Cruis’n USA (Nintendo 64, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points) is literally the greatest racing game ever made. I have absolutely no idea how this game became one of my favorite racers of all time since it really isn’t that great, but it is. Maybe it’s because I only owned an N64 so the variety wasn’t that great to begin with, and I played this game non-stop over and over. Now that it is out on the VC will I be downloading it? No. I think the fond memories I have of the game need to stay that way as I’m 100 percent positive that playing it now would only ruin them. Alas, time is a harsh mistress and I do not think that Cruis’n USA has aged well at all. Oh, for the days when race tracks weren’t made of real city streets and national monuments and landmarks were all closely grouped together on fictional race courses.

*wipes a single tear from eye while looking wistfully out the window*

Sigh. Well the other game is Wonder Boy (Sega Master System, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone—Comic Mischief, 500 Wii Points) which is just Adventure Island on the Master System. Legal stuff happened. Same game made twice. What’s the point. I’m too depressed to go on.

Download these games at 9 a.m. Pacific time. More after the jump if you can bring yourself to read.

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Bleck, bleck and triple bleck. You would think the day after Easter would be the perfect time for Nintendo to celebrate the second coming of a great game. You know, bring back some hard to get game from death and let it rise from the ground to walk the earth once more, much like the Christ purportedly did way back when. But instead of raising Christ, who for the sake of this metaphor is representing Mother 3, the lord (Nintendo) seems to have accidentally raised the two thieves crucified along with JC: KING’S KNIGHT (NES, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 500 Wii Points) and POWERBALL (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 800 Wii Points). I think that metaphor worked out pretty well.

King’s Knight is a landmark game in that it was Square’s first release in the U.S., but the game is more of a sign of the greatness to come than greatness itself. It’s a shooter (yes, another shooter) with RPG elements and leveling up but it never really jumps out at you in any way. Powerball on the other hand jumps out by being a totally made up sport about the power of balls. Never played this one but from the youtube videos it isn’t looking like a must buy either. Pretty damn uninteresting week if you ask me.

If you like to read press releases hit the jump.

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Well Nintendo didn’t want to take too much fanfare away from our site redesign so this week they’re only delivering unto us one game, Super Turrican (Super NES®, 1 player, Rated E 10+ for Everyone 10 and Older – Fantasy Violence, 800 Wii Points). Just when we’ve started to accept two games a week as the norm Nintendo goes ahead and drops down to one game once again. Of course it doesn’t really matter since Brawl is coming out at the end of the week and that’s all anyone is going to be playing anyway. If you need a game to tide you over till then you could do far worse then Super Turrican. I vaguely remember it being pretty fun and having a good variety of weapons and levels. Take this with a grain of salt though as my childhood memories of the Bill and Ted game on the NES were also fond and we all know that they shouldn’t be. But the enemy’s name is “the Machine” so it can’t be all bad. Now if only one of the weapons was called “the Rage,” then once you got to the boss you could use Rage against the Machine…I’m so sorry for that. Hit the jump for the full release.

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OK, who are you and what have you done with Nintendo? We get two good games in one week? We can drop the charade, I know the real Nintendo would never release both Harvest Moon (Super NES®, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone, 800 Wii Points) and Lords of Thunder (TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone – Fantasy Violence, 800 Wii Points) within the same week. That’s just too much cult classic (as the press release put it) goodness in one week. So I’m stuck wondering where you put the real Nintendo.

I suppose I’ll cover this Faux-Nintendo press release since it’s the only one I’ve got, but just know I’m on to you, Nintendo imposter. Harvest Moon is one of the greatest sims ever. Every time I plug one of these games in, determined to hate it for its farm managing antics, I find myself instantly caring about how my cabbages are doing and whether or not my cows are comfortable or not…Curse your fun! Making me play games that I’m supposed to hate!

I am informed by the gods of the internet (read: Google search) that Lords of Thunder is actually a completely badass game too. How could it not be really? Not only is it a side scrolling shooter with heavy metal music, but every description of the game also mentions knights/badasses. Not just knights, who are already badasses, but knights who are badasses on top of already being badass. That’s so much badass. This is one of the coolest things about the VC, a game like this that few got the chance to play (since it was only released on the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD), is now totally accesible to the masses.

Farming goodness and flying knight badasses go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Enjoy one of the better press releases not-Nintendo has not put out after the jump.

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This will be a short and sweet installment of IWVCUPH as Nintendo has taken their promise of three new VC games each week and thrown it out the window by releasing only two games for the past few weeks and now this week only releasing one game. That’s the short part of it, the sweet part is that the one game is 1080 SNOWBOARDING (N64, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points), one of the best snowboarding games ever made and still a blast to play despite it’s, shall we say, dated graphics.

I suppose I should make fun of some cheesy line in the press release but I’m too upset from Nintendo’s broken promises shattering my fragile heart. This single solitary game goes live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Hit the jump for the press release involving only one game.

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Oh, Hai guys! Remember when Nintendo was all up with releasing three games a week for the VC? Yea, that was great, wasn’t it? We’d laugh, cry, share fond memories and hug it out a bit as we downloaded three new games every week. But those times are over it seems as once again Nintendo has shortchanged us by releasing only two games this week. Those games are ADVENTURES OF LOLO 2 (NES, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone, 500 Wii Points) and SUPER STREET FIGHTER™ II: THE NEW CHALLENGERS (Super NES®, 1-2 players, Rated T for Teen - Violence, 800 Wii Points).

Nintendo says that they’re offering you the chance to truly decide if you’re the kind of person who solves problems with thought or fists, but I say they’re offering you two decent games that don’t really make up for the lack of the third. The Adventures of Lolo 2 is decent puzzling fun (from what little I’ve played of it) and any Street Fighter is good Street Fighter, especially one that adds Cammy into the large thighed mix, but really these two games are begging for a third one to round them out. What if I like to solve my problems with blazing guns or PK Fire (hint, f*cking hint, Nintendo)?

Games will be at the Wii Shop Channel at 9 a.m. Pacific time for your downloading pleasure. Hit the jump to read the full press release.

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I’m going to loosely quote Louise Armstrong here as I believe his words pertain to the virtual console release for the week.

Tea for two, and two for tea. That’s the way the world should be…unless you’re talking about Virtual Console releases because then there should be three.

This week the ol’ VC isn’t getting as much love as it should be with only two releases. Of course when those two releases are Star Tropics (NES®, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone-Mild Fantasy Violence, 500 Wii Points) (Yes! Yes! Finally, yes!) and THE KING OF FIGHTERS ‘94 (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated T for Teen-Animated Blood, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Alcohol & Tobacco Reference, Violence, 900 Wii Points) its hard to stay angry at the big N.

If you couldn’t tell from my parenthetical outburst above, Star Tropics is one of my favorite games ever, vividly etched into my mind as both fun and challenging. I haven’t played it in a few years so hopefully it is still as good as childhood Razak remembers it. KOF94 is the first in the KOF series and as such is a pretty influential and amazing fighter. If I was any good at 2D fighters I’d be downloading it right now along with Star Tropics, but I’m not, so it looks like all I’ll be doing retro-wise this week is island hopping in my uncle’s sub while attacking bad guys with my leet yo-yo skills.

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Ahhh, the last time I will type the year 07. What shall I do to celebrate? Well, according to Nintendo’s press release I should download the three new VC titles for the week and play videogames all night. Normally this would sound like a good plan, but on New Year’s Eve? I guess since both Bubble Bobble (NES, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 500 Wii Points) and Top Hunter (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated E10+ for Everyone 10 and older-Cartoon Violence, 900 Wii Points) are multiplayer you could at least have some fun with other people but playing Light Crusader (Genesis, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone-Animated Violence, 800 Wii Points) by yourself on New Year’s Eve should not even be an option no matter how much you love using “your best combination of brains and brawn to save the kingdom.”

Now then, if it wasn’t New Year’s Eve and I didn’t have a fancy dinner with a toast to attend and friends to be around I would totally be downloading Bubble Bobble as that is some fun bubble action - a statement you can make surprisingly often in the world of videogames. I’d also give Light Crusader a try since it’s Treasure’s only RPG and with the option of playing as either Roddy or Cathy Top Hunter could really shine as a game where you can play as either Roddy or Cathy.

All games are live at 9 a.m. pacific time. The entire New Year’s Eve extravaganza (read: Press release) is after the jump.
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Here we are beginning another week and receiving another group of VC titles. This week is special though, for not only are we receiving three new titles we are receiving the first VC title with new features put in and the truly awesome ability to send VC titles as gifts. Truly, this is a great week not just for gamers but for all of man kind.

First and foremost on the list this week is Pokemon Snap (Nintendo 64, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points), a game totally devoted to taking pictures of Pokemon. Wait! Don’t leave. It actually is really good and with the new feature allowing you to send pictures of your recently photographed Pokemon to your friends it gets even better. I know I’ve been dying since the game came out to show off that wicked shot of Charizard I took. Now all I have to do is duplicate it exactly. Even if you aren’t into showing off your Pokemon this is great news because it means Nintendo is actually thinking about not just spitting out ports, but updating their classic games.

Let us not forget that there are two other games coming out this week. Ghosts’n Goblins (NES, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone—Mild Animated Violence, 500 Wii Points) comes to you from way back when you could still find side scrolling games in an arcades. Nintendo describes the game as “unique and unforgettable.” Both words are perfectly apt descriptions as the game is unique in that you probably can’t beat it and unforgettable because you will never forget the day you threw your NES controller into a wall because the game was so hard.

Finally the VC serves up a big pile of baseball fun with BASEBALL STARS 2 (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 900 Wii Points). The obvious sequel to BASEBALL STARS “delivers everything you’d expect in a classic game of baseball.” So you sit around watching two guys playing while you scratch your privates until one of those two guys hits a ball with a stick? Sorry, baseball never appealed to me unless I was at the stadium with friends drinking copious amounts of over priced beer. I’m sure the arcade antics of the game totally make up for the fact that “split-screen views and close-up shots worthy of any highlight film” are the two highlights the press release chooses to comment on.

All games were live as of 9 a.m., PST, and the gift giving feature will be up later today. Hit the jump for the full press release and information on how you can give a VC title as a holiday gift.
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