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

Disappointing doesn't even sum up the two releases covered in this edition, but still it's another two out of the way to make way for the better titles which hopefully be in the next edition. Anyway enough from me and on with the games!

Available for download this week we have...

• Clayfighter
• Sonic Chaos

Points: 800
Publisher: Interplay
Developer: Visual Concepts
Released: 1993
System: SNES

During it's lifetime the SNES saw many a varied visual style for many a game ranging from the realistically rendered DKC to the frenetically paced F-zero which famously employed the Mode 7 graphical technique and everything in-between. However nothing quite like Clayfighter had been seen before, at least not on a console; 'Claymation' was something that had been used in television and films before but as for games, this was new territory.

The sheer level of work that had evidently gone into carefully crafted clay characters was nothing short of astounding and made for a simultaneously surreal and stunning looking title which easily set itself apart from everything else; but as impressive as it looked, as crazy as it's characters were ranging from Blue Suede Goo, Bonker the crazed clown Ickybod Clay and more besides, it was all just overcompensation.

Each clay-clad character has their own range of basic attacks as well as the obligatory special moves to perform, as for how it plays... think Street Fighter II but poorly executed; most moves are infuriatingly inaccurate and the special moves aren't anything spectacular at all. To add further insult to the clay-caused injury the audio used in this version of the game not only grates after a little while even though it suits the game but it's actually a good deal inferior to the SNES version which makes it a wonder why the slightly superior version wasn't put onto the VC instead.

Regardless of version though there aren't really any redeeming features that save this from becoming a rather bland and basic brawler once the novelty of the crazy clay characters has worn off and in all honesty you would be much better off sticking with a more established fighters such as Samurai Shodown or Street Fighter II.

Verdict : A clever clay casing conceals a crappy combat system.

Points: 500
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Aspect
Released: 1993
System: Master System

By the time of the blue blurs third iteration Megadrive owners were treated to one of Sonic's best adventures to date which increased ten-fold once Sonic and Knuckles was released; but for owners of the less capable 8-bit system the Master System the third title in the series was something completely different and unfortunately underwhelming in comparison to it's bigger and better 16-bit counterpart.

So the story starts with Robotnik stealing the red chaos emerald so that he can use it to make nukes, this then throws all the other emeralds out of balance sending them to a parallel universe. This is where Sonic and Tails then step in who between them will collect the chaos emeralds and save South Island from Robotniks evil scheme.

This of course sets the scene quite nicely for another spot of ring collecting, speeding through loops, eliminating enemies, scouring special stages and beating bosses. Everything is split into six zones each of which is separated into three acts; after you have breezed through two standard acts with literally take seconds to breeze through it's then onto the boss battle during which you can now thankfully hold onto a few rings which balances things out a bit but unfortunately the whole game offers very little in the way of challenge at all.

Even your average gamer with no real skill as such will be able to zip through this and complete the whole game in less than an hour with very little challenge at all, had the acts been a bit longer or if there had been more of them then this may have helped matters slightly but really once you've breezed through it twice as both Sonic and Tails there is little here to come back for assuming you collected all the emeralds along the way as Sonic.

Not a lot more can be said about the title as it is weaker than it's predecessors, features levels which are lacking anything really special and is pretty much average in both aesthetics and audio. If you remembered it fondly back in the day then theres a chance you might want to pick it up again for the simple sake of nostalgia or if you've never played it before but even at only five hundred Wii points it's cheaper to track down a copy of Sonic Adventure DX for the GC and play that as it contains the Game Gear version of the same game along with others as bonus titles, it's not quite the same but it's the better option if you're not too fussed about owning the MS version.

Verdict : A short, simple and sedate Sonic title.

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.