Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe's guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo's download service. Written by Sam C Gittins.

Yet again we travel back in time to a galaxy far, far away for the last and best installment in a certain well-known film to game conversion series, thankfully this version is the best. Anyway enough from me and on with the erm... game!

Available for download this week we have...

• Super Return Of The Jedi

Points: 800
Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: Sculpted Software
Released: 1995
System: SNES

So here we are again for the third and final installment in this epic series of games and thankfully the best has seemingly been saved for last because basically this takes the best parts of the previous installments and improves on them even further. Essentially though it still isn't a great deal different from its predecessors; everything is just done on a greater scale, needless to say though I'll give you a rundown of what exactly has changed.

Classic two-dimensional platforming prevails as you take on the role of your chosen character - as opposed to the second game where you were forced in whom you have to play as at certain points - as you do battle against the empire. Because of this it means that the plot of the films is no longer accurately followed which may annoy purists but in all honesty it's for the better of the game.

Due to this you will take part in many events that never took place in the films and fight bosses that are very loosely based on actual happenings, but looking on the bright-side � as opposed to the dark-side � you now have a total of five characters to choose from which include Chewbacca, Han-Solo, Leia, Luke and Wicket. Even though you can choose to play through the majority of the game with one character there are still limitations such as only being able to play as Wicket on the Ewok stage though this is reasonably appropriate and so is understandable.

Playing as Luke now allows you to 'use the force' and your trusty lightsaber as opposed to the simple blaster used in previous games and make for a much deeper experience where combat is concerned. You'll still be relying on trial and error though for certain characters perform better on certain stages but it may take a couple of tries to figure out which is best-suited; everything seems more balanced this time around as well because power-ups are now more common and disappear at the end of each stage, previously the only way to keep a power-up was to not die, so it's nice to see that it's a tad more forgiving this time but still challenging enough.

To put it simply this is the best out of all three Star Wars games, the improvements such as the password system remain intact while the more impressive set-pieces like flying the Millennium Falcon are now even more polished; unfortunately the Endor bike scene still looks terrible but you can't have it all. If you only buy one Star Wars game from the VC then make it this one because it's that much of an improvement that it almost makes its predecessors redundant.

Verdict : The force is strongest in this one.

That's it for another installment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!

Sam Gittins
[email protected]

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