It's been a long time coming, but the Nintendo we once loved has woken from its coma and is slowly starting to remember us. Sega's beloved strategy-RPG sequel Shining Force II (Genesis, 800 Points) finally comes to the Virtual Console this week, arriving several months after its Japanese Wii debut and almost a year after its initial release announcement.
Nintendo has also recently remembered that the Virtual Console supports Nintendo 64 games, as evidenced by this week's release of Mario Golf (N64, 1,000 Points), which arrives more than five full months after the last N64 VC release (Pokemon Puzzle League, for those keeping track).
Things are heating up on the WiiWare front, too, with this week's featured titles including Some Cell Phone Bowling Game That Everyone is Totally Excited To Pay Eight Dollars For (800 Points) and Holy Balls! A Falling Block Puzzle Game (800 Points). Dack, I am so sorry.
Want to mess around with the goofy music creation mode from Mario Paint? Want to do this on the go, without loading an SNES emulator onto your Nintendo DS flash cart of choice? Do not panic! The homebrew community has whipped up an enhanced version of the Mario Paint music creator called... well, Mario Paint Composer. The homebrew version has more ways to save tracks and more options for how you actually use notes in your songs. It sounds like plenty of fun, though I haven't tried it yet-- I just know I like watching videos of weird songs arranged in Mario Paint on YouTube.
Most fan-translation projects either never get finished or only make progress of the course of many, many years. The progress the Mother 3 Fan Translation has made with their work is comparatively brisk in comparison, really. The translation and main hacking of the game is complete, and now fans only have to wait for bug-testing and tweaking to finish before final release.
Now that the hackings pretty much done (some miniscule things remain which may not be worth bothering with), that just leaves the testing phase. Itll probably start sometime this weekend, and before people start asking, we dont need help testing. The testing will be done internally for several weeks.
In 2006, Nintendo released a budget-priced series of simple but stylish games for the Game Boy Advance. Subtitled "Bit Generations," these titles condensed gaming to its essence, offering up minimal graphics and sound but deep and engrossing gameplay.
The series had never left Japan, until now. In a totally unannounced and unexpected move, Nintendo has remade several titles in the Bit Generations series for release on WiiWare. First up is this week's release of Art Style: ORBIENT (600 Points), a remake of what I thought was overall the best Bit Generations game, Orbital. It's a gravity-based puzzle game that plays sort of like Katamari Damacy in space, all wrapped in a uniquely soothing, ambient presentation. A friend once jokingly described it as what it would be like if Brian Eno made a video game. It's excellent.
Not nearly as exciting is this week's fellow WiiWare offering of Bomberman Blast (1,000 Points), a Wi-Fi multiplayer Bomberman game that seems more like an inevitability than anything else. Then there's Super Turrican 2 (SNES, 800 Points), which...I...NNNGGGH MUST BUY ORBIENT OKAY BYE
Mega Man 9 didn't win me over right away.
I was really looking forward to it, too. I read the interviews. I looked at the screenshots. I frothed with suitable anticipation when Capcom cited Mega Man 2 -- one of my favorite games of all time -- as the design template for Mega Man 9.
After all that buildup, I guess I was expecting a direct follow-up to Mega Man 2. This is definitely not the case. Mega Man 9 struggles to live up to the high standards set by Mega Man 2, and its level of difficulty vastly overshoots previous entries in the series. Mega Man 9 does, however, provide an entirely enjoyable experience throughout, and most importantly, it excels at duplicating the essential heart and ingenuity that is so often missing from the majority of retro-styled remakes and sequels.
Mega Man 9! Mega Man 9! Mega Man 9! It's on WiiWare now, and I'm presented with a difficult decision. Do I wait until October 1st for the release of the inferior, blurry, badly controlling Xbox 360 port, or do I...wait, I guess this isn't that tough of a decision after all. But, but...Achievement points!!
The game that you're all going to want to download this week, no matter what, is Mega Man 9 (1,000 Points), a ballsy and hopefully fruitful NES-styled Mega Man sequel. Joining MM9 on WiiWare is PLÄTTCHEN twist 'n' paint (1,000 Points), which...no. No! Don't get distracted! Focus on the mission here: helping Mega Man 9 to succeed in the hopes that Capcom is inspired to make Ducktales 3. This is important!
On the Virtual Console front, Nintendo offers up the all-time great Super Dodge Ball (NES, 500 Points) and the not so great Vectorman (Genesis, 800 Points), both of which I could've sworn were already released. But whatever! Press release now; reviews later.
Cho Aniki and Mega Man 2 are brought together at last, courtesy of the Wii's Virtual Console. What a wild world we live in. The VC also recently received Final Soldier, a previously Japan-only shooter for the TurboGrafx-16. Are any of these games worth buying? Let's travel through time to find out!
If you want to buy an original, sealed-in-package Virtual Boy, then you may just be in a little more luck than you would've had last week. Geekay Games in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, one of the seven territories that make up the United Arab Emirates, recently discovered a shipment of 100 factory-sealed Virtual Boy units left sitting forgotten in a warehouse.
While the Virtual Boy is usually considered the worst Nintendo system ever, its rarity has made it a popular retro collector's item. Virtual Boys that are still factory-sealed were rarely spotted anywhere in the world before the Dubai find. Right now Geekay Games is selling through its Virtual Boy stock for the local equivalent of $27 apiece. A typical e-bay price for a second-hand Virtual Boy without its original packaging intact is $100.
What were you doing last Saturday, September 13th? If you were Nintendo and the year was 1985, you were releasing the Famicom version of one of the greatest and most important video games of all time, Super Mario Bros. The US release for the NES followed about a month later, on October 18th.
You probably already know most of this info, but Finding Dulcinea's On This Day has a pretty good breakdown of why Super Mario Bros. was such a big deal. While Mario as a generic mascot sort of character did predate Super Mario Bros., it wasn't until that game that he became the Nintendo icon he is today.
I know it's a big day for Wii downloads, what with the second Strong Bad game and the long-overdue Mega Man 2 hitting at the same time, but give the original Super Mario Bros. a little of your time anyway. Hook up your NES, play one of the numerous ports, or snap it up from the Virtual Console. Try your hand at World 8-4, and remember all the wonderful games that Super Mario Bros.'s success made possible.
The leprechaun community is reportedly "stunned" by this week's Virtual Console and WiiWare lineup, according to Nintendo's latest press release.
"I just...[wow]," says Lucky Leprechaun, who declined to comment when asked about his terrible cereal. "Just a few weeks ago they were giving us [titles] like Art of Fighting 2 and Break In. Those games licked [me red balloons]."
"But now we get Mega Man 2 (NES, 500 Points), which is like, the best [thing] ever!" Lucky continues. "It's like, daaaamn."
Downloadable WiiWare releases for this week include Strong Bad Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free (1,000 Points) and Potpourrii (800 Points). Local leprechaun response has been mixed. "AAAAAAAAHH" says Leaky Leprechaun (pictured above, left). "AAAAH! AAAAAAHHH!"
"Ooohh," replies Lusty Leprechaun (pictured above, right). "Eee hee hee hoooo...oooh."
