Virtual Console Reviews - Page 6

Put on your ninja suit and rescue the kiddies once again!

After treating retro gaming fans to the delights of Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III from the Mega Drive / Genesis, it is only right that SEGA bring us back to basics and let us get our grubby mitts on the original arcade game from 1987 where this glorious franchise began. Considered to be...

It's a trap!

Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap marks the end of the Master System trilogy. It’s a direct sequel to the wonderful Wonder Boy in Monster Land with the action starting out in the final lair of the last game. Unlike the original Wonder Boy, though, there are no loincloths in sight. Most Master System fans will consider this game to be the definitive game in the series with good..

Final Fight for two

The Mad Gear gang are back and out for revenge. This time they’ve kidnapped Guy’s fiancée Rena and her farther, so it falls to Haggar and friends to rescue them from the gang’s evil clutches. The original Final Fight was a classic side-scrolling brawler which received two paltry SNES ports, the first of which is already available on the Virtual Console service. What let..

The game that kicked off the most popular RPG series in existence.

Role-playing games began their climb to popularity during the early 80's on the many personal computers of the time period. These turn-based titles brought a more strategic element to gaming for those looking to use their minds more than their reflexes. Square obviously saw the...

Blast off and attack the evil Bydo Empire once again in 8-bit!

While we applaud Sega for bringing some of its most fondly remembered Master System games to the Virtual Console, we can’t help feeling that on this occasion it is a little bit pointless. After all, we’ve had a near arcade perfect port of R-Type on the TurboGrafx-16 since 2006, which humbles the Sega Master System version by..

Sega's classic fantasy side-scroller hits the Virtual Console in its original arcade form - but is it any good?

It would be fair to say that the expansion of the Wii Virtual Console to incorporate arcade releases has been extremely welcome, but it has resulted in one rather unusual side-effect: we’re seeing rampant duplication of titles already available. We’ve already had the likes of..

It's River City Ransom with a side order of Track & Field.

What do you get when you combine the River City Ransom theme with Track and Field-style gameplay? You get Crash 'n the Boys: Street Challenge. The game takes the street gang theme and creates some fitting Olympic-style events to go along with it. Sounds like a mouth-watering proposition, but sadly while the unique urban competitions have a..

A near-identical version of a game already available on the Virtual Console

Way back when the Wii came out in late 2006, one of the initial games available on Virtual Console was the NES version of Solomon's Key. Now that arcade games have been added to the service's catalogue, Tecmo has chosen to release the original arcade version. But is it really worth another 500 Wii Points? The gameplay in..

Lesser-known than its NES counterpart, but is it still worth picking up?

When you utter the name "Rygar", many people will instantly think of the NES game with the same name. In it, you played as the bare-chested warrior Rygar, making his way through both side-scrolling and overhead stages using his unique weapon, the Diskarmor, to take out hordes of enemies and defeat evil. Like most NES..

The Emperor has been expecting you

The third and final game in the Super Star Wars series promises more of the same great experience offered as its two forerunners, but did LucasArts give us a conclusion worthy of the series or just a clichéd third act with some kid-friendly Ewoks thrown in? Like the previous two outings, Super Return of the Jedi is a 2D platformer in which you take on Star..

Do or do not: there is no try.

Following up on the success of Super Star Wars, LucasArts released Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back (a.k.a. Super Empire Strikes Back) to an audience already hyped and waiting. As we discussed in our previous review, the story barely paid lip service to the movies, and this release is little better. Even so, the game was a success before it even hit store..

Does it soar like an eagle, or crash and burn into the ground?

Sometimes games deserve second chances. Let me tell you a story... A long time ago in a television studio far, far away, yours truly took part in an episode of Games World, Hewland's Gamesmaster clone shown on Sky 1. Everything was going great until the semi-final, when the skydiving...

The starting point for a venerable roleplaying legend

Pity the poor Master System. South America and Europe aside, it just could not compete with the unstoppable NES despite superior technology and some cracking games. Among those titles is what could be considered the machine's killer app - a huge game with a matching price tag, which not only tested the hardware but also the boundaries and..

Is the force strong with this one?

When Super Star Wars was released in 1992, it was an instant success. Offering old-school platforming but set in the Star Wars universe and culminating in the destruction of the Death Star, the video game format fit the movies like Harrison Ford fits the role of a roguish scoundrel. At the time, video game critics...

Joe Musashi returns in what is arguably the best ninja game ever

There’s a common assumption that a console’s best titles come towards the end of its lifespan. This is mainly because developers take time to get to grips with a new machine’s power and as a result you have to wait a couple of years before you see what each console is truly capable of. With this in mind, it’s rather ironic..

Older. Prettier. Just not wiser.

In every genre there is one game that stands as a pinnacle to which other games in that genre aspire. Final Fantasy VII, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Sexy Poker. In their respective genres, these games are the standard by which other games are judged. Tecmo Bowl for the NES is often cited as that standard for classic American rules football games. But..

Smash Table Tennis delivers a backhand to your wallet.

Sometimes, you just have to wonder who at Nintendo is in charge of the Virtual Console game selection. Perhaps it's one of those people who, when unable to decide what to do, throws a dart at a dartboard with possible "options" on it in order to come to a decision. That almost has to be the case here, because we have no idea why else..

Will Pulseman's quality shock you?

Ask yourself this - what games have Game Freak actually developed? Many people will probably only answer with "Pokémon," but the truth is, before Pokémon was even created, Game Freak was responsible for a handful of unique titles of their own. Pulseman was strangely only released in Japan originally. It was temporarily available on the "Sega..

Welcome to your doom!

There’s no two ways about it: Altered Beast is a terrible game. Even here, in a perfect conversion of the arcade original, it’s so horrendously stodgy and repetitive that it makes you wonder quite why anyone holds it in the slightest bit of regard. For those lucky few amongst you yet to engage in a little beast altering,...