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

Another installment of VC Weekly brings with it another solitary game in what seems to have become a standard release schedule, here's hoping for a blowout of games nearer the end of this month. Anyway enough from me and on with the game!

Available for download this week we have...

• Alex Kidd in Shinobi World

Points: 500
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Released: 1990
System: Master System

After having varying degrees of success in his previous outings Alex Kidd was dragged out one last time on the Master System, this time into the world of Shinobi. The plot as ever revolves around Alex having to defeat evil and rescue his girlfriend with the twist being that a god takes control of Alex and turns him into a Ninja... of sorts.

It's an interesting premise which lends itself well to a good few interesting set-pieces and scenarios which are reminiscent of the game that it's mimicking; it's basically a cut-back version of Shinobi that plays in a more light-hearted way. This basically means that you'll get enemies but you won't be hard pushed to get the better of them, the levels aren't that challenging either and are what gamers have come to expect from a platform game.

Everything looks reasonably good for a Master System title as you might expect from one of the later games released on the system and the music is decent but sadly marred by glitches causing the audio to slow down and sometimes cut out altogether which is unfortunate.

Really there isn't a great deal to say about this game, buy it if you're a fan of the series but otherwise it really isn't worth your time because simply there are better platform games out there so why choose one that's average at best?

Verdict : A perfectly playable yet passable platform game.

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]

Looking for reviews on other Virtual Console games? Or a full list of games available on the system? Then Check out our Virtual Console Index Page.