an intense set of adrenaline-designed courses containing diverse and rough terrain that will test your skills and reaction time.

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...

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 the honourable thing and revised the review to..

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 first game will be immediately familiar with the..

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...

Wipe out General Morden's newly remobilised Rebellion Army.

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 type. After a..

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. Boogerman stars Snotty Ragsdale, a nosy millionaire..

Experience one of gaming's iconic franchises in this perfect rendition of the arcade classic!

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...

Forgotten Worlds is a side-scrolling shooter, one of the first games to incorporate 360 degree aiming and shooting, a revolutionary feature at the time.

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..

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 avid part of the previous two releases and also..

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...