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

One game... is all that has been released this week on the VC, chances are though if you have been playing the sublime Super Mario Galaxy then this won't have been much of an issue so it's both the best and worst week for Nintendo releases in retail and virtual format respectively. Anyway enough from me and on with the err game!

Available for download this week we have...

• Double Dribble

Points: 500
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Konami
Released: 1989
System: NES

This is the first Basketball game to arrive in the NES downloads section and indeed on the entire virtual console thus far, is it worth it though? I would have to say no. Double Dribble which may have at least been semi-impressive at it's original time of release due to it's impressive visuals for the system is incredibly dated in almost every other respect.

Audio is apparently absent from the main game as there is no background music save from in the few cut-scenes which are over relatively quickly anyway. Mechanics are basic too as while you do get to do a lot of titular dribbling and shooting into the hoop (oh err) that's basically it.

Add to this a sparse selection of controllable teams (all three of them) and you have one truly terrible title which fails to provide even one single amount of entertainment in either of it's near identical single and two player modes.

I really cannot find anything to recommend about this game aside from it's cut-scenes which are basically irrelevant by today's standards. If you want a reasonably decent basketball game until something better arrives on the VC, I would suggest dusting off your DS and obtaining a copy of Mario Hoops 3 x 3 which is arguably better than this travesty.

Verdict : Triple the drivel is Double Dribble.

Notice from Nintendo: "A second Virtual Console game was due to be released this week; however it failed to meet our technical standards because it was found to be incompatible with certain TVs when using a Component AV cable. As we are committed to releasing all new Virtual Console games with 100% component compatibility, we have decided to delay the release of this game until these technical standards are met."

That's it for another instalment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. (hopefully with more than one game) So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!

Sam Gittins
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