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

After missing out a week Nintendo have seen fit to update the Virtual Console once more, unfortunately the single title added isn't that amazing. Anyway enough from me and on with the erm... game!

Available for download this week we have...

• Zaxxon

Points: 500
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Released: 1982
System: Arcade

Back in the day of its original release Zaxxon was something rather special in the arcades owing to the isometric perspective that it employed being a first for arcade games; it also stuck bravely to sprites rather than attempting to venture into 'true' 3D territory. The result was actually rather impressive at the time and managed to create a shooting experience unlike any other around.

This re-release sticks faithfully to the arcade original with the controls being replicated just as they were with either the control stick or the D-pad handling the joystick input rather well making the various ship movements accurate leaving you to worry about the shooting which thankfully can be switched to auto-fire if you so desire.

Originally this arcade title was displayed on a vertical monitor so in a reasonably clever move this aspect has been catered for by giving players the option of displaying in either a reformatted wide-screen mode or you can stick to the windowed mode complete with an added scan- line effect if you really want. Audio is competent but only really serves to aid the experience as there is no music to speak of, just a handful of complementary blips and bleeps that amount to the games sound effects; indeed when constantly changing altitude it sounds more akin to a radio being tuned in than anything else.

It plays rather repetitively as you fly around shooting things while adjusting your altitude to ensure that you don't end up crashing, you have a fuel bar which can only be topped up by firing your laser at red barrels which are of course placed perilously at ground level often causing you to crash while obtaining fuel especially if you're new to the game. So its relatively steep learning curve basically becomes this titles undoing because it only gets increasingly difficult and when you couple this with the often object-obscuring isometric view, the game inevitably becomes a rather frustrating experience based on mere trial and error.

Overall you may get some enjoyment out of it and the novelty of the isometric view and simple gameplay may be enough to keep you playing if you're really determined to persevere with it but in all honesty there are better shooting games out there so only get this if you're literally played everything else the VC has to offer within the same genre and are desperate for a shooting game fix.

Verdict : A simple and sedate shooter.

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.