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

A couple more games added to the VC once more and while one is barely worth mentioning the other is at least reasonable, with any luck the next update will be of greater quality. Anyway enough from me and on with the games!

Available for download this week we have...

• Super R-Type
• Operation Wolf

Points: 800
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Irem
Released: 1992
System: SNES

With two arcade R-Type games in the bag (both of which were of decent quality) the developers decided to try their hand at a SNES-based sequel; inspired by elements from the originals this iteration turned out to be something of a mixed bag. It starts off as you take control of R-9; a powerful ship and earths last hope for survival against the evil Bydo empire... yeah the good old earth VS aliens plot, still if it isn't broke...

The main game itself is heavily based on R-Type II which is no bad thing, one of the first things worthy of note is the visuals and audio which are respectfully recreated on the 16-bit machine and yield no real difference from the arcade versions. For it's time of release this was quite an achievement and as a result the game looks and sounds decent enough even today.

Actual gameplay however is a somewhat thorny issue, as yes the ship controls well, the behemoth-sized boss battles are satisfying, lasers and power-ups are well placed and perform well and the enemies are fun to blast. But where this game is let down is in it's complete lack of restart points so if your unfortunate enough to battle your way through the ominous onslaught of enemies all the way to the boss only to get K-O'd then you'll have to start the entire level again!

Mercifully you are granted unlimited continues to aid you in your quest to save the galaxy but ultimately it can prove frustrating when you retry a level for the fifteenth time only to get beaten once again and it's at this point where you have to wonder if simply playing starts to border on mere madness and masochism.

Basically if you want a decent shooter and aren't deterred by an insane and often unfair, cruel and punishing difficulty level then by all means this is the game for you. For everyone else though who just want to simply play and progress and move on to the next game, this perhaps isn't for you but if your still looking for something thats similar go for either the original or R-Type III as they are still challenging but fair, rewarding and undeniably superior.

Verdict : A solid but soul destroying difficult shooter.

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

Once a sure-fire hit when it debuted in the arcades thanks to it's simple but smart visuals and authentic Uzi 9mm style light-gun; this was a decent arcade shooting game of it's time. So it should perhaps come of no surprise that this success would aspire to be recreated through numerous home console versions and equally unsurprising it should be is that none of them ever came close including this, the NES version.

From the outset this isn't a particularly appealing prospect due to it's cut back visuals which look tragic in comparison to the arcade original not to mention the sound which feels suitably muted in comparison. But these are just purely aesthetically aspects of the game which surely wouldn't matter that much if the game delivered the goods in the gameplay department surely?

Well perhaps but in this case you don't even get that, granted at least the original NES version supported both control pad and zapper support; both nearly equally as cumbersome but nonetheless usable. Here however this VC incarnation only supports the pad and nothing more, still as sluggish as ever and about as responsive as a raccoon with rigor-mortis.

Surely this would have been an unmissable opportunity to recode the game to work with the pointer function of the Wii-remote to at least add some form of viable control to this otherwise atrocious game in order to give it some sort of selling point? No then? Well that essentially makes this a game with no selling point which is of no real use or value to anyone.

It truly is not worth investing in this at all, if it had full remote functionality it still would only be barely playable but without that it has no sole redeeming feature, no hook, no real enjoyment and thus no point. Wait for some official Nintendo NES lightgun games to be re-released on the VC which they will hopefully code with added functionality or otherwise track down the original in an arcade and pay the princely sum of twenty pence for a play of the superior version, this isn't it though and really isn't worth even entertaining the thought of purchasing.

Verdict : Poorly programmed ported pointlessness.

Thats 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.