Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe's guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo's download service. Written by Jordan Khoviteri-Zadeh.

Each week generally three or four games are released upon us. However, should you really pay your hard earned cash on these titles for nostalgia's sake? Because believe me, games get rose tinted so easily. I shall be here to guide you through this realm of past games and kilobyte downloads.

This week, we have four rather classic downloads up for grabs!

• Excitebike
• Kirby's Adventure
• R-Type III
• New Adventure Island

VC Weekly will have a different layout from what you normally expect from our regular reviews. Instead of going through and analyse every part of the game, each review will cover: The history of the game, what it plays like, does it stand up to test of time? And should you buy it? Then it will be given a scoring out of 10. Simple, eh?

Points: 500
Blocks Used: 99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Released: 6th September 1986
System: NES

So, first on the list is Excitebike. This was a fairly inevitable release since this Friday (16th February) Excitetruck is finally hitting European shores. This arcade style motorbike racer was released in Europe back in '86, featuring a rather ingenious play style, where you could basically go fast or really fast. Using the games innovative over heating system the player can choose to go at either a normal speed or speed the bike up. This however meant that the bikes over heat metre would slowly fill and if the bike becomes too hot then it crashes to the side of the track and you have to wait for the bike to recover. Sounds complex? Well for people who played it in the past, it's really not. A side from the games over heat system, Excitebike didn't play like the average racer of the time. The game used different kinds of ground obstacles such as mud patches, ramps and verts to try make you crash so you had to negotiate whatever you ever going to land on by controlling your bike in mid air.

The game also features two modes of play: Selection A is time trial and Selection B is a text book versus AI affair but they mostly play the same way. Both only feature 5 tracks, which are fairly short but as anyone who has played the title knows there's quite a lot of tactics and skill involved. You can make the AI crash by making them hit your back tire with their front meaning even now you hold your breath as you approach and try to overtake the AI. Excitebike is an incredibly fun title and it surprisingly still plays, looks and sounds the part even today. Its music is instantly recognisable and you'll still hum it. The emulation is also handled very well, with no kinks, bugs or slowdown.

Excitebike was originally released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan; meaning players could save and load custom tracks as well as race on premade tracks. Thankfully, Nintendo actually fixed a bug that plagued the original release. If you ever tried to save or load a track you made, the game would lock up. This was due to it being a quick port from a disk system game to a normal NES cartridge. The track editor for its day was incredibly robust and if anything shows up some modern games for not including them! Excitebike's quick style of racing is pure fun from start to finish even now and is probably better than its younger brothers Excitebike 64 and the new Excitetruck. The only downside to this title as people know is its shortness. The game doesn't have that much to offer in terms of an actual game, it's very much a play for 30 minutes or so kind of title. Should you buy it though? If you were a fan in the past or if you've never played Excitebike, then yes, as it was a staple of the NES games library and I can highly recommend it.

7/10

Points: 500
Blocks Used: 104
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Released: 9th December 1993
System: NES

The second game released this week is 1993's Kirby's Adventure, the second game in the Kirby franchise. It saw a very late release in the life of the NES and, visually, it shows. If you've never played a Kirby game (or even Super Smash Brothers), this is how it goes: Certain enemies you face have unique abilities and Kirby has the capability to suck these enemies in to gain them. This unique style of gameplay that pretty much separated Kirby from all other platformers back in the 8-bit days making it very different from the big two: Mario and Sonic. Kirby also uses a different damage system. You don't die when you've lost all your rings or when you get hit in your lowest form; you have 8 energy blocks which can be refilled by items, which more resembles Zelda or Metroid.

Like other platformers however, Kirby is incredibly short. The game only has 8 worlds containing 6 to 8 levels in each, which are mostly themed and named after foods. They all end in a boss battle also. The game also features 4 mini games: Quick-Draw, Crane, Egg Catcher and Arena. Kirby was originally aimed at the lower aged gamers when it was originally developed; the game is much easier than any of the three Mario's on the NES due to its simple level design and life system. That doesn't mean there aren't problems however. This game has horrific slow down and since I've never played the original NES game so I'm not totally sure if it's not just bad emulation. But going by previous VC titles, I'd say it has to be the original game. The sound effects and music are also ear wrenchingly tinny meaning you might want to play this one at a low volume. However the music is reasonably catchy, if you've played any previous Kirby game you'll have heard most of the music before.

So, does this game live up to other VC games? Not really. The fact is Kirby's Adventure is quite past it. Kirby: Canvas Curse/Power Paintbrush is a far better game on the DS or failing that Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland on the GBA is a complete remake of Kirby's Adventure and it's a much better version to boot. I'd save your money on this one, unless you're an avid Kirby fan.

5/10

Points: 800
Blocks Used: 135
Publisher: Irem
Developer: Irem
Released: 1993 (North America, no exact date)
System: SNES

Our third game this week is what is considered by many to be one of the greatest side scrolling space shooters. R-Type III: The Third Lightening, released back in 1993 and as to be expected, this game is incredibly difficult! But that is no way a bad thing, if you're a fan of Ikaruga, Radiligy or Radiant Silvergun you are sure going to like this. Using both an incredible amount of enemies and physical obstacles, this game will take you a long time to complete.

R-Type III also boasts a quite fantastic weapon system, which has three specific areas of excellence. Firstly, you have two fire buttons. Now this may not seem major but up until this point games either had a charge fire button, which meant you had to button mash to do a single fire attack or other games just had a rapid fire button. R-Type III boasted both, which are controlled with X and Y on the classic controller or GameCube controller. The game also has what's called 'Shadow Force Weaponry'. Which are essentially different styles of laser which come in red (reverse lasers), blue (all-range lasers) and yellow (guide lasers). These however were nothing new for the R-Type franchise and neither were the 'Cyclone Force Weaponry' which is essentially just a smaller ship that either locks onto the front or the back of your spaceship. Graphically and audibly R-Type III is still fantastic. With its high tempo midi beats suiting the levels to a tee and even the scrolling sprites used in this game still hold up fairly well. As for the emulation, I used to own this game back on the SNES and it is exactly the same, a very good job by Nintendo.

As I previously said, if you're a fan of the genre if you've played this game or not it's a definite pick up, but don't if you're not in for a significant challenge or you hate dying a lot.

7/10

Points: 600
Blocks Used: 102
Publisher: Hudson
Developer: Hudson
Released: 26th June 1992 (Japanese)
System: TurboGrafx-16

The final game this week is quite a strange title from Hudson, originally released back on the NES and then remade for the TurboGrafx-16. The game is yet another platformer to be released on the Virtual Console, but this game never had the success that some of the other games of its type had. However, don't let that put you off. Despite its rather clunky controls New Adventure Island is a solid game and a great alternative if you're into the genre and want a change of style or pace.

This game also has a great cast of characters and even has an opening cinematic of sorts, the story is however quite simple and just like a Mario game, a girl (in this case Tina "Miss Island") is kidnapped by the wicked Baron Bronsky. Hardly original, but if the gameplay is there does it really matter? Thankfully this game really is quite good! You have an array of weapons at your disposal which include: boomerangs, fire and arrows to take down your enemies. The game also includes many different locations such as forests, caves and castles. As for graphics and sound this game really stands out however. Although the sprites and backdrops lack detail they have buckets of colour and style, the same goes for the music which is a mix of calypso, hip-hop and other styles of music.

The only problem is this game is so utterly generic. Against Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog already on the Virtual Console why would you choose this? So would I recommend it? Well, yes and no. Yes, if you want something different to play in the platforming genre; but no if you haven't played Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario World, Mario 64 or Sonic the Hedgehog. That's all four of you.

5/10

That's all for this first week, folks! Check back next week for more reviews, and get an eye on the site for more retro coverage very soon.