speedyb

Hey, at least Super C is a great (albeit really hard) game. Nintendo could've given us Donkey Kong Jr. Math or something.

I'm playing Ninja Guy-DEN! HAI!!!!

MOVE IT MOVE IT MOVE IT MOVE IT!!!

On the one hand, it's great to get ALTTP finally. On the other hand, part of me is concerned that now it'll be months before we get another Nintendo title on the Wii U VC.

It's actually not a horrible game, but I still don't know what they were thinking by having the game freeze in place every five minutes to announce it's getting dark and vice versa. It's really vexing to be in a groove when, without warning, the dialog box appears (even worse, you can't skip it).

"And no, I don't believe they currently have no games available to them for release - Nintendo must just be spreading the releases out to avoid running out of available games too quickly before new ones become available to them."

If Nintendo actually has a lot to release but is choosing not to (which I doubt- so far few third party developers have released games for the Wii U VC), that's really foolish. They released more games each week for the Wii, and they never ran out even in ~5 years.

@Uberchu As awesome as SMAS is, they're not the original games. And besides, you can't play that on Wii U, can you?

@MAB Because on the Wii U, you'd get save states and controller config, plus you don't have to boot into Wii Mode and monitor the Wiimote's battery power.

But more importantly, Nintendo gave people's hopes up that this classic would likely be released by the end of 2013, and it didn't happen. At least, not in North America. That hurts consumer confidence.

It's like NOA is going out of its way to release everything BUT SMB3 and ALTTP.

And, another SMB game that America won't get. [/still waiting on SMB 3]

Obviously SMB3 could be played on Wii. That's not the point. Wii U -is- where I want to play the game. Save states, for one thing, but also it doesn't require booting into Wii Mode and dealing with the Wiimote's batteries.

Pathetic. Other companies care more about VC than Nintendo does.

@TruenoGT Not sure if serious...

In addition to his video game covers, Greg was also a prolific classic animation illustrator: http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/greg-martin-1956-2013/ . Good stuff! This kind of cover art is quickly becoming a lost art or perhaps not as fashionable, which is a shame.

Most of his cover art is excellent and eye-catching (particularly his Sonic ones), but the decision to take decidedly anime-style characters and turn them into... whatever Pocky & Rocky's American cover art was, was a bad one. Then again, that could've been a decision thrust upon him by some marketing group. I dunno, I wasn't there. At any rate, that was one of the few unappealing covers amidst a lot of quality ones.

RIP Greg.

@TreesenHauser Yeah I saw that. Must have just been an oversight.

If I'm going to be perfectly honest, I don't think this game has aged all that well. The controls are clunky and fickle, it's nearly impossible to hit an enemy without getting hit yourself (especially later in the game), it has quite a few bugs, and like many old Nintendo games, it's pretty short.

Also, it always bugged me about these games that weapons can be taken away from you at random. You'll have a chain in hand, you defeat all the current enemies on screen, and then the chain disappears. What the hell.

Double Dragon 2 improved upon the formula in every conceivable way.

I went on the store and Castlevania was $4.99 even though I bought it on Wii. Um, please fix it, Nintendo?

Before anyone gives their hopes up, I doubt North America will get ALTTP this week. We're getting Double Dragon instead: http://nintendoeverything.com/double-dragon-coming-soon-to-the-wii-u-virtual-console/

That review splash image is hilarious. Even the deer is saying, "Get me out of here!"

It's a better game than Rival Turf!, but that's not saying much.

Is it just me, or are some of these analysts HOPING Nintendo fails?

I'll definitely be buying Super Mario 3D World. I was hoping for Mario 3 to be released alongside it, but I can't complain too much since 3D World will keep me occupied.

Still, they better hold to their word to release SMB3 before the end of 2013!

Well guess what EA? I don't need your business either.

@brucelebnd And rightfully so! SMB3 is a classic platformer while Brawl Brothers is an average beat-em-up at best. And it would be foolish of Nintendo not to take advantage of the tie-in with 3D World.

Gah! No Mega Man X2? Laaaaaaame. I really hate it when Europe and America's VC releases are out of sync like this.

It's not a total loss; I'll be downloading the Sonic demo. But still, I was ready to play some more Mega Man. Now I'll have to wait a week. Grr.

Talk is cheap.

Rondo of Blood is overrated. There, I said it.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great game. But Super Castlevania IV is superior.

The issue isn't so much a lack of releases- remember with the original Wii when we had that six month gap of no releases at all? Compared to that, this is -nothing-. At least we've gotten new releases pretty much every week since the service began.

And the issue isn't really a lack of quality; there have been some good games released so far (Mega Man 2-4 & X, Super Mario 1 & 2 & World, Zelda, Final Fight 1-3, Street Fighter II, Kirby). It's just that most of October has been lackluster.

Rather, there are two problems: Lack of variety of systems, and re-releasing what we've already gotten before. When it comes to the former: The original VC launched with NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, and Turbo Grafx. The Wii U currently only has two of those. There -are- good games on other systems than NES and SNES, come on. And as for the latter, we got Earthbound and Golf but... that's about it for games we didn't get on the Wii. Kind of a letdown so far.

Prediction: Next week's Wii U VC games will be:
-Donkey Kong Jr. Math
-Ice Hockey

....Yay.

Terrible Wii U VC selection this week but Sonic Lost World could be good.

Wow, I can't believe you would rank the sequel, which improves on the lackluster port of the first game, lower. Let's look at all the positives here:

-Three characters, one of which is Maki. Nuff said.
-Two players. Again, the first SNES game only had one player mode.
-You aren't spit back to the beginning of a level after a continue (seriously, this was a HUGE annoyance in the first SNES game)
-Ear worm music (I completely disagree that it lacks catchy music- "Fret Street Beat-Beat" is one of my top Final Fight tracks, no joke)
-Hardly any slowdown that plagued the first game
-Haggar's spinning pile driver puts his pile driver from the first game to shame
-Globe trotting! The first game was just confined to Metro City. And I disagree that the environments aren't memorable- what about fighting on top of a train, or an airport runway?
-Moving up and down on the map. Yeah it's not a big deal today but it's still something the first game didn't have.

As for the difficulty... let's face it, the only reason the first SNES game was so difficult was because of two factors: The enemies were able to kill you in only a few hits (heck, some of the bosses had attacks that took HALF your life bar!), and you were sent to the beginning of a level every time you got a game over. If you took those two things away, it would be roughly the same difficulty as Final Fight 2. Anyway, if you want it to be more challenging, you can always adjust the difficulty.

I'll give you that the enemies and bosses aren't as memorable as the first game's. But I wouldn't rank this a paltry 5/10, not at all.

It's a gimped port. Go for Final Fight Double Impact instead.

@Tasuki Don't forget turning Poison & Roxy into full-fledged guys, changing "Oh my God!" to "Oh, my car!", missing a few frames of animation, missing the scene transitions (knocking down doors, etc.), and changing some of the boss names (Sodom = Katana, Damnd = Thrasher). Really, the only reason I'm buying the first game back is out of nostalgia, because it really does pale in comparison to the arcade, as well as the Sega CD and X68000 ports.

I go back and forth about which of the sequels I like better. Both are pretty solid games, though the second game "feels" more like the first Final Fight in terms of its game engine. Which of course is a huge plus.

@KeeperBvK Why not? Sega released tons of Virtual Console games for the original Wii.

Oh PLEASE bring those three Final Fight games to the North American VC this week too. (crosses fingers)

Just beat it in 40 minutes, no warping. That was fun as always. But SMB3 is unquestionably the superior game.

I've never quite gotten into the 3D GTA games. It was fun eluding the police for as long as possible, and I did like how the games felt like a big world, but I was never good at the missions so I never got very far in the games.

The best part of the games are the fake radio stations, especially VCPR. There was some hilarious stuff in there.

This game would've been a classic for me if not for three things:
1) If you get game over, you go all the way back to North Palace. If you got really far on the map, this is a huge pain, especially when, in order to get back to where you were, you have to endure tons of...
2) Random battles. Yeah, you can avoid them on the map, but that's easier said than done due to the limiting four-direction movement. And do they have to pop up every five seconds?
3) Stiff controls. This is most noticeable during the sword fighting, but as I said above, it also makes it difficult to avoid the random battle monsters on the map.

Otherwise, this game has its merits. You have the desire to explore more of the overworld that any game like this should have, and it seems a bit more forgiving than the first game when it come to health refills (and you actually have lives this time!). And despite the stiff controls, I do like the 2D platforming sections because it mixes up the gameplay from just being top down movement like the first game. Oh yeah, and the leveling up is kinda cool.

@APHughes Weird. Not sure what the problem was- Europe got it, Japan got it, why not us? It kind of vexes me when there's a discrepancy between the PAL and North America VC releases. Oh well, hopefully next Thursday...

@Cohort Yeah, in terms of music and visuals, the X68000 version of SF2CE probably comes the closest to the arcade. I can't comment on the gameplay because I haven't played it.

@SparkOfSpirit Aren't we all.

@Yanchamaru Man, I didn't care for the PC Engine port at all. The graphics, music, and sound quality are all inferior to the SNES and arcade versions.

As for SSF2 SNES, it's a decent port but it lacks some animation frames, has muffled voice bytes, the character sprites are smaller, doesn't have the proper "almost defeated" music (it just speeds up the regular stage theme), and it lacks the announcer voice for "Round 1 (etc.) Fight!"

As for Capcom bringing the arcade SSF2 Turbo to VC, don't hold your breath. After all, they barely took advantage of the Wii U VC Arcade (all their games were previously available for Capcom Classics Collection), what made you think they'd bother with their '90s games?

@unrandomsam Seriously? Super Castlevania IV is the best classic era Castlevania game. It has great controls, an amazing atmosphere, a varied soundtrack, and a gradually rising challenge.

Comon North American release.

Personally, my favorite music track in the game is Sky Diving.

@Donjwolf Bonkers is actually pretty good, and has a similar game engine to SNES Aladdin. I wouldn't mind a remake of it, but of course Darkwing Duck and Chip n Dale would be higher on my want list.

@Samurai_Goroh Only reason I can think of is a few cosmetic differences. Ordinarily regular SFII wouldn't be worth it except for completists, but if you can get it for free, why not?

While I share my disappointment with the larger amount of 30 fps games in this generation of games, it doesn't render Giana Sisters unplayable. Even on a HDTV.

Plok was one of the best games for the SNES, and I would love to see it come to the VC. (crosses fingers)

Nothing for me. I'm really disappointed that the Wii U VC started so strong, but very quickly dropped to only one title per week. At this rate, it's gonna take forever to get through the Wii VC library.

And I have a sinking feeling that a good chunk of the titles won't be re-released anyway.

@Sceptic If you paid $80 for a Mario game, you got ripped off.

@3Daniel Yeah, I'd be surprised if we saw Spawn again.