Blood, Bikes and Beyond

Time, then, for another trip down the lanes of somebody else's memory - as American Wii owners are invited to digest three new Virtual Console games that I was either too young or too drunk to play in the first place.

Apart from Excitebike (500 Wii points), obviously, which is the sole NES offering over in Americaland this week - and one that we've already had here in Europe, where it's been available since Excite Truck's release over a month ago. It's a motocross racing game, in case it wasn't clear, and even if you didn't play it on the NES back in the '80s it's possible you've brushed up against it with the Game Boy Advance's Classic NES Series, or even as one of the microgame templates in the Wario Ware GBA titles.

There's less chance, perhaps, of your having encountered The Story of Thor (Beyond Oasis in the US - 800 Wii points), which debuted on the Mega Drive a similarly long time ago, and puts you in the role of young prince coming to terms with (or, rather, running around the land of Oasis accumulating) various spiritual powers as part of an action-oriented RPG. But then that's part of the Virtual Console attraction.

Finally there's TurboGrafx-16's Splatterhouse (600 Wii points) - another '80s throwback produced by Namco, which has you running around a mansion as a resurrected student hacking up monsters with all sorts of grisly implements. Wikipedia says that it and its sequels are "considered a pioneering series in the horror genre of gaming, which would later lead to the creation of the genre known as 'survival horror'." And who are we to argue with Wikipedia?

Look out for more Virtual Console releases - this time for Europe - on Friday.