Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The appeal of the Virtual Console is obvious: nostalgia. The VC is jam-packed with memories from yesteryear, spilling over with wonderful software that defined our childhoods. But it isn't all lollipops and puppy dogs. Nostalgia can also be very misleading, and some of those packets of data you download from Nintendo's service can end up souring childhood memories.

Personally speaking -- and this will probably sound like heresy in some quarters, so brace yourselves -- I was left disappointed by Mega Man 2, a game I adored as an eleven-year-old, but one that now seems slightly dated, with its repeated leaps of faith and enemies that like to spawn directly beneath you. On the other hand, a game such as Super Mario Bros. 3 still feels like a breath of fresh air, almost two decades after it was released.

Thinking about this some more, we have three questions for you. One: which Virtual Console games don't hold the same magic for you as they once did? Two: have any titles aged better than you suspected they would? And three: have you ever held off from downloading a certain game, concerned that it may ruin one of those precious childhood memories?

We were already totally pumped about getting Cho Aniki on the European and Aussie Virtual Consoles, but our faces lit up when we saw what else was lying in store for us this morning. Metal Slug is the first Neo Geo game to appear on the download service since December 14th, but what a comeback!

From a value-for-money perspective, we'd still recommend picking up Metal Slug Anthology (especially now that it's so cheap), but it's great to see SNK's classic series represented on the VC (and this version even has Classic Controller support). Puyo Puyo 2 and TurboGrafx billiards title Break In complete this week's line-up.

• Cho Aniki -- TurboGrafx-16 -- 900 Wii Points
• Metal Slug -- Neo Geo -- 900 Wii Points
• Break In -- TurboGrafx-16 -- 700 Wii Points
• Puyo Puyo 2 -- Mega Drive -- 900 Wii Points

Hop in your Slug and blast your way past the break to see all four in action!

An immensely pleasing sight greeted our bleary eyes when we inspected the PAL Virtual Console this morning -- the revival of last September's Hanabi Festival! What does that mean? Simple: for the next few weeks, the VC will feature games that were previously unreleased in Europe or Australia, which we suppose justifies the slightly higher price tags.

Best of all, we're promised that this will continue for the next few weeks. Wonder what else we'll get? Here are this week's trio:

• Columns III: Revenge of Columns -- Mega Drive -- 900 Wii Points
• Final Soldier -- TurboGrafx-16 -- 700 Wii Points
• Gradius II Gofer no Yabou -- TurboGrafx-16 -- 900 Wii Points
  

As usual, make the jump for footage of all three.

[Update: There's much excitement here, as further inspection of Nintendo's press release reveals that Speedos-clad TurboGrafx-16 shooter Cho Aniki will be one of the future Hanabi Festival releases!]

Despite the game apparently being quite mediocre, we can't help but be excited about the arrival of Hudson's Riot Zone on the Virtual Console this Monday. To be honest, we haven't gotten over the gee-whiz factor of being able to download Turbografx-16 CD-ROM games. Also, we love brawlers. Well, I love brawlers. Dave may have something else to say after playing it.

The game is basically a whole-cloth Final Fight clone, which we're secretly okay with. It's not our copyright. Capcom seems to be doing okay with their whole fighting-game thing, even after being ripped off. Riot Zone at least one-ups Final Fight in awesomely Engrish intro cinemas!

The internet has made it easy to find cheats for games, but we miss the tips pages from game magazines, when the discovery of a new code could inspire you to go back to an old game. These codes aren't exactly new, but oldness is the essence of the Virtual Console! We're bringing back the classic codes every week on The VC Advantage.

The stated purpose of this column (see above) is to explore the nostalgia of video game magazines via their cheat columns. We've imitated those columns in style, but we've never done the most obvious thing when it comes to magazine nostalgia: link actual old magazines. When we happened upon this archive of TurboPlay magazine, we knew we had to share it. TurboPlay, published by Larry Flynt Publications (who also published the cheat-focused Tips & Tricks), was the longest-lasting TG16-specific magazine in the U.S., and featured a who's-who of game writers, including Andy Eddy, Chris Bieniek, and even Working Designs' Victor Ireland. (As a young pre-blogger, I had a subscription to TurboPlay, and also devoured all four issues of TurboForce and the three TurboEdge newsletters from NEC. You probably could have guessed that.)

We encourage you to browse the entire TurboPlay archives, as well as the other two magazines' brief collections, to see what the world was like when NEC was still involved with the TurboGrafx-16 (all of that stuff has since been handed off to their partner Hudson) and was goofily optimistic about the future of their ultimately doomed, yet still beloved, console. We've provided the entirety of TurboPlay issue 7's "Turbo Tips" columns for you after the break, so you can get a taste of retro-cheatery.

Now that the Virtual Console gift feature is alive and kicking, it just seems fitting that we celebrate with a few gifts of our own. Each member of the Wii Fanboy staff has carefully chosen one game currently available on the U.S. Virtual Console, and we're ready to show our appreciation by gifting the lot to one lucky reader. But guys! What if I already have the game in question? Well, dear reader, we've also each chosen back-up titles, just in case. If the winner has one, we'll move onto the next. If you have all of them? Maybe you should hang back and let someone else win! 'Tis the season of giving, after all.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling us what you'd be most likely to give away, if you were so inclined. You may enter once per day, and we must receive your comments between now and December 20. The giveaway closes shop that night at 11:59 PM EST, so get to work! We'll announce the winner December 21. As usual, entries are limited to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older. Please check the official rules for any other questions.

Wii Fanboy's Virtual Console Gift Pack

• Devil's Crush -- TurboGrafx-16, 600 points (JC)
• Dragon's Curse -- TurboGrafx-16, 600 points (Candace)
• Excitebike -- NES, 500 points (Chris)
• Gunstar Heroes -- Sega Genesis, 800 points (Eric)
• The Legend of the Mystical Ninja -- SNES, 800 points (Dave)
• The Legend of Zelda -- NES, 500 points (Alisha)

2007 is the twentieth anniversary of the PC Engine (the Japanese Turbografx-16) and Hudson, who co-created the console with NEC, is honoring the little console and its little HuCards in two ways this year:

1. By releasing lots of awesome games on the Virtual Console, and
2. By featuring a multipart PC Engine retrospective on their home page

We're so happy to see the Wii bringing the PC Engine back into the limelight. It brought us a lot of games that deserve a second look, and deserve to be played by a new audience. Please, tip your hat to NEC and Hudson's masterpiece. Go check out the first part of the article, and then check out some Turbo games on the VC if you haven't already!

The folks over at Bits Bytes Pixels Sprites have discovered that two new Virtual Console games, as of now unannounced, will be headed to the Wii sometime in the near future. See, in poking around Hudson Entertainment's website, they found pages for both Alien Crush and Dungeon Explorer, mentioning their inclusion into Nintendo's Virtual Console line of games.

For the unaware, Alien Crush is a pinball title with an extra-terrestrial theme, where Dungeon Explorer has playing as Detective John Gutter, a tough-as-nails cop with a dark past. As witness to a rather disgusting murder with no evidence left on the scene beside your testimony, you have 48 hours to find the one responsible before your fellow police officers toss you into the slammer.

OK, we're kidding. You do, in fact, explore dungeons.

[Via Joystiq]