Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The first Swing Golf Pangya (as Super Swing Golf was known in Japan) featured costumes that made your golfer look like Tecmo characters Kasumi or Ayane from the Dead or Alive series, or Ryu Hayabusa from both DOA and his own Ninja Gaiden series. For the sequel, Tecmo apparently wanted to make available the most Tecmo-y costume possible, and chose a recognizable uniform from a game that is not only well-known and well-regarded, but has Tecmo in the title. And, since it would be extraordinarily hard to swing a club dressed up like a Tecmo Stacker, they chose Tecmo Bowl.

We're looking forward to future Rygar and (especially) Mighty Bomb Jack costumes, ourselves. There'd be no question about whether or not we'd be interested in a game that let you play golf in red tights and a horned helmet.

Aeropause's Steven Munn has compiled a list of potential Virtual Console games for suckers. These are all games that have superior versions that could show up on the Virtual Console, or, in the case of Street Fighter II, superior versions that already have shown up. Even without taking the arcade versions into consideration, there's still one more SNES Street Fighter II that could come out, so can you ever feel confident about buying one?

We take issue with a couple of the items on the list. Munn recommends against buying Super Mario Bros., because buying it later as part of Super Mario All-Stars with Super Mario World will be cheaper. We disagree, only because we think the NES version is the definitive version of that game. Same with Ninja Gaiden Trilogy: should Tecmo ever decide to release the SNES compilation on the VC, it will be cheaper than buying all three NES games. However, those SNES remakes are a mess of barely-upgraded graphics and ruined music.

The article does raise a good point, however. Why should we be expected to pay over and over again for inferior versions of the same game, when the best versions exist and can easily be ported? We're thinking of arcade games, here.

Because this guy wants to play you for it in Tecmo Bowl. Now, we know what you're thinking. This has to be fake, right? Well, maybe it is, but we've contacted the man behind the web page and he seems to be the real deal. He says he will totally show up at your house (within the continental U.S.) with nothing more than a NES, Tecmo Bowl and a desire to strip you of your precious monies. And don't try to play him in that Virtual Console version of the game, either. it's only the real thing for this guy.

[Thanks, XGamerX!]

Admittedly, we should've noticed such when we played the game yesterday during our VC Monday Madness feature. Maybe its our old age, but we didn't really notice the player names being changed at all. Regardless, it happened and while the original Tecmo Bowl on the NES didn't have official NFL team names, they did have player names. This was the result of being endorsed by the NFL Player's Association.

Even though the names are changed, we still feel that the Tecmo Bowl available for download on the Virtual Console is well worth your precious monies. With this latest development, has your mind been changed if you haven't downloaded Tecmo Bowl yet? Will you not download it due to this latest development?

This week, we're given a trio of delicious Virtual Console titles to snack on. The Virtual Console has certainly been in the news lately, however the expected arrival of StarFox 64 and Actraiser just didn't happen. Instead, we're left with some titles that gamers may not be too excited about.

We, however, could not help but be excited as we have many a fond memory of playing Tecmo Bowl with relatives on Thanksgiving when we were younger. At the risk of boring you to death, we'll shut up about our past and just present the games:

• Tecmo Bowl - NES - 1-2 players - 500 Wii Points
• Sonic Spinball - Sega Genesis - 1-4 players - 800 Wii Points
• Double Dungeons - TurboGrafx16 - 1-2 players - 600 Wii Points

So, what were you guys expecting to hit the VC this week? Disappointed from this week's offerings? As always, be sure to come back later for our verdict on these Virtual Console titles.

[Via press release]