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

Another week, another solitary release as Nintendo seem to be getting back to a weekly schedule once more. Anyway enough from me and on with the erm... game!

Available for download this week we have...

• Final Fight 3

Points: 800
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Released: 1996
System: SNES

Following the decent level of success had by the first two games Capcom went ahead and released a third entry in their popular Final Fight series very late on in the lifespan of the SNES, but that's not to say it was ignored because of this; indeed it did rather well back in the day however it's now a somewhat rare game to find in its original format and so this Virtual Console release is something of a blessing for anyone who has been wanting to play it but avoid the hefty price-tag.

It's mostly more of the same here but with a bit more balancing out of the attacks that you perform, the end result is something that plays partly like a scrolling beat-em-up and partly like a traditional one versus one fighting game. Your standard moves remain intact but you can now perform a 'Dash' move plus a complementary attack and a special move meter that allows you to unleash Street Fighter style specials that require their own rotation of the D-Pad; this may all sound rather unnecessary but it really does add to how the game plays rather than detracting from it.

You get three game modes to choose from which consist of single player, two-player and most interestingly an automatic two-player mode in which the second character is controlled by the CPU and rather competently too may I add. This can be very useful especially during the later levels, the only downside is some slowdown which is caused by the extra 'work' the console doing in executing this mode, otherwise though it's a solid addition.

Everything looks very detailed as you may have come to expect from Capcom games as they know how to strike a good balance so everything looks sumptuous considering when it was released. Audio complements the game rather well with some stunning tracks that live up to the high standard expected from the series; the only downside is the sometimes muffled voice effects but considering how much has been crammed in here it's not surprising that there are a few niggling technical aspects but they are by no means deal-breakers.

Overall this is near enough a fantastic return to form for the series, some purists may prefer the more straightforward fighting of the first two entries but really this third iteration manages to add so much more that it's hard to fault it for trying something different when it clearly works in favour of the game. If you're a fan of the series then you're most likely gonna want this and even if you're not this is still an excellent title in its own right and comes highly recommended indeed.

Verdict : Superb side-scrolling scrapper.

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.