Nintendo Wii Fanboy

This time, the focus is on the games that made the system so awesome. And also Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. Categorized by, among other criteria, storage format and by whether each is an arcade port or an original game, this list of "Games that Defined the Turbografx-16" covers a lot of the best games for the system. There's quite a bit of stuff on the list, like Alien Crush and Blazing Lazers, for you to go buy on the VC now, and other stuff like Devil's Crush that will ensure that the VC will be providing us with rich, flavorful content for quite some time.

The Virtual Console has made shooting games widely available for the first time in years. We like shooters, despite being categorically awful at them, so we're happy about this. But has the genre been disproportionately represented on the VC? There are so many, versus very few fighting games, and no role-playing games.

Are you guys buying shooters? Are you happy with the selection? Are you all zap zap zap and pew pew pew at the bad spaceships?

Give us a second here -- we're going to gush for a moment over Super Mario Bros. 2, and burn with jealousy that we're not in Europe today. We would trade our weekend plans for a little face time with this classic, but it looks like we'll have to wait. Some nice choices available today on the Virtual Console -- let us know what sounds good to you!

Today on the Virtual Console:

• Blazing Lazers -- TurboGrafx -- 600 Wii points
• Mach Rider -- NES -- 500 Wii points
• Super Mario Bros. 2 -- NES -- 500 Wii points

Here's a little pre-Monday Virtual Console Madness, courtesy of Hudson. Get your Wii Points ready, because our personal favorite shmup ever is going to be available for download next week in the US.

Blazing Lazers (Gunhed in Japan) is a vertical shooter for the Turbografx-16 that differs from other vertical shooters in one important way: really fun weapons. There are four categories of weapons, each of which can be upgraded to five different levels. Our favorite is the enemy-seeking green lightning beam thing. It's pretty.

[Via GoNintendo]

Have we mentioned recently how much we love Hudson? Not only did they make tons and tons of incredible games for the Turbografx-16 (and lots of other systems!), but they're better than anyone else about actually releasing their games on the Virtual Console. And now we have news that some of the best Turbografx-16 games are coming to the US in May! Also some stuff for Nintendo consoles in Japan, but we'll get to that.

It finally happened. A game we profiled in Virtually Overlooked has been officially announced for the Virtual Console. Even though IREM's Ninja Spirit was one of the best and most popular TG16 games, we're going to go ahead and declare this as a victory.

As if that weren't exciting enough, Hudson announced plans to release a personal favorite, Blazing Lazers, as well as Ordyne (excellent, adorable shmup) and World Sports Competition (we haven't played it, but we'll assume it's great because we're in a good mood).

Nintendo of Japan also has some fantastic stuff planned, including Super Mario Bros. 2 and F-Zero X, either of which would no doubt be the headline if anyone else were writing this. That's Super Mario Bros. 2, the Japanese version, released here as Lost Levels. The really, really hard one, as opposed to the silly one about throwing vegetables.