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

A decent couple of titles if you're either a long-term Nintendo fan or a fighting game enthusiast. Anyway enough from me and on with the games!
 
Available for download this week we have...     

Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels
World Heroes 2


 
Price: GB £4.49, EU €4.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Released: 1986
System: NES

When this game was released in European and western territories it turned out to be something rather different from what was known as the true sequel to Super Mario Bros in Japan. Indeed the version of the game that we have come to know is none other than an alternative version of a game known as Doki Doki Panic which was remastered with Nintendo branding.

Indeed years later we did get a version of the original Super Mario Bros 2 included as “The Lost Levels” on the ever popular SNES compilation cartridge Super Mario All-Stars not to mention the edited and enhanced version in Super Mario Bros DX. This release however is the full and unedited version of the original Japanese release.

It's just like the original game except for a few new elements including poison mushrooms which can kill either Mario or Luigi if consumed and blowing wind which can either help of hinder your movement. The main change comes in the way of every single level from the original being taken back to the drawing board and completely redesigned in order to make for a more altogether challenging experience.

One other main inclusion of note is that after beating the entire final world without using a single warp zone which is a challenge in itself, you get to play a secret world nine which comprises of a few excessively easy stages. However if you then manage to beat the game a further seven times (with or without stage 9) you will get the chance to play on worlds A – D which comprise some of the most challenging levels in the history of Mario games, the difficulty of which can only be expressed in the frustration of failure rather than in mere words.

Worth buying then? Almost certainly if you are a fan of the series or maybe even if you aren't but just want to play it for the sake of doing so much like a climbing a mountain just because it's there all for the sake of the challenge. You will certainly get your points worth if it's intense difficulty you are after but thankfully you can make use of the fantastic 'save state' feature which should see you through the more 'frustrating' parts of the adventure, just make
sure you save in a sensible place as there are many pitfalls in this perilous platform title that has earnt its place in videogame history.  

Verdict : An even more super version of an undisputed classic.

Points: 900
Publisher: D4 Enterprise
Developer: Alpha Denshi
Released: 1993
System: Neo Geo

When the original World Heroes was released it was met with praise mixed with criticism in almost equal measure because for everything it did right there was something unfortunately underwhelming about the whole overall experience so it should come as little or no surprise that for the sequel Alpha Denshi decided to go back to square one, often this can result in a better product but it's only half-true in this case as while some issues are fixed others have come into play even if it is still a marginal improvement. The fighting roster may have nearly doubled in size which can be seen as an immediate positive but as we have learnt over the years; quantity does not necessarilly always equal quality so as you might have guessed this is something of a mixed bag from the very start.

Taking center stage is the Deathmatch mode which is perhaps the most interesting inclusion as it's far from being just a throwaway addition, doing away with individual health bars in exchange for one shared bar creates a decent dynamic as from the start the bar is coloured Red on the left and Blue on the right in relation to the on-screen characters. Upon taking damage that fighter will lose a coloured part of 'their' health from the bar as it's overtaken by the
attacking colour, once one colour fills the entire bar the losing player is then given a count of ten, if they recover then the battle will begin anew only this time a slight advantage is given to the player who almost managed to win in the form of more of the bar being filled in with their colour from the start; these battles can go o0n for some time owing to the fact that each player can 'recover' twice over plus the timer lasts longer and there is the interesting
addition of traps including Lasers/Saws which make for a nice strategical twist providing you can use them to your advantage.

Controls are indeed an improvement though they are still far from perfect, you have buttons for your Punches/Kicks plus another used for throws though it's fatally flawed as tapping lightly on the attack buttons will give you a basic move while holding the buttons in is supposed to result in a significantly stronger attack but there is quite a delay when you attempt this which is not really what you want in a fighting game. As aforementioned though they are much
better than the controls used in the original World Heroes title but they still suffer from being annoyingly unresponsive so ultimately how much fun you'll get out of this fighting game will depend largely on how much you of this you can put up with or if you can somehow 'adapt' to the noticable lag in the controls which arguably shouldn't be so noticable to begin with.

From a visual standpoint everything has been overhauled to a particularly decent standard featuring rather bold looking characters which are for the most part clearly seperated from the nicely rendered backgrounds which is certainly a positive step forward even if the level of animation isn't quite what you might expect from a 2D fighting game. Audibly things have improved where the music tracks are concerned as some of them are actually listenable which is a plus but that's where the positives end as the sound effects basic, banal and just plain boring lacking any real impact thus rendering their inclusion rather worthless though this was somewhat to be expected as the ones that were used in the first game were less than stellar to say the least.          

If you're particular about fighting games then chances are you will find your 'fix' elsewhere unless of course there are no other fighters on the Virtual Console that you haven't played, in which case you might feel like dropping your points on this but just be warned that for its one main positive element found in the Deathmatch mode there are still a whole host of problems present. But it's still not the worst fighter ever made by any stretch of the imagination so if you're curious then this might just be of interest to you but honestly if you are looking for a more conventional fighting game then there a many better examples available to you as this is really more of an alternative made for a small percentage of fans of the fighting genre.

Verdict : Adds an interesting yet slightly ill-advised twist to a well-trodden genre.

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!