North American Virtual Console Update (03/17/08)
… Oh my, you’re here reading this and not playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Did your game cassette break? Did you try blowing into the Wii to loosen any dust? Wait, you’re here to find out what games have been released on the Virtual Console?
Well, whatever floats your boat, man. Whatever.
Super R-Type (SNES; 800 points) - Look, I know I’ve joked around about the amount of shmups on the Virtual Console before. So, at the risk of being hypocritical, I will retread my previous cynicism: Oh, wow, another shmup! Finally! This is truly the one genre that has laid dormant on the Virtual Console, like so much Godzilla underneath the oceans of Japan, waiting for a nationalistic nuclear testing program to awaken it and serve as an extended metaphor for the horrors of war and the insatiable wrath of mother nature. Truly, this genre will be revisited as infrequently as the aforementioned movie series, arising from the watery abyss only to spin another yarn on modernity and society, or, at very least, to give Mathew Broderick something to do in between bouts feeling inadequate in comparison to his previous work or his somehow-sex-symbol wife. This is Super R-Type in explicit detail, my friends, lap it up before the powers that be decided it is an agent of dissent and revolution. Anyway, Super R-Type is a bit more of the same from the long running series and is near identical to the other R-Type game already released on the Virtual Console, save for the additional and removal of certain levels and the expunging on midway check points. Suffice to say, this game is for the true fan only. VC-Reviews gave the game a 3 out of 5.
Spelunker ( NES; 500 points) - Despite being named after a delightful pre-WWII colloquialism, the videogame Spelunker is apparently anything but delightful. VC-Reviews gave the game a 1 out of 5. On a semi-related note, did you know the term spelunker has been more or less abandoned in favor of the term “caver?” Apparently, the term spelunker should now only be used for the untrained, weekend warrior-type explorer, while “caver” is reserved for only the skilled, competent exploration enthusiast.
And that is all she wrote. It appears any rumors of a close-to-Smash Bros. release for our favorite franchises have been summarily dashed. Well played, Nintendo. Well played.
- Rob O’Reilly
