Random Weirdness - Every Monday

Okay, so the unthinkable happened. Square Enix decided that they couldn't milk any more money doing remakes of the old Final Fantasy games and put the first one on the Virtual Console. While this is awesome, as it is a great NES RPG for cheap, all I can say is it's about damn time. Now get to work on bringing Dragon Warrior out. Anyway, in light of the FF release, I decided to post an oldie, but a goodie. Enjoy.

CONTRA REBORN!

Konami have been introducing their popular franchises to the Wii. We've seen Gradius make a WiiWare return and that horrible Castlevania fighting game (when will you learn, Konami. Castlevania sucks in 3D), not to mention Solid Snake in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Now, it's time for my all time favorite classic Konami franchise to step up. Of course, I'm speaking of Contra ReBirth, which was released this past monday on WiiWare. I haven't played an awesome Contra game since Contra III: The Alien Wars. Since then, most of the games have been less than stellar (primarily Legacy of War and The Contra Adventure - both of those games sucked). Then Contra 4 came out (I still have yet to play that one) which brought back the series in superb form. Now we have one for the WiiWare, and it kicks ass. It reminds me a lot of Contra III, with the ability to switch between two weapons on the fly and the return of the homing missile, which is tied with, of course, the spread gun as my favorite weapon. Bill Rizer is back, of course, but Lance is gone, literally. Lance went on a solo mission back in time to the 1970s and was never heard from again. Which leaves Bill and his new partner, Yagyu (from Neo Contra) to go back and finish the job. Everything I love about the series is back: shitloads of enemies, bullets, and explosions. Some of the stages are crazy. The first boss battle has you jumping out of your exploding spaceship to fight a giant space centipede, or whatever, while you ride on the debris that is burning up while entering the Earth's atmosphere (I'm not making this up, check out the video). Another stage has a bunch of purple, robotic, giant llamas that you can blow the heads off of. Crazy. This game is so much fun. It brings me back to the days of playing the original with my younger brother, as always, implementing the Konami code that everyone knows by heart (man, I did that shit in my sleep). Anyway, if you haven't played it, do so. And if you have a Wii, it's ten bucks, man. I swear, Contra ReBirth could wipe the floor with the other WiiWare games out there. Pick. This. Up. Anyway, here's some of that beautiful bean footage. By beans, I mean "wanton destruction."

Savage Virtual Console Apocalypse

I love the Wii's Virtual Console service. Bringing all of my favorite titles from yesteryear right to my game system for a reasonable price. You want to play NES games? You got it. Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo games? Sure thing. TurboGrafx 16? Hell, we'll even throw in some of the TurboGrafx CD games for good measure. You want some Japanese games, too? Go right ahead. Domo arigato, Mr. Nintendo.

The Virtual Console could very well rule the world, but it doesn't.

Why? Well aside from the obvious (that being yours truly rules the world), it's not being utilized to it's fullest. Sure, they put some great games on there, but there's a lot of crap on there, too. Seriously, who wants to play Mach Rider, or the Adventures of Lolo, or Milon's Secret Castle (The Angry Video Game Nerd said it was terrible)? They even have Donkey Kong Jr. Math. Who the hell wants to play a math game?

And those are just in the NES games. Fortunately, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis libraries are not as clogged with as many shitty games as the NES, but you can still find some crap lying around there. Not only that, but there are plenty of games that have yet to see the light of day on the service. Where are all the cool Enix games? You only have Actraiser available. Where's Soul Blazer or Illusion of Gaia? Hell, where's the Dragon Warrior series?

The weekly releases seem like just a small trickle, too. Initially, they said that there would be four games released every week. I think that might have happened only once or twice since its inception. During the winter, they usually only put out two games. And when it picks back up in the spring, you'll usually see up to three per week. Now, I understand that Nintendo can only do so much each week, so I'm not too bent out of shape about that.

Then comes the advent of WiiWare. At first, I thought, "Cool, some downloadable modern games." But then I realized that , instead of releasing three for the VC and one for WiiWare, the WiiWare release often took the spot of one of the VC releases. So now, if you're lucky, you get a WiiWare game and two VC games. Not to mention the fact that half the WiiWare games are nothing more than a bunch of shovelware. You want a shitload of mediocre puzzle games? No? Too bad. You wanna play a bean bag tossing game? Neither do I, but they made it, anyway. Oh, here's a good one. Do you want to have your own farm... full of Pokemon? Can you do anything with it? No, not really. You just watch them as they act all cute. That'll be ten bucks, please.

Sure, there are great games for WiiWare. I love Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People. I even like some of the WiiWare iterations of classic francises, like Bomberman Blast and Gradius Rebirth. The last WiiWare game I picked up was Onslaught, a Japanese first person shooter. I don't know if any Japanese company has ever made a first person shooter before this. It feels very much like an arcade game, though. It's not bad.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Nintendo's online game services are great, but they're not as awesome as they should be. I still think that the VC is better than WiiWare, mostly because the latter is full of fledgling video game companies trying to make a quick buck by flinging monkey shit, while the former is full of seasoned video game companies trying to make a quick buck by rereleasing all their old games, which, by the way, some of them are still monkey shit.

I'll leave you with one moment of promise for the service. This independent company, WayForward, made a puzzle-horror game called LIT. It has a simple premise and storyline, but the mix of horror and puzzle elements gives it a fresh hook. It's not a bad game at all. I just hope we see more forward thinking game developers who can keep giving us something that pushes the boundaries of gaming. We all know the Wii could use all the help it can get in that department.