The Rocky Mountain Collegian

March 5th, 2007

Routines and Rewrites

I have a routine on Monday mornings. It’s a simple one, I think – my first class is at 11, mercifully, so I get up around 9:40 and watch The Price is Right at 10. Simple pleasures are always the best, if you ask me. Recently, my roommate purchased one of them newfangled Nintendo Wii’s, and it’s contributed another little step to the routine. See: one of the features touted by the rather austere game machine is that of the “Virtual Console,” a glorified outlet for legal emulation which allows users to download older games to their wii’s at prices in the 5 to 10 dollar range.

When the service launched with the console back in November it had an embarrassingly limited selection of about 12 games, but since then the smoke-enshrouded overlords at Nintendo have seen fit to update the service with new games on a weekly basis. The day of the week chosen for updates in North America is, oddly enough, Mondays at 10, Mountain Time. So in addition to Bob Barker, I also get to marvel at the frequently odd Virtual Console game additions for the week.

Last week saw the addition of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a game which defined video games for kids growing up in the late 90s, and which has become almost impossible to talk about due to the absolutely staggering level of hyperbole attributed to it since then. They also added a few obscure games from the 16-bit era, including the remarkably-poorly-named-but-totally-awesome-regardless Chew Man Fu for the Turbo-Grafx 16, and the just-sorta-poorly-named-and-pretty-good Bio-Hazard Battle for the Genesis. A pretty good range of choices for one week, really. And hell, the opportunity that the Virtual Console provides for older games to reach a newfound mass audience that they never would have had originally is really intriguing. Except that, well - sometimes the weekly updates just ain’t no good, son.

This week, for example, saw the addition of three games from the NES, Super NES and Genesis, respectively. There’s the not-worth-5-bucks NES port of Elevator Action, the head-smashingly difficult Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, and the Genesis role-playing game Sword of Vermillion, which some nasally-voiced guy on youtube made a video review of, and by “video review” I mean that he swears a lot while clips of the game play in the background. Not the best selection of games, y’know? Especially coming off of last week. If there’s a silver lining to any of this, it’s that the descriptions they write for each game in the official weekly update press releases are kind of amazing. Elevator Action is described as a “multidirectional, scroll-type spy-action game that is a blast from the past.” Do they have, like, a computer writing these? Let me try my hand at it.

Monopoly™ (Dinner Table, 2-8 players, 2550 Wii Points): A classic paper-board game in which you can own properties. Choose from twelve playable characters including Thimble, Wheelbarrow, Top Hat and The Boot. Move around the board by rolling the dice – small cubes with dots printed on them. Try not to land on your opponent’s spaces or you will have to pay them money, and don’t go to the jail-space! When you cross the box marked Go, you get 200 dollars. Features real-life locations like the Waterworks and Community Chest. Monopoly is fun for the entire family!

Hm. I think I may have a newfound respect for whoever’s writing these. Missing the entire point is an art.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Game Guy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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