Jungle fun in Secret Command

Not much to get excited about this time - Other than Secret Command, today's picks are fairly weak.

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars was already released in North America a while ago. It's the second game in the Alex Kidd series and basically the beginning of the end for Sega's original mascot. It ditches most of the unique games from the original game and is basically just a very straight-forward platformer - No more breaking blocks, riding vehicles or having rock, paper, scissors matches. If you need to be convinced that saving your Nintendo Points is the best option just read our review.

Secret Command might be a much smarter choice to invest some points into. You might know this game under one of two different names - It was called Ashura in Japan, and was the licensed Rambo: First Blood Part II in North America. It's a bit like MERCS and Ninja Commando - You run through vertical stages blowing up everything in your path while rescuing hostages. There's not much to it, but it's good for some mindless fun, and can be played with 2 players.

Today also brings us the first European DSiWare update since the DSi was released - Too bad it's not a good one! The only new game up for offer is Mixed Messages, which North America got earlier this week as well. It's a bit like Broken Telephone, the game you probably played as a kid, where you relay a message by whispering to each other, gradually turning it into something completely different. In this game though there's an extra artistic element - You start with a message, but you'll have to draw an accompanying picture. The next person writes down the sentence he thinks it's based on, the person after that draws another picture, and so on. It's incredibly simple, and as some people have already noted, you can basically play this game in Pictochat, which is on everybody's DS(i) for free - We say save your Nintendo Points!

That's actually the last VC update this month - The next one's on the 1st of May. Hope for a Hanabi Festival, because there was one in May last year as well!