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

If you like your fighting games on the difficult side then you'll no doubt be pleased with this latest release, everyone else may want to give it a miss though. Anyway enough from me and on with the erm... game!

Available for download this week we have...

• The King of Fighters '95

Points: 900
Publisher: D4 Enterprise
Developer: SNK
Released: 1995
System: Neo Geo

When the '94 edition of this popular fighting series was released there were a number of complaints from fans who wanted certain aspects of the game improving for the sequel; namely the ability to customise your teams which wasn't there and the fact that the CPU characters were far too easy to defeat. Be careful what you wish for is the general rule with the '95 edition because while these issues were addressed they managed to create another issue far worse than the two combined.

Customisation options were added without any issues but when it came to altering the difficulty SNK basically went from one extreme to the other by making the CPU so hard to beat that it basically rendered the game unplayable for many which almost cancels out any actual positive improvements that were made; in short the company shot themselves in the foot.

Fighting mechanics remain largely unchanged, you can now select your own team instead of them being predetermined but aside from that you still have both weak and strong punches/kicks along with the power bar which allows you to perform special moves once it fills up. A variety of game modes are available to you including Single Play where you choose a character and take on the leader of the opposing team, Team Play which lets you choose a team of three characters and fight against a trio of CPU opponents plus Single All mode in which you attempt to take on the entire roster of the game with just one character if you're feeling particularly masochistic.

Difficulty level aside everything else is as it should be from the responsive controls to the fluid animations, beautiful backdrops and excellent accompanying music; so if you really want to get your moneys worth then you'd be best off finding another person to play against as this is where you'll undoubtedly have the most fun.

If you're planning on playing this solo however then extreme caution is advised because playing the single player modes on any difficulty is a particularly painstaking challenge whichever way you look at it. Truly if you value your sanity and your classic controller then purchase this in mind to playing it with someone else, otherwise steer clear and wait for the inevitable release of the fairer and more balanced '96 sequel.

Verdict : Fun but flawed and frustrating fighter.

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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