Squeenix Hits Virtual Console

Hey Wii owners, it's a good week to be you. Not only did Madworld just drop into stores, but the Virtual Console is having something of a rennaissance.

Item the first: Sega, Taito and Nacmo are bringing some of their arcade hits to the service. The arcade versions, mind, not the dodgy console ports.

Item the second: Final Fantasy I through to VI are on their way to the Virtual Console in all their original non-enhanced glory. I assume that the ones that weren't originally released in the West (FF2, 3 and 5) are going to use the translations developed for the GBA / PS / DS adaptations.

Item the third: If you just can't get enough of Cecil The Death Knight from FF IV, you will be stoked by the appearance of FFIV sequel The After Years on Wiiware, alongside My Life As A Dark Lord, which is apparently a sequel to the poorly received My Life As A King.

Secret of Mana on Virtual Console

In case you didn't read the title: SECRET OF MANA ON VIRTUAL CONSOLE!

Yes: it's available for download to your Wii. Yes: the three-player co-op is intact. Yes: Squeenix are finally releasing their SNES classic for your retro-gaming delight.

This is one of those games that's every bit as good today as it was when it was released. If you've (somehow) never played Secret of Mana this is a must-buy Virtual Console title. If you have played it, heck, it's still a must-buy.

So - who wants to help me complete this for, what, the fourth time now?

NOTE: I'm not entirely clear whether this is "out now" or "out come the next VC update, either this Friday or the Friday following". I'll check the VC store when I get home and let you know.

Great Moments In Gaming History #2: R-Type

The answer to the above question is "no". R-Type is one of the most nun-punchingly hard games ever released for any system, ever. Not only will you not survive, but you'll be pathetically grateful just to outlast the first level.

R-Type swaggered into arcades in 1987 and immediately began to savagely molest the previous genre kings, Gradius (1985) and Darius (1986). I love Gradius in the way that a Catholic priest loves his altar boy, but there is no question that R-Type is the better game. The opening screen challenges you to "Blast off and attack the evil Bydo empire!" and by golly that's exactly what you do.

It's R-Type that's responsible for introducing or popularising nearly everything that we expect today from shoot-em-ups. Customisable weapons, a semi-controllable option pod known as the "Force", and a chargeable beam shot are all core elements of the R-Type experience. For the first time gamers were called upon to not just epileptically flail around the screen dodging bullets (although there's plenty of that) but also to consider the placement of their Force pod and develop a long-term strategy.

The graphics are attractive even by today's standards, stuffed full of chibi mecha and Giger-esque monstrosities. Environments are colourful and bosses are appropriately intimidating. The game's a pleasure to watch, although you'll likely be watching the same section again and again as you struggly manfully to not solve the ridicuously hard level design with a hammer and blowtorch.

Eventually most home consoles saw ports of R-Type; the TurboGrafx-16 version is available today through the Wii Virtual Console. Despite the game only being eight levels long, the original TurboGrafx release was split across two cartridges which were sold separately at full price. The Japanese Virtual Console shop preserves this format, requiring two downloads, but luckily Western gamers can get the whole thing as a single reasonably-priced purchase.

Blazing Lazers

I think we can all agree that in any given situation a Blazing Lazer is 100% more awesome than its regular non-Blazing counterpart.

That's the maxim by which Compile developed the shoot-em-up Blazing Lazers for the TurboGrafx in 1989, and it's a concept which is just as full of win now as it was then. Blazing Lazers (known in Japan as Gunhed) is available through the Wii Virtual Console or at a TurboGrafx emulator near you.

If you're a gamer of any credibility you're familiar with the concept of a shoot-em-up. You pilot a vessel (usually a spaceship), which moves in a single direction (usually up or to the right) and you variously dodge and blast your way through wave after wave of enemies. Key entries in the genre include classics such as 1942, Gradius and R-Type.

It turns out, though, that all those beloved icons had it wrong. The developers of those games seemed to think that merely because you were one ship against a near-infinite armada that you should be remotely killable. That was a silly idea, and Blazing Lazers discards it like the rubbish it is.

In any given game of Blazing Lazers, somewhere between 30 and 80 percent of the screen is filled by your weapons. Your ship vomits an unstoppable avalanche of fiery death which obliterates bad guys long before they appear on screen. Where other games make you choose whether your weapons should be penetrating, homing, or multi-pronged, Blazing Lazers is quite happy to let you have all three at once, with a side-order of smart bombs and satellite ships to boot.

Your weapons come in four basic flavours: a regular bullet shot, a sonic wave-gun, a death-dealing orbiting shield, and the titular blazing lazers. You change weapons by collecting the appropriate power-up from defeated enemies; collecting several of the same power-up in a row upgrades your weapons, while changing to a new type will set you back at the bottom of the power tree. You also have subweapons, which change the impact of your primary weapon. For instance, while using the lazer, the Homing subweapon will add a spread of missiles to your lazer-tastic death rays, while Multibodies will add additional lazers and Full Fire will focus your lazers into a single enemy-annihlating homing flame-beam of death.

It's a little unfortunate (if predictable) that in almost all circumstances the lazers are far better than the other choices; in fact, a lot of the game strategy involves avoiding non-lazer power-ups as though they were ebola. Also, like most games of this ilk, getting killed sets you back to your basic lazerless gimp-ship, which makes it exponentially more difficult to stay alive long enough to power back up.

There's also unfortunately no two-player mode. I suspect its omission is due to the limitations of the TurboGrafx rather than any real malice, but it's still a shame. Releasing a game like this with no co-op is an affront against humanity.

Still, it's all worth it for those prolonged sessions of enemy-torching which make the game so memorable. Blazing Lazers is everything which is awesome about shoot-em-ups distilled into one potent brew. It's one of those rare Virtual Console titles which is as enjoyable today as it was when it first debuted and if you haven't downloaded it yet there should probably be special jails just for people like you.

C64 Games On The Virtual Console

I have three questions.

One: Why did no one tell me that Europe has been getting Commodore 64 games on the Wii Virtual Console for the past couple of months, including but not limited to the excellent Paradroid?

Two: When does Australia get on this magical sparkle train to happiness?

Three: Does this mean we're about to be given the keys to such gems of gaming history as Ghostbusters, Lords of Midnight, M.U.L.E, and Dizzy?

TV Show King

TV Show King, available for the Wii through the Wiiware download service, is so middle-of-the-road it makes lane dividers look extreme.

This sort of product is exactly the reason that "quiz games" and "bargain bin" are synonymous. Admittedly, this is a bargain-priced title, but that's no excuse for it being bafflingly bad.

The problem is not in the questions, which are numerous and reasonably competent. Each question is a four-answer multiple choice, and the available choices are usually intelligent enough to make you think for a moment.

Neither is the devil in the presentation. The game takes the form of a quiz show, introduced by a grinning presenter with some worrying eyebrows, and each player is depicted by a Mii, which is awesome.

It's the gameplay which is thoroughly saturated with awful. The developers seems absolutely determined to make sure that small children can regularly beat adults. There are two aspects to this. Firstly, you select your answer to each question by pointing at it with the Wiimote and clicking. It's obvious to everyone else what answer you've selected, so if someone looks like they know the answer then the other players can just piggyback on their genius. The first player to answer correctly gets more points, but not a lot more points.

And secondly, between every round there's this ridiculous "wheel of fortune" thing, where you can spin the wheel to gain or lose points. The wheel on average will grant or deduct as many points as you would gain from playing a perfect round, with a couple of extreme options thrown in which remove all your points or give you more points than you could possibly score in a game. When you play two perfect rounds and then see the chump who didn't know the capital of France take first place it's like your fun just got sharply kicked in the groin.

Admittedly it's not like there's a lot of high-quality quiz games out there to prefer over this, but TV Show King is still a pretty bottom rung choice and is certainly not the best advertisement for the new Wiiware service. I won't flat out say to avoid it at all costs, but I will heavily imply it.

Assorted Gaming News

While I was doing the 100 Must-See Movies a few tidbits of news went past that I know some readers will be interested in.

- Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain) has been cast to play the Prince of Persia in the upcoming movie.

- The Penny Arcade game is out on XBLA for 1600 points (about $25 AUD). I'm downloading the thing as we speak, but my expectation is for it to deliver only an unremitting torrent of pain.

- The next Guitar Hero's going to have Rock Band-style additional instruments including singing and drumming.

- WiiWare is now available for download in Australia, featuring a six game launch line-up. None of the initial offerings are particularly wonderful but it's only a few short weeks until Telltale releases the first installment of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People. Yes, there's a Square-Enix game available via the service (Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King) but by all accounts it's very average.

Hanabi Festival Returns To Wii Virtual Console

Just thought I'd remind Wii owners out there in Europe and Australia that it's the Hanabi Festival again, which means if you head on over to the Wii shop you'll find another set of never-before-seen-in-the-West games available.

There's three imports up this week. Puyo Puyo 2 (aka Puyo Puyo Tsu) is, of course, the sequel to Puyo Puyo, better known in the West as Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. It's a game that involves arranging coloured beans, which fall in pairs from the top of the screen, to create chains of four or more identical beans, which then clear from the play field. Puyo Puyo 2 is mostly identical to the original, but if you're a fan then you'll likely still be entertained by it. Minor changes include the treatment of ojama (garbage) and the ability to double-rotate a piece trapped between two columns.

The second game is Break In, a snooker simulator for the Turbografx. As always with this kind of thing it's pretty much for snooker enthusiasts only, and even then I'm led to believe it's fairly middle-of-the-road.

Last up is the most interesting of the three, Cho Aniki ("Super Big Brothers"), which is, if you can believe it, a bodybuilding-themed side-scrolling homoerotic shooter. It's what's known in Japan as a baka-ge (idiot game), being more interested in being weird than it is in being good, but aside from its unconventional visual style it's actually a half-decent game.

Last time around not all the Hanabi Festival games stayed available after the Festival, so if you're tempted by any of these you'd best pick them up fast.

Shining In The Darkness

Of all the old-school grid-based dungeon crawlers I've ever played, Shining In The Darkness is definitely somewhere in the middle.

This is a 1991 Sega MegaDrive game (or Sega Genesis to all you Americans), available through the Wii Virtual Console. It's a Japanese-style RPG that sees you trekking through a multi-levelled dungeon, mapping the crap out of the place using grid paper while fighting off random monster encounters and looting all and sundry from the local treasure chests. The game displays from a first-person view, which is pretty much its most memorable feature.

If you can believe it, there used to be a ton of games like this. Shining In The Darkness is clearly modelled on the dungeon segments of Sega's 1987 Phantasy Star. That game came out on the vastly more primitive Master System, so it's an embarassment that Shining looks mostly the same.

Genre enthusiasts will also put Shining next to classics like Eye of the Beholder (1990) or Dungeon Master (1987). It compares poorly; those games featured real-time combat, complex inventory management, deep character customisation and some quite fiendish and varied dungeon puzzles. Shining has none of those things.

What Shining does have is a lot of enthusiasm and focus. The art style is full of life, particularly the town and castle segments. The game is reasonably concise and doesn't go for a minute longer than it needs to (total play with an FAQ is maybe 12 to 15 hours). The dungeon layouts are fair and understandable. The magic system is reasonably well balanced, although you'll want to read up on it in a walkthrough as there's no help text to be found in the game. And while there's a lot of level grinding, it's reasonably well-hidden behind mini-goals that call on you to retread the same dungeon corridors again and again.

The game's biggest failing is the random encounters. Encountering a potentially lethal group of monsters every few steps means you'll want to keep your travel routes short. This means a lot of frustration for hardcore mappers, and a large chunk of the game bypassed for those willing to consult an FAQ. Also, levelling up starts to feel a little pointless once the monsters cast spells, which bypass your armour and defence stats to inflict unvarying amounts of damage.

For a certain sort of gamer, all of the above is just more of an incentive to play. There's something really satisfying about sketching map layouts on grid paper while grinding obscene amounts of level-ups. In its crazy extinct little sub-genre, Shining is by no means the king, but it's also a long way from the bottom. It soars high above videogaming offal like Double Dungeons, and its simplicity, focus and charm make it a much more user-friendly experience than, say, the original Bard's Tale or Might and Magic.

If this sort of obsessive-compulsive trawling of 10 x 10 stone corridors is the sort of thing you've ever enjoyed, then Shining In The Darkness is probably a game you should be familiar with. But if you've so far managed to avoid this whole gaming menagerie, you're much better served downloading a copy of Eye of the Beholder.

Man, I've got to go play Eye of the Beholder again.

Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People

Those talented people at Telltale Games have apparently decided that frolicking in the small bathtubs of cash that their Sam & Max games have made them is not enough, and they need to give the community a little something back. That "something" is a new game, and you'll need to pay money for it.

The game in question is Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People ("but you can play too!"), and it seems to be a point-n-clicky sort of thing which will be delivered in "five adventure-packed action-sodes", starting June 2008. If the trailer's any indication (and the FAQ says it is), it looks like it'll feature writing and voicework by the Homestar Runner crew.

I'm told there's PC versions coming, but what's interesting is that the main delivery platform for the game is going to be Wiiware - the episodes will be 100% downloadable through your Nintendo Wii, and playable with the Wiimote. That's five kinds of awesome.

Gaming In 60 Seconds

Since the last time I've been blogging, I've finished an awful lot of games. For those who care, here are some quick summaries.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2): A fantastically addictive experience that will consume 100+ hours of your life - but if you like depth of gameplay, compelling plot, or interesting characterisation you're better off playing an earlier installment of the series. The later dungeon designs are downright idiotic, becoming repetetive, tedious slogs wherein you'll be forced to search for invisible paths and illusionary walls on a scale not seen since the original Might and Magic. Sadly better than most traditional computer RPGs but still not up to scratch for Square-Enix's mascot franchise.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS): Fun open-ended 2D platforming in the tradition of the Castlevania titles for the Gameboy Advance. This one acts as a direct sequel to the GBA Aria of Sorrow, and sees you once again leading white-haired pretty boy Soma Cruz in a quest against vague and unspecified evil. If anything, Dawn of Sorrow is even easier than its already undemanding predecessor, and you'll breeze through in a couple of days of gameplay. It's a decent ride though, and this time around Soma's ability to capture the souls of defeated enemies and gain their powers is put to better use in crafting puzzles to block your progress. Worth your purchase for the DS if game longevity isn't a major concern to you.

Gitaroo Man (PS2): Everyone who told me this game was good was full of filthy, filthy lies. A pox on their houses. Gitaroo Man comes from Koei, the makers of Dynasty Warriors, and features a similar hardcore guitar metal soundtrack, but that's where the similarities end. You're tasked with fighting the challenge, or challenging the fight, by using the analog stick to follow a rapidly moving line across the screen while simultaneously jamming out using the face buttons, in time to each level's music. In practice, this is eye-wateringly hard, deeply unsatisfying, and will likely just leave you wanting to go back to playing Guitar Hero. Avoid as though it had rabies.

Elite Beat Agents (DS): Every bit as good as Ossu! Tatake! Ouendan!, this extravagant tale of male cheerleading captures most of what made the Japanese original good, while at the same time turning down the difficulty to more realistic levels. Not all the new Western soundtrack will win gold medals, but the excellence of busting your moves to the likes of YMCA and Jumping Jack Flash more than compensates. Must-have for all DS owners.

Cooking Mama (DS): Real cooking, taught through the use of minigames. What's there is definitely strong, but it only took me about ten minutes to start asking, "But then what?" Certainly original; possibly a good buy for non-gamers and the very young. Hard to justify at full price for connoisseurs, though.

Another Code (DS): Aka Trace Memory in the US. Developer CING's first attempt at a DS point-and-click puzzler falls flat due to an uninspiring story and a largely sterile game world. While some obstacles make inspired use of the DS's unique features, on the whole this is likely to leave most consumers cold. Stay away unless you're a die-hard adventure fan and you see it on sale.

Hotel Dusk (DS): Where Another Code bit down hard on the suck pill, CING's second effort in the adventure genre is significantly more impressive. Hotel Dusk combines strong plotting, dialogue, and a unique art style to create a memorable and enjoyable romp through a 70s noir-esque mystery novel. The game sometimes moves on rails and makes you feel more audience than player, but this won't diminish your enjoyment of an all-round class act. Should be seen.

Excite Truck (Wii): Sweet Goat of Moses, this game is fun! Everything you liked best about the Burnout franchise, combined with motion sensitive controls and the sensibilities of the old-school PC classic Stunts. Never have monster trucks spent so much time flying through the air. For people I've shown this to, it seems to sell the Wii in both concept and execution better than anything except perhaps Wii Sports - and Excite Truck has a hell of a lot more staying power. Must-buy for Wii owners.

Well, that's all the things I'm done with since last we spoke. While I'm here, I'll mention that Wii owners who haven't yet obtained and played ActRaiser for their virtual console are uneducated philistines who deserve to be shot in the street. Right in the street, shot.

Pinvisible

So here's a thing. Today I took a break from the novelty of watching Homestar Runner on the big screen via the Wii browser, and played a little of the original NES Pinball on the Virtual Console.

Apparently when your score clicks over to 100,000 the flippers become invisible. Does anyone know if this is a deliberate feature of the game or just an emulation problem?

ANSWER: No, this is a feature of the original game, apparently. If I'd managed to hold out till 150,000 they would have reappeared and stayed visible until I ran out of balls. Strange stuff.

Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine Post-Mortem

Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine has a strange history. On the surface, it's a spin-off of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Dr Robotnik, the villain of the Sonic series, has a penchant for turning adorable widdle animals into hedgehog-killing robots. In Bean Machine, he's turned his mind to robotising the population of Beantown, who are (as the name suggests) anthropomorphic beans. It's up to you, as (presumably) Sonic, or, I don't know, some guy, to stop Robotnik's evil plan by manipulating falling sets of beans so as to combine beans of the same colour in a vertical playing field. In reality though, the Mean Bean Machine is actually just a re-skinned version of the Japanese hit Puyo Puyo, freshened up for sale to a western market.

Mean Bean Machine came out in 1993 for the Sega Megadrive (Genesis for you non-Australians), with accompanying ports on the Master System and Game Gear. The Megadrive version has also just been released for the Wii Virtual Console, and as a result I've now played through the game and finished it for the second time in 14 years.

The game's mostly just a Tetrisoid. Beans drop in pairs of two, in a range of colours. You have to stack them to connect same-coloured beans in sets of four, which can be in straight lines, square blocks, or arrangements that go round corners. Making a set of four beans clears them from the playfield, allowing everything resting above them to drop further down into the bean well. These dropping blocks can trigger further four-bean combinations, and so forth. If the beans reach the top of the playing field the game ends.

You can play the game in an "exercise mode", which sees you simply continuing to clear beans as the drops get faster and faster, much like traditional Tetris. This is fine, but the real meat of the game is in the two competitive modes - Scenario (you vs the computer) and Two Player (which as the name suggests pits you against another real person). In either of these modes, clearing more than four beans on a single drop results in the excess beans migrating to your opponent's playing field as un-coloured "refugee" beans, which can interfere with carefully planned combos and brings them closer to reaching the deadly top of the screen. Setting up the necessary combos to bomb your opponent is absolutely necessary to victory, but it can be deliciously difficult when your opponent is doing the same thing to you.

The Scenario Mode puts you into a series of 13 such matches of increasing difficulty, culminating in a showdown with Robotnik. Each match is against one of Robotnik's robots, who all have a different "personality", evinced by some cheesy character art and pun-filled dialogue. Winning a match rewards you with a password which you can use to resume play from that level. Getting through all 13 matches should take no more than a few hours, although there's a difficulty setting squirreled away in the options menu that you can turn up to increase the game's longevity.

Graphically the game looks like it could have been an 8-bit Master System title instead of the allegedly 16-bit offering that it is, but the star here is the gameplay so you won't be bothered. The sound is also very average for the era but does the job of not annoying you while you're playing. It's safe to say that you won't walk away humming any of the musical score.

Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is one of the better early Tetrisoid games, and players of all ages and skill levels would likely get some fun from it. The content of the game is short-lived but thoroughly enjoyable while it lasts. As a download from the Wii Virtual Console it's attractive but it's hard to recommend unless you've already bought and gotten tired of the vastly superior Columns (also available on the Virtual Console at exactly the same price).

New Virtual Console Titles

For those Australians who haven't checked the Wii Shop today, you'll find the following additional Virtual Console titles available for download:
* Gunstar Heroes
* Ristar
* Pinball
* Columns
* Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
* Urban Champion

Which is awesome. (I'm playing the Bean Machine right now.) But it's still really disappointing that you have to play these games exactly as they were originally released. That's right - you can't even save your game to the hard drive. I'm playing Bean Machine and (can you believe it) writing down passwords. It's positively medieval.

Wii First Impressions

It's time for babbly barely coherent late-night fanboi ranting. As mentioned earlier, I got my Wii today, and spent most of the day trying it out with friends.

It represents a number of firsts for me:

* First time I've bought a non-handheld console on launch day.
* First time I've spent nearly a thousand dollars on a new console, games and accessories without feeling the slightest hint of buyer's remorse after getting it home
* First time I've been able to just hang out for hours with a console operating system without feeling the need to fire up a game or "play something".

If you happen to have a Wii, it's well worth making the effort to get it connected to the internet. For those who invested in the USB Wi-Fi dongle for the DS, it's a pretty simple process, as the Wii can connect through the exact same peripheral. Otherwise it's going to involve setting up wireless access points or waiting for the forthcoming release of the LAN adapater.

I'm happy to report that the Virtual Console shop does actually sell more games in Australia than previously reported. I've secured copies of both Golden Axe and F-Zero from its pixellated clutches, and they're just as much fun as I remember. Both are a little overpriced, coming out to about $12 AUD each. (Bear in mind that Golden Axe represents a grand total of 40 minutes of play from beginning to end.)

Making your little virtual avatar, or Mii, is great fun, and it's even better if you have a ton of friends around to get in on the process. My Mii Plaza is now populated by little virtual facsimiles of most of the people I know. These little hooligans become the playable characters in Wii Sports and Wii Play. Miis you're not using appear in the background and in crowds. I don't know of any third party software using them yet, and it's a little hard to see how you would outside of chatroom avatars, but I hope they don't get completely ignored by forthcoming releases.

The Wii uses friend codes, much like the DS, as a measure to stop random strangers stalking children and suchlike, but they're implemented a lot better than on the DS. Instead of having a unique code for each game, you get a global code for the system. Swapping friend codes with someone (which can only take place outside the Wii environment) will allow you to exchange mail, send your Miis visiting their console, and (presumably) eventually allow you to select that person as a preferred opponent in multiplayer titles. As the Wii is ideally always left on, there's a lot of scope for interaction with your friends list to take place here. I've already received a ton of Miis from the household of Wuffie in Perth. (Damn you, miniature Karlski, why are you always bowling in the lane next to me?)

You can get so involved in sending mail and playing with Miis that you can forget to play any games entirely. Which says something about how friendly, engaging and easy to use the Wii interface is. It really feels like Nintendo telepathically read all my subconscious disappointments with the PSP and made me a little white console to cheer me up.

The feel of the controllers really varies from game to game. Tennis, which is included in the Wii Sports pack-in game, is incredibly addictive and an absolutely perfect four-player introduction to the system. Rayman Raving Rabbids also delivers a fantastic experience from the unique Wiimote controllers. On the other hand, the boxing and gold components of Wii Sports are an exercise in pure frustration that could easily turn off new players. I guess it's like any controller - it's only as good as its software support.

Anywho, I'm going off to sleep now because I have a busy day tomorrow. If I'm up to it, I'll put up my impressions of Casino Royale in the morning. (Short version: just because it's probably the best Bond film ever doesn't mean it isn't full of disappointing pacing and story problems.)

G'night.

Australia Wii Virtual Console Launch Titles

Following is a complete list of the classic games that will be available for download in Australia via the Wii Virtual Console when the system hits stores on Thursday.

* Donkey Kong
* Mario Bros
* Wario's Woods.

And... that's all. Note that there's no "Super" next to "Mario Bros" either. Let me know if you actually feel like paying money for any of those titles so I can laugh at you and question your masculinity. Plus this little gem:

The TurboGrafx system never made it to Australia and New Zealand, and those countries will again not receive TurboGrafx games.

Sorry, what? And that makes sense how? I guess with all the Sony bashing, Nintendo were feeling lonely and left out.

You know what's NOT on that list, that other countries are already able to download and play? Warning: those subject to bouts of demented sobbing and teeth gnashing may wish to look away.

* Bomberman 93
* The Legend of Zelda
* F-Zero
* SimCity
* Super Mario 64
* Altered Beast
* Sonic the Hedgehog
* Ecco the Dolphin
* Golden Axe

Again, in case it's not clear, Australia will NOT be getting those games at launch. That sound you can hear is the squeaky laugh of Ecco the Dolphin as he taunts you while fighting time-travelling underwater aliens.

All of this is via Go Nintendo, and I don't really have any experience with how reliable they are prior to today, so for all I know they could be lying through their snaggly inbred little teeth, but it sounds true, and really, isn't that what's important? They're sourcing it from Nintendo World Report, a fairly obnoxious site that uses popups (visit at your own risk).

Thanks to Curmudgeon Gamer for the heads-up.

UPDATE: This turned out to all be horrible puppy-kicking lies, except for the bit about TurboGrafx games. The launch lineup was actually quite decent and it expanded quickly over December. This is the last time I trust Go Nintendo for my news. Pfah, I spit upon their graves.

Quick Thoughts

Can I just say how happy I am that the Wii virtual console launch lineup will include Toejam & Earl? Possibly the greatest two-player co-operative game ever made? I am so going to be bugging everyone who knows me in Canberra to play this with me. Who knows, it might even be playable over the interweb in some fashion. Although it's $8 US, maybe $12 AUD, which is a little steeper than might have been ideal for such a dated game.

Also, I got shanghaied into seeing Children of Men last night, so that's no longer happening tomorrow. (There wasn't much interest in that one in any case.) But the rest of the Good Movie Thursday schedule is still intact. Review of Children of Men forthcoming. Short version - it's bloody brilliant.