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

The VC celebrates the release of it's three-hundredth title this week, thankfully it's a good one even if the other title released this week is exactly the opposite in terms of quality. Anyway enough from me and on with the games!

Available for download this week we have...

• MUSHA
• Smash Table Tennis

Points: 900
Publisher: Seismic
Developer: Compile
Released: 1990
System: Megadrive

It seems that vertical shooters end up falling into either one of two situations; most of them get released in all regions and receive a pretty high level of critical acclaim but there are a good few that for whatever reason never see the light of day in Europe despite being excellent and going on to gain a cult following by would-be importers. This is another case that falls into the latter category and as a result M.U.S.H.A (Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armour) never reached as large a target audience as it could have done; but now that mistake can be rectified with its VC release.

The title was developed by Compile who are highly regarded for producing games of this genre including the rest of the 'Aleste' series to which this installment belongs. So just what exactly makes it so brilliant? Well for a start the presentation used here is absolutely top- notch from the amazing anime style intro that you'd be more accustomed to seeing in a Mega CD title to the big, bold and beautiful visuals which are among some of the most impressive ever created on the 16-bit machine.

Everything moves fluidly and sounds superb as you pilot your 'ship' which soars through the skies as you take out wave upon wave of relentlessly attacking enemies which proves ever so satisfying thanks to a well balanced weapon-set. You have a standard single shot weapon which can be upgraded to a fully fledged cannon but it's the pods that provide the real firepower; including such delights as cluster bombs, lasers and a very versatile shield... naturally these become more powerful by collecting up to four of the same coloured power-up and as a result you will feel outnumbered but never out-gunned.

Somewhat strangely when you have two pods they are fired separately so pressing two fire buttons almost constantly is required which seems a tad odd but it quickly becomes second nature and just as well because there's always a lot of on-screen action to keep track of. It's always busy but it never becomes to hectic to handle, the locations are diverse and the range of enemies are both inventive and challenging not to mention the behemoth bosses which round things off nicely; also another excellent element are drones that you can pick up which assist your ship in a variety of ways providing either offensive or defensive capabilities, you will learn to use these to your advantage if you wish to survive.

Overall it's one of the best vertical shooters available for the Megadrive and the amount of attention to detail and design that's been put into it is testament to a huge amount of effort that was put into its creation. This is as pure, fresh and challenging an experience as you can get for it's genre on a 16-bit system and now that it's available to all at a reasonable price, there really is no excuse for those who have always wanted to play it; so go forth and enjoy because quality like this doesn't come around very often and it's well worth the extra one hundred Wii points.

Verdict : A simply sublime shooter.

Points: 600
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Released: 1987
System: NES

Where to begin with this... it's decidedly deranged that Nintendo have decided to release such a monumentally terrible title on the Virtual Console, especially considering that the other Hanabi titles thus far have been mostly decent and present excellent opportunities for people to finally experience some of the long lost titles that they may have been longing to play for some time but have refrained perhaps due to the high import cost of obtaining the games in their original format.

But this latest addition to the library is ridiculously redundant as it really is the poorest excuse for a sports title that I have ever had the misfortune of playing; I'm still shocked that it was even deemed worthy enough for release in the first place let alone a re-release decades later.

It's a failure of epic proportions, not even coming close to matching any of Nintendo's own NES sports titles which were even in the worst examples still playable but this is something else entirely. You basically hit the ball and try to score as many points as possible within a set number of matches but controlling the direction in which the small spherical object travels can be a troublesome and tedious process as the controls are absolutely atrocious.

Add to this the decidedly bland backgrounds plus the mundane music and it becomes apparent that this really isn't a game that you'd wish upon anyone to play, especially when it's been done to a better standard many times since ala Rockstar Table Tennis heck even the Ping Pong in Wii-Play is better than this.

Truly there really isn't anything else to say other than to show my utter disgust at Nintendo wasting an opportunity to release something good instead of dragging up the corpse of a long dead sports simulation that should have stayed buried and left to rot in peace because no one in their right mind is going to want to download this... it's unnatural!

Verdict : The most pointless and pathetic Ping-Pong game ever produced.

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]

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.