Check you next week!

Lets start with the TG16 entry, Air Zonk is a sequel of sorts to the Bonk series of games. This title brings us an EXTREME version of the lovable Bonk character named, you guessed it, Zonk. This new mascot was a sign of the times, and probably a direct result of the popularity of the edgier Sonic character in relation to Mario. Anyways, Air Zonk is a side scrolling shooter this go around, straying away from the platforming of the earlier titles. It’s a decent game to check out, if only to see how mascots have changed through time as marketing took a stronger hold in the games industry.

For our NES releases this week we have Mach Rider and Yoshi. Mach Rider is a very forgettable early motorcycle racing game, and Yoshi is a puzzle game featuring the lovable dino mascot that shares the name of the game. I have fond memories of playing Yoshi way back when it was released and will probably check it out for nostalgia’s sake, but this is far from a great puzzle game

So this week Nintendo brought us a collection of more obscure titles, I’m hoping that they have some triple A titles for us coming down the pipe! I guess I’ve been spoiles with the great releases of the past couple of weeks!

Enjoy your week, we’ll talk again next Monday.

Gunstar 9 has been taken under the rule of the sinister Colonel Red, and it’s up to the Gunstar twins to take back what is theirs, using whatever means necessary—firepower usually, lots and lots of firepower. Through the 7 stages that you come up against, you will often be faced with multiple bosses, what seems like a million enemies, and a few quirky puzzles thrown in for good measure. Although the game is essentially quite short the cooperative 2 player option, and over a dozen weapon customizations keeps the experience alive for quite a while.

Although Gunstar Heroes is nearing it’s 14 year milestone, the visuals still hold up remarkably well. From the colorful backgrounds, to the detailed sprites, it’s almost as fun to look at is it is to play! Straying away from the generic level design of many of the other side-scrolling action games of the era, Gunstar Heroes has you battling foes in all sorts of obscure locations, keeping things fresh and interesting. Even with so much happening on screen, your character moves quickly and fluently, being able to shoot his bizarre weapons nearly 360 degrees.

Even though Gunstar Heroes has a very limited number of stages, each one is long, and always has you trying to go in with new weapons each time around, making it dangerously addictive, especially since it can be brutally hard, making for a scary mixture for those around you. Gunstar Heroes has held up well over the years, and with the 800 point price tag, it’s crazy to pass it up, as it is hands down one of the best games in the ever expanding library of the Virtual Console.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Throughout the levels there are some standard baddies such as skeletons, wolves, and some other pretty generic looking monsters.  To defeat the bad guys, you have to give them a select amount of punches or kicks, your only attack moves at first.  The enemies aren’t really that intelligent and for the most part charge right at you.  However, the game still is quite a challenge.

After you take down a few enemies, some of them drop what I call ’soul orbs’ - it’s practical enough of a name, seeing as how it’s never explained in the game.  Each time you get a soul orb your character gets more buff, and grows in size.  When powering up the first two times, you get to enjoy watching the stimulating animation of watching your character’s muscles grow and his shirt ripping off.  The first two power-ups don’t do much to help you as far as game play goes.

Once you get the third power-up, get ready for a change of pace, this is when your character gets altered into a beast.  There are various types of animals and creatures you can morph in to, but I won’t ruin that for you because it is the best part of the game.  As a beast the game becomes much easier, quick, and far more fun.

After easily destroying all the easy bad guys as the beast, you will get to the boss stage.  The bosses may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but are pretty easy to beat once you get the pattern or know how to beat it. The boss on the second stage is a bit broken, if you know how to beat it you can kill it in, literally, about two seconds.  Thankfully, that’s the only boss in the game I encountered like that.

Altered Beast is pretty stale alone, but with a friend the game, it shines a lot brighter. The game also becomes much easier when playing co-op, which is a good thing because the game is pretty hard over all.

All in all, Altered Beast is a very average game, but when there are some classic games on the VC for even cheaper, and better beam-ups that are out already, and surely more to come, it makes this eight dollar game one hard game to recommend.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

To start this, I need to say this is not Super Mario Bros, this game’s way more popular cousin. The reason why? There is almost nothing super about this game.

Mario Bros. premise is simple, you are a plumber named Mario and you have to “clean up” the sewers. These sewers are infested with monstrous turtles, crabs, and even flies! Who else are to clean them up but the heroic Mario and his brother Luigi?

The way you advance through Mario Bros is this: Every stage there a certain amount of monsters to kill. To kill a monster you jump on it, or hitting its underside with a block, flipping it over; jumping to the platform its on, and running into it will kill it instantly. Every once in a while you get a bonus stage where you collect a huge amount of coins! WOW!

Since this is text, you likely could not tell how incredibly fake my enthusiasm for Mario Bros is; it’s not fun. The idea, while solid in concept has way too many problems to save itself. The worst feature? The jump feels really, really dated. I had trouble getting the hang of it!

The gameplay it is so repetitive that it’s almost laughable. The difficulty is also pretty odd. It is easy to take out every enemy once you learn there pattern. However in some levels random fire balls appear and was my cause of death.

However despite how bad playing alone is, you can forgive Mario Bros for its faults in Multiplayer. Multiplayer has an strange co-op/competition element to it. This makes for some really fun moments. From watching your friend struggle with the jumping mechanics, to accidentally causing his/her death causing all of your progress to be ruined, you’re bound to have fun a few times with it.

In conclusion Mario Bros does provide a few fun moments, but over all the game is ruined by its poor design. This is caused in part by the age of the product making the game show its old age… From its ugly graphics, to high scores being the main reason to play, to poor controls, it’s got it all. All in all its hard to recommend this game over other titles in the VC line-up but if you want to give this game a try, it better be for the multiplayer, go ahead.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

As Ryu Hayabusa, you will traverse the city and other locales in your ninja garbs, and head on to fight evil in this 2D sidescroller full of cheap enemies (Who really do nothing but get in your way to knock you off cliffs) and cheaper level design. However, while you WILL die over and over again, leading to guaranteed anger and mass frustration, it won’t happen of ill will. Ninja Gaiden controls so well for a(n) NES game, also using deep mechanics, despite using two buttons. Item pickups will help you out, but inevitably won’t save you. The first level is deceptive, leading you to believe you are a ninja master, and it really feels like it as you slash and shiruken your enemies left and right. Ryu’s ninja acrobatics and wall clinging makes you really feel like you’re accomplishing something, and you really have to haul ass through a level to get it done before the time runs out, making you feel that much more cool as you tear through the environment and your enemies.

From a graphical standpoint, Ninja Gaiden clearly shows its age, but the cinemas, along with their awesomely hilarious dialogue really stand the test of time. Cool art in the movies and melodrama make for a strangely out of place story that just doesn’t matter because you’re having too much fun killing football player/soldiers with machine guns. Nothing in this game adds up, but it doesn’t matter. It’s an insane amount of fun, and equally as difficult. If anyone ever tells you that video games do not lead to violence, point them in this direction - they’ll be flipping tables in no time, only to turn back around and start playing again.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Kirby’s Adventure is the first console game in the now famous Kirby franchise. The premise is built behind you playing as a pink puff ball, Kirby with an array of powers. The most obvious and well known power is the copy ability, which
allows you to copy an enemy’s power and duplicate it. Some of the powers include turning into a fireball, wielding a sword, and even becoming a UFO! All of them are enjoyable and built in to the level as a gameplay mechanic (ie: Find the fire shooting ability, and keep an eye out for the fuse of a near buy cannon for some explosive fun!)

However the copy ability is not his only ability. Kirby also has the ability to fly for a limited amount of time, which is crucial to many platforming elements in the game, and over all make the game more enjoyable.

Now on to the gameplay: Kirby’s Adventure is a fun light hearted 2D platformer which is broken up into worlds and then into segregated levels. In every world, there are various stages, mini-games, and at the end a boss fight.The levels are quite simple, you have to get to the door with a star over the top of it without losing all of your health. It may sound easy, but monsters with various abilities will cross your path, but who cares when you can copy their ability to fight against them?! Along the way in some levels are the aforementioned minigames, puzzles, and many hidden places.

The graphics are above average for NES, but the colors are not as bright as an SNES game would be for obvious reasons, however everything is crisp and clear, no major eye sores like in some of the other NES games available on the Virtual Console.

As far as NES games go, the game does not feel dated at all, which is a problem I find with most NES VC games. The difficulty is average, but back in the day it would be considered rather easy. I did die a few times, and the last boss game me a hard time, but it was nothing frustrating, because when you continue, you leave off where you last
played.

To conclude with overall impression of this game, I simply love it. It suited what I needed in a VC game: A game I can jump in to any time and have fun with it. It is among the best platformers of all time, and I would even rank it up with the icons of the genre, Mario and Sonic. It is an underrated gem, a gem worth 5 dollars ten times over.

An instant buy for the VC, and so far the game I have been most impressed with.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

First off, the levels are massive. Playing this game again reminded me how small most maps are in many NEW games these days, and it’s really surprising to see how high some of the maps go, as well as the size of the perimeter. Ack, Vertigo! The object of the game is to search all of these different world, looking for Bowser, and collecting Stars along the way. Stars unlock doors to new worlds, and with a total of 100 you’ll have plenty to do. I’ve completed this game a few times, and you don’t need all 100 to totally flip it, but it’s quite an accomplishment if you can manage to successfully complete all of the side missions, which are really fun as well. It’s a load of fun to race penguins down ice slides, blast yourself above the clouds in hope of some red coins, and fighting Bowser multiple times.

Over time, of course the visuals have toned down - but the minimal polygons still reflect well with the color scheme - the game is so colorful and vibrant that the visuals aren’t a problem by any stretch of the imagination. Nintendo really knew what they were doing at the time, and re-releasing this (again) was a smart move. It’s great to have in HD, and it’s just awesome to play it on the Gamecube controller, and more so the ultra comfortable Virtual Console Controller. The controls are very tight, and making Mario go where he should is as easy as pie. And pie is really easy. And delicious.

Nintendo’s legendary platformer is re-reborn on the Wii Virtual Console, and it’s one of the best titles available. There should be no doubt in any humans mind whether or not they should buy this. Buy it. If you spend 1000 points on anything, ever, make it this. It’s a huge, vibrant, and really energetic game that everyone should experience. It’s a definite revolution in gaming and it just kicks ass going back to play it again. And again… and again.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Contra III has a pretty generic “Uh oh, Aliens!” storyline that pans out over a whopping six, count ‘em SIX levels. The decent thing about the short length though, is Contra is tough. It’s always been a difficult game, and it just makes for the fun - even the loads of trial and error becomes a bit of fun, especially when you’re playing coop. I love switching up both of my weapons on the fly - it’s great for getting out of a lot of sticky situations, and it’s really handy to have that backup gun in a tight squeeze (ie: ANY BOSS FIGHT).

Weapon pickups galore, co-op kick ass explosiveness (which is EVERYWHERE and all the time), and cool visuals give the action packed classic a little flair (and looks even nicer in HD!). It’s a tad under 10 bucks, and is worth every penny - while it may not be the best entry in the series, it’s the best one you can pick up on Virtual Console right now, and it’s truly a great game, with “Classic” written all over it. Fans of old school Konami games will especially dig the title, even more so if they’ve never spent any time with it.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

At this point, the game is fun for a bit. It’s really cool to fight hordes of ninjas, and a lot of cool one-hit-kills pop up every now and then, but the highlight of the game is Kage’s ‘Crouching Tiger’ powers - jumping on top of 50 foot trees baby! Climbing trees and fighting enemies makes for a super cheap tactic, as they stop, and don’t even try to attack you. At all. The novelty wears off after a mere couple of plays. The game is short, not worth it, and just… bad. I wrote this review twice because my first review gave it four stars. I played it again and re-wrote it. I didn’t like accepting that this was one of the worst games ever, but it’s pure fact. I paid for it - Nintendo got the money for it. Don’t give them more.Rating: 1 out of 5 stars