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We have suddenly decided to care more about one of the Virtual Console's oldest shooters. Japanese t-shirt company Mars Sixteen, as part of their ongoing (and amazing) Namco shirt collection, has created two cool Xevious shirts. The grey one shown above features the game's logo and Solvalou ship on the front, and an edited screenshot of the Fortress on the back. The other features the Nazca Lines as seen in the game.

Mars Sixteen's other video game shirts include a lot of great Falcom and Sega stuff, as well as more Namco classics. They've made some surprising choices regarding which games deserve their own shirts! Would you wear a Samurai Ghost t-shirt?

[Via Famitsu]

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.

Everyone likes shooters, except for people who don't. And even they might, if they played the right one! We like them anyway, and guess who picks the games for the column? That's right, a groundhog looking at his shadow a random number generator us. Besides, shooters are really hard, and it's nice to have some kind of advantage. Here are some codes for a very small sample of the VC's many shooters.

Gate of Thunder (TG16 CD)
Stage Select: Whenever we see the name Gate of Thunder, all we can think about is the KISS song "God of Thunder." So instead of cleverly trying to work it in to the text here, we're just going to link to it, and then tell you how to select stages in Gate of Thunder. Sometimes the direct approach is the best approach. To access the stage select, press I, II, II, I, select, I, II, I, II, select, select, run.

Xevious (NES)
Skip the Fortress: We've kind of avoided playing Xevious in the last few years, since our only contact with the game was the annoying Atari 7800 version. Luckily, the NES version is less annoying and totally worth looking into-- if nothing else, as one of the first vertical shooters. It's possible to skip the Andor Genesis fortress by pausing the game right before getting to it, then unpausing it. We miss pause-glitch cheats!

R-Type (TG16)
More continues: Today, we're going to help you learn two surprising things about R-Type. First: you can give yourself more credits by holding select and jamming on the I button at the title screen. Here's the second thing.

[Codes via GameFAQs]

Three games up today for the Virtual Console in North America -- two disparate shooters and, just to mix things up, a racing game. Though after Gradius, we're not sure if Nintendo shouldn't take a break from scrolling shooters in favor of something a little different for a while, since after Gradius, there's many a game that just doesn't seem quite as good. And according to you guys, the VC needs to start branching out a little more anyway! Perhaps next week. For this week, however:

Xevious (NES) -- 500 points
R-Type III: The Third Lightning (SNES) -- 800 points
MotoRoader (TurboGrafx 16) -- 600 points

[Thanks to everyone who tipped us on this!]

What's this ... just Xevious? We appreciate a good, old school scrolling shooter just as much as the next fanboy, but this is a pretty boring offering when it's the only offering for the week. You can do better than this, NoE! Show us what you've got.

The NES game will set you back 500 points, if you are so inclined. And here's hoping for a more exciting next Friday.