Virtual Console Roundup

After a rather limp and short Hanabi Festival and the launch of WiiWare, I'm pleased to report that the Virtual Console seems to have pulled its socks up, straightened its tie and put its nose to the grindstone with some elbow grease. It's making an effort, in other words, and the past two weeks have offered up four games of commendable quality. Don't worry though, I'm sure I'll find something to grumble about.

Paradroid

• Platform: C64
• Wii Points: 500
• In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 5 (approx)

First Uridium, now Paradroid. Not all the C64 games released have been particularly well-suited to console play (see: Ninja, The Last) but spank me with a rolled up Zzap 64 and called me Rignall if seeing Andrew Braybrook's masterpieces blown up on a HD screen, played with a joypad, doesn't confirm just how far ahead of his time he really was.

You play as a robot - or rather, you play as a helmet on top of a robot. A series of space freighters have been overrun with rogue droids, and the best way to end the crisis is to use this helmet to transfer control from one droid to another, working your way up the robot hierarchy through cunning combat and fast-paced puzzling.

You hover around a 2D maze, and can move between different areas of the ship using teleport pads. Holding down the fire button activates transfer mode, and you'll initiate a battle of wills with any droid you collide with in this state. You then have a limited time to choose one side of a circuit board and select the wires that will turn most of the central column to your colour. Sounds baffling. Really isn't.

If you've never played Paradroid then don't look at the screenshot. Seriously, don't. Put a Post-It on your monitor or something. The game does not look impressive in 2008. All the robots look identical, apart from their rank number, and those chunky sprites will send out all the wrong messages, and you'll miss the chunky minimalist artistry that was designed to complement the game design, not overshadow it.

It's a game where exploration, arcade reflexes, rapid puzzle-solving and tactical strategy all get mashed up together, with no one element dominating the others. A sublime brew. It is, in other words, the sort of game that we used to get when solitary programmers, blessed with bright ideas and the freedom to make them a reality, could still make their mark on the industry. It's the best kind of gaming nostalgia, one based on all that was genuinely good about the olden days rather than fuzzy fondness for things that seemed awesome to a twelve-year-old in 1985.

While I've spoken out about the Virtual Console's wonky price structure many times, this isn't a battle worth fighting in this case. If you can't find it in your heart to pay a few pounds for a perfect copy of Paradroid that you can play at any time without digging your old Commodore out of the loft, then there's no hope for you.

9/10

Burning Fight

• Platform: NeoGeo
• Wii Points: 900
• In Real Money: GBP 6.30 / EUR 9 (approx)

You know it's a good week when the worst game of the Virtual Console bunch is actually pretty good, and only stands out because of its derivative nature. Yes, this is SNK's answer to Streets of Rage and Final Fight, and by "answer to" I actually mean "blatant copy of".

You pick from three characters - the generically named Duke, Ryu and Billy - and then clobber your way through stop-start scrolling stages, duffing the crackers out of the various street punks who get in your way. There's no kidnapped girlfriend to be saved - you're just smashing people up because they're naughty. It occasionally feels unfair, with some enemies repeatedly using dash attacks that are all but impossible to dodge or block, but with generous health, lives and continues it never becomes too frustrating.

You can pick up the weapons dropped by pummelled foes, including guns, while scenery items can be smashed to reveal items such as hot dogs, brooches and... handbags. Hmm. Breaking up the action are occasional mini-games, much like those in Street Fighter II, in which you demolish a screen full of objects to earn points and health. There's really very little here that won't feel overly familiar.

Yet despite being so painfully in debt to better games, Burning Fight is not without its appeal. The beat-'em-up genre has been absent from the VC for a while, and for those pining for some scrolling violence, this is an above average option.

7/10