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

An astonishingly good platform title, age-old arcade port and yet another incarnation of a certain popular fighting game to make up the numbers. Anyway enough from me and on with the games! Anyway enough from me and on with the games!

Available for download this week we have...

• Mayhem in Monsterland
• Space Harrier
• Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition

Points: 500
Publisher: Apex
Developer: Apex
Released: 1993
System: C64

One of the very last games to be released for the C64, this vibrant platform title showed what the system was truly capable of and why owners of the machine were so fond of using it as their platform of choice. Essentially it's only partly original because most of it's mechanics are borrowed from other popular platform games but it's the way in which it's all executed that elevates it to levels of excellence.

Mayhem the Dinosaur is unhappy due to the negative place that Monsterland has become due to an apprentice magic Dinosaur named Theo Saurus - who decided to practice some of his master's spells after drinking too much cactus juice. Mayhem takes it upon himself to change things back to the peaceful place it once was with the help of Theo Sauras who was responsible for screwing things up in the first place.

The dinky Dino's quest will take him across five different worlds as you assume his role and must collect bags of magic dust from defeating enemies, once you have enough you must find the hidden entrance to Theo's cave so that the real magic can begin. From what begins life as a "sad" world with nearly all colour drawn out of it; a transformation then occurs which restores it to it's former fluorescent glory and from that point you must then collect yet more magic but this time in the form of stars before running across the checkered finish line to end one level and begin the next.

It's a really simple concept but it's executed so well and it manages to include mechanics which while partially borrowed work well; for instance the way that Mayhem moves is similar to Mario plus you can jump on enemies heads to dispatch them but on the flip-side you use the "up" button to jump and pressing the action button while moving makes you run at high speed through enemies Sonic style. Similarities don't stop there as you are afforded two hits before you die and there is a countdown timer for completion of each stage.

Visually this falls into two categories as on the one hand the "sad" levels which are washed out and grey look like a lot of old platform titles of the same era with a limited palette but once the level is back to it's "happy" status it takes on something that I can only really liken to being Yoshi's Island but if it were made on an eight-bit console; as for the music it transforms from being quite uninspiring to being rather upbeat and whats more the music changes multiple times throughout the restored variants of the levels and always provides an awesome audio accompaniment.

When stacked up it really is a solid platform title featuring a deceptive difficulty, delightful design but above all is just purely fun to play; compared to it's competitors it's almost as good and as aforementioned although it borrows many elements from the masters of the genre it managed to make them it's own as well as having enough originality of it's own to pull everything off with admirable aplomb.

Verdict : A cracking contender not poor pretender to the throne of the genre ascender.

Points: 500
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Released: 1986
System: Master System

This is definitely an example of it's time of release as by todays standards this once "classic" arcade port really doesn't sufficiently stack up any more; true that once upon a time it's pseudo three-dimensional flying effects and generally psychedelic nature alone would have sold this game but today we look for a little more from our gaming experiences and crucially this lacks one major component...

Variation, while everything starts out pretty fast, frantic and fluid in nature as you move furiously through the air blasting everything in sight that's looking for a fight in your direct path of flight. On your journey you will encounter many varied enemies from Alien Pods, Chinese Dragons and even Prehistoric Mammoths each with their own attack patterns; once you reach the end you will encounter the boss for that particular stage and thats basically it.

Lather, rinse, and repeat then carry on until all the eighteen levels you beat or resign to defeat from; there really isn't any more to it at all, there are a couple of bonus stages which help break things up a bit but not much.

So there you have it, a game which while entertaining in the short-term and features "far-out" visuals and "sketchy" sounds, is nothing more really than the entertaining experience that it provides on your first play through. There is little to warrant replay unless you hold particular nostalgic memories of it, everyone else will just move on rather swiftly, so it's worth the points if you can accept the short but satisfying "hit" it provides.

Verdict : An average arcade affair.

Points: 800
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Released: 1993
System: Megadrive

Yes it's that time, yet another update of the fabled "best fighter ever!!1!" game of the 16-bit generation from Capcom, while many will have their favourite version of Street Fighter II a lot of us don't really care as much as to an extent if you have played one version of the game then you have played them all; just as long that version happens to be the one with enhanced speed, multiple extra characters and... sigh here we go again.

This is basically the Megadrive port of the original SNES game with added bonus of being two games in one (Championship & Hyper Fighting) and at the time it was ever so slightly superior if you had access to a six button pad meaning you wouldn't have to pause to switch between punch and kick like you would with the three button pad; unfortunately that issue is raised once again if you are using the Wii remote on it's side to play this so it's really recommended only if you own a classic controller.

Really though there aren't any other plus points to this version of SFII especially when you consider that there are already superior versions available on the VC and so if you already own one of those then this is pretty much redundant and even if you don't you are still better off picking up one of the others as opposed to this as they are just better all round.

Other than that it's the same classic gameplay, same fighters, same modes, same everything except for the notable addition of group battle; so it's purely down to preference but personally I would recommend any of the other variants of this title that are already on the VC over this one.

Verdict : As superb as Street Fighter 2 is, this version is pretty sedate.

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
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