Virtual Console Review Catch-Up: Robot Dodgeball Edition

Oct. 11 1:10 AM by Sardius

Pretty! Too bad nobody was ever able to play this far.

The last month has been an exciting one for WiiWare, with the awaited and fantastic Mega Man 9 debuting alongside out-of-nowhere gems like Art Style: Orbient. Things have been significantly less exciting on the Virtual Console side, but recent weeks have nevertheless brought a good variety of long-demanded classics to the Wii. Is Super Dodge Ball worth your money? Does Vectorman still impress with its Genesis-era graphical trickery? Let's play and see!

Turrican kept looking more and more like Contra until even Contra got sick of it and started making crappy PS1 sequels as revenge.

Super Turrican II

One thing that the Virtual Console is good at is taking something old and forgotten, making it awesome for a brief shining moment, and then running it into the ground so hard that we wish we'd never heard of it in the first place. See: TurboGrafx shooters, imports, and Turrican.

A while back, I gave Super Turrican a pretty thorough recommendation. Then Mega Turrican came out, and I thought it was even better. It's really hard to get excited about yet another Turrican game in such a short span of time, though. Honestly, I haven't even bothered playing past the first level in Super or Mega Turrican. They're all good games, but by this point, there's so many others that are much more worthy of your time. Sorry, Amiga fans. I'm all Turricanned out.

Try these instead: Contra III (SNES), Super C (NES), Mega Man 2 (NES)
Don't bother with: Mega Man (NES)

Vectorman

Oh Vectorman, how I hate you. I remember how all the magazines hyped you up as the next Donkey Kong Country, yet when I rented you and put you in my Genesis, I found a limp, boring run-and-gun blessed with little imagination and lots of bad controls.

Oh Vectorman, why can't the screen scroll fast enough to keep up with you? How could a robot be so slippery to control? How can your once-amazing graphics be so unimpressive today? Is there any part of you that is worthwhile or memorable?

Oh Vectorman, you are so bad that you came out on the European Virtual Console long before the citizens of the United States would welcome you back. Why did you have to have a sequel that we'll inevitably have to suffer through again in a future VC release week? Why couldn't you just die quietly along with your revolutionary Genesis cousins Jurassic Park, The Ooze, and X-Perts?

Guys, I don't think I like Vectorman very much.

Try these instead: Mega Turrican (GEN), Gunstar Heroes (GEN), Alien Soldier (GEN)
Don't bother with: Super Turrican (SNES)

The Statue of Liberty watches on in horror as a group of giants in a floating dodge ball stadium threatens to destroy America.

Super Dodge Ball

I'll admit it: I never got around to renting Super Dodge Ball way back when. I'm sure if I had, I'd have tons of fond memories of flying around the world and beating the hell out of flickery little chubby dudes. I didn't, though, and after having played Super Dodge Ball on everything from the Neo Geo to the Nintendo DS, the NES version is hard to recommend.

It's good, though! I'm sure it was great, even, back in its day. The River City Ransom characters and aesthetic are still as unique and charming as ever, and the gameplay can get pretty intense at times. Its technical limitations really show nowadays, though (slowdown, dropped frames, and flicker are problems throughout), and given that the Japanese Wii recently received the superior PC Engine port of Super Dodge Ball, why should we settle for less?

Try these too: River City Ransom (NES)
Don't bother with: Renegade (NES), Double Dragon (NES)

Mario Golf

As odd as it seems, Wii owners have been starving for a good golf game. The Wii Sports version of golf set the bar pretty low, sure, but even after several tries from numerous publishers, nobody's gotten it quite right. Too few people seem to realize that what people want from golf games -- more than anything else -- is accuracy. I don't want to be forced to play with your shitty motion controls that don't work. I don't care how realistically Tiger Woods can punch a ball into a bystander's bozack (well, okay, I care, but not enough to actually pay for a Tiger Woods game). What I want is to be able to hit the ball where I want it to go. And yet, this remains a rarity in Wii golf games.

It was thanks to whatever brain damage that the majority of Wii publishers suffer from that makes them think that motion controls are appropriate for anything that demands even the slightest bit of accuracy that Neo Turf Masters was able to come out on the Virtual Console in August and completely wipe the floor not only with its VC competition, but with every retail-priced Wii golf title as well.

I love Neo Turf Masters. Not even Mario Golf can match its level of excellence, but it comes darn close. If you've bought and played Neo Turf Masters to death already, Mario Golf is a great secondary choice.

Try these too: Neo Turf Masters (NEO)
Don't bother with: Golf (NES), Power Golf (TG16), NES Open Tournament Golf (NES)

Yes his default name is Bowie and I renamed him Ziggy SO WHAT

Shining Force II

The original Shining Force was one of my very favorite Sega Genesis games. The sequel never really grabbed me, though, for reasons that I can't explain. While I finished the first game many times over, I only rented Shining Force II once, and never felt compelled to play it for more than a few hours.

Years later, I finally have an excuse to go back and find out what made Shining Force II so repellent to me when I loved the original so much. After playing it again, I've come to the conclusion that I was a crazy person. Shining Force II starts out at least as good as its predecessor, and could possibly become even better later on. The strategy-fueled combat that made Shining Force so compelling is present in full in its sequel, and despite the fact that the story and characters aren't as immediately likable, there's no reason not to buy this game immediately if you were a fan of the original.

This is awesome -- I'm really glad I gave it a second chance after all these years. I know what I'll be playing once I finish up with Persona 3: FES. And Persona 4. And whatever other RPG I end up playing afterward that's going to dominate my time for months on end. But I'll get around to it eventually!

Try these too: Military Madness (TG16), Landstalker (GEN), Shining in the Darkness (GEN)
Don't bother with: Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV (SNES)

Comments

Shining Force II is amazing! I beat it more often than the first one in my youth, and despite the fact that there's a perfectly good (and expensive) Genesis cart of it lying around in my room, I'll probably still buy it on VC just to have it in higher resolution. The story-line really does get better and better, and I liked the ending more than the original, but what is really great is the rather unique battles you start having from the mid-point of the game on.

I should try Mario Golf, nothing has really grabbed me golf-game-wise ever since Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf...

Super Turrican 2 was farily neat. Its a bit more linear than some of the other Turricans, with less emphasis on exploring big levels. Its also filled with shooter sequences for variety. Its only real weakness for me are some of the stages where you need to use the grappling hook. Like most games not called "Bionic Commando", the hook doesn't really control all that great.