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

Fans of lesser-known platformers will likely be satisfied by this release for a time, especially if they like ghosts and vacuum cleaners! Anyway enough from me and on with the game!
 
Available for download this week we have...     

Tumble Pop

Price: GB £2.70, EU €3
Publisher: Data East
Developer: Data East
Released: 1993
System: GameBoy

While it's true that Luigi is probably one of the more memorable characters to utilise a modified vaccuum in a game - after the Ghost Busters of course - there was another game that came out significantly before called Tumble Pop in which you take control of a man with a 'Vacuulator' who has been tasked with ridding the world of evil entities by simply hoovering them up and expelling them at each other. There's very little else you need to know with regards to the plot except that it make the perfect excuse for a very mad-cap platforming game that borrows from the best while retaining its own charm.

There are a host of levels included spread out over eight worlds via a Super Mario Land 2 style map system which allows you to pick certain levels in whichever order you want even though ultimately you'll be playing through them all it's still nice to be given the illusion of choice. Levels themselves consist of simple 2D platform sections where you work your way upward having to rid the area of all the monsters before the time runs out, often upon defeating an enemy they will drop a letter which can collect up to none of to spell the name of the game, doing this will also end the level but also allowing you to enter a mini-game which will allow you to collect many items.

Power-ups that you'll come across include increased mobility or even invincibility which can be stored for use in the later levels, of course there are the obligatory extra lives that you can collect sporadically which are always useful especially considering how easy it can be to die if you're careless enough to walk into one of the games many enemies which range from Aliens, Mutants and even robots. Once you're done with the main game which shouldn't take more than a few hours even including the few not-so challenging boss battles you can even have a go at making your own levels which can artificially extend the life of the title somewhat as does the suspend play feature which make handilly lets you bypass the slightly inconvenient password system. 

A reasonable amount of time has gone into the visuals as the backgrounds while clearly copy/pasted in places have a certain amount of charm to them as do the rather unique animations of your character and the enemies as you attempt to suck them up.
Audibly everything is rather cheerful as a catchy piece of music which is looped plays for the entirity of the game, varying slightly with each new backdrop, the sound effects are suitably cute too adding to the playful tone of this rather odd platformer.

It may be quirky enough to recommend as a curiosity which will pique the interest of fans who enjoy the genre but to anyone else I would advise caution as while this title is fun to play in short bursts it can become rather repetitive leaving you feeling perhaps short-changed. Admittedly the game does cost very little for an eShop offering so it's still tempting but it's far from being the best that you can get and while it doesn't plain suck it's still lacking that certain 'something' which would make it an essential purchase.   
 
Verdict : A novel distraction that's not quite powerful enough to suck you in completely.


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!