Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Rare made a name for themselves on the NES with completely awesome games like Solar Jetman, Cobra Triangle, and Battletoads, as well as unfortunate stuff like Beetlejuice and Taboo: the Sixth Sense. But of their numerous NES games, perhaps the best is a simple action-platformer about a guy in thick armor who kicks open treasure chests in order to bribe knights.

Wizards & Warriors follows Kuros, a knight of the derivatively-named kingdom of Elrond, as he rescues a series of identical maidens (with names like "Grizelda") strung up in caves. On the way, he fights giant bats, ghosts, stationary birds, animate rocks, and various other nuisances. His journey takes him from a forest, to a cave, to another cave, to a few more caves, to a cave inside a tree, to a (cavernous) castle.

We weren't expecting much from Emergency Mayhem, a Crazy Taxi-styled emergency services title peppered with minigames, but these video previews for the police car and ambulance modes look really fun! For a game with such a distressing past -- having been announced and canceled for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 in 2004, exchanging publishers and developers several times since -- we wouldn't have been surprised if this turned out to be a wreck.

Though reviews haven't been kind to Emergency Mayhem (the game hits stores this week), we think the minigames look like a good break from all the high-speed chases and siren-whining. You can defuse bombs, administer CPR, and even help someone cough out a fly. According to these two clips, you can also get some sort of bonus by running over criminals and patients. When that gets old, you can add spice to your emergency duties by crashing into crowds of pedestrians without consequence.

One of our readers, who must be a HUGE Shadowman fan, recently sent an email to Valiant Entertainment, the folks who own the rights to the N64 installment of the game, asking if the game would grace the Virtual Console. Upon sending the email, he received a surprising response:

"Thank you for your interest. Yes, we have been speaking with Nintendo regarding Shadowman for the Virtual Console. Although, they have a ton of games to review and select from, Shadowman is on their radar."

So they've been speaking to Nintendo? Great, we guess, as the more game to grace the Virtual Console the better. We cannot comment on whether we're excited or not, never having played the game ourselves. How many of you have played the game and would like to see it on the Virtual Console?

[Thanks Foetoid!]