Another Taito classic gets the remake treatment!

A large part of today's update isn't very surprising - Three of the games are published by Hudson Soft and were already announced for release earlier this week. The two unannounced releases are quite nice surprises though!

On WiiWare, we've gotten Puzzle Bobble Plus!, the third Bubble Bobble series WiiWare remake by Taito. Like Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands before it, it seems to be a remake of the original game with a handful of extra features. The gameplay is thus completely unchanged, you still need to shoot bubbles into other bubbles of the same colour to create a chain and make them disappear. It's always been one of the most addictive Taito games, so we suspect that this will be worth the 800 Wii Points price - Sean certainly seemed to like it.

Water Warfare is the game which has already been dubbed a "First-Person Soaker" - Unlike pretty much every other FPS game, you don't kill anyone, instead, you shoot water at their T-shirts until they pass out from being too wet! It's got a variety of other modes which are common in other FPS games as well, such as capture the flag, but of course, they've been slightly changed to fit the non-violent theme better. If you were disappointed with Onslaught's lack of a deathmatch mode you'll probably like this, and for 800 Wii Points it's cheaper too.

On the VC side of things, today's surprise game is the arcade version of Altered Beast, another classic Sega game which was ported to home consoles but is ultimately considered to be far superior in its original form. It is of course still Altered Beast, though - So it's still pretty much nothing but mindlessly punching and kicking your way from the left side of a stage to the right side. The game costs 800 Wii Points in Japan, but Mega Drive games cost 600 on average there, so there's no direct competition between the arcade and Mega Drive versions - Because they're 800 each in Europe, Sega has decided to be sneaky and has upped the price, so you'll have to pay 900 points for it instead!

SimEarth: The Living Planet is another in Maxis's line of simulation games, which also includes SimCity and The Sims. This Turbografx-CD version is pretty much the best version possible for VC, so no complaints there, but the game itself will likely only appeal to the hardest of hardcore simulation game players - There's an absolute ton of depth and different things to do, so casual players definitely might want to stay away! Read our review to see if it's up your alley if you're daring enough!

The solitary DSiWare release this week is Sudoku 50! For Beginners, which is quite simply put a collection of 50 Sudoku puzzles. Hudson Soft already released Sudoku 150! For Challengers two weeks ago, so the worth of 50 might not be as good - It's 200 DSi Points, while 150 costs 500, so you're getting a better deal if you get that! Plus, really, who doesn't know how to play Sudoku?

We'll have reviews for Puzzle Bobble Plus!, Water Warfare, Altered Beast and Sudoku 50! up soon, but rest assured that each of them will be a decent to great choice if you like their respective genres.

Thankfully, this means that Nintendo of Europe has broken their pattern of 1 VC game every 2 weeks almost as soon as it started - Thank the stars!