This is the best game on the Wii's Virtual Console, hands down. The single player is your tried-and-true standard Bomberman fare, but the multiplayer - which you can play with up to five players - is nothing short of extraordinary. The formula is simple (despite occasional stage gimmicks like conveyor belts and teleport holes), and is a wellspring of endless fun. Not just good for a retro game, Bomberman '93 is currently one of the best games, period, on Wii.

Progress: Gave Up

It's a little rough around the edges, but Streets of Rage is pretty close to what we know today as the modern Beat-Em-Up. There are some weapon pickups and health items and so forth, multiple attacks (jump kick, suplex, piledriver!), and three ethnically appropriate characters with no real gameplay difference. With two players, this is a great Virtual Console selection.

Progress: Gave Up -- Round 8

A Gauntlet-style action RPG for up to five players. Choose from several cool classes, including Fighter, Warlock, Elf, and Knome! Use your class-specific attack (a colored projectile) to beat up enemies and destroy their spawn points.

Not much to look at, but Dungeon Explorer has some promise for multiplayer hijinks on Virtual Console.

Progress: Gave Up

Take a space shooter, and turn the spaceships into kids with laserguns. Gunstar Heroes is brilliant in its simplicity and excellently tuned in difficulty. Upgradeable weapons, constant crossfire, and awesome music make it a surprisingly addictive retro title, especially with two players. I would rank it a Virtual Console must-have.

Progress: Gave Up -- Finished like two levels

Another Xmas VC purchase. Slightly better than Altered Beast: variety of selectable characters, mountable beasts, giant axes, fire everywhere.

Progress: Gave Up -- Level 2?

Rise from your graves!

I bought this little guy for Virtual Console with Xmas Wii points. Playing it at first was hilarious, but the novelty wore off pretty quick, what with the grating sound and the klonky (that's not a word... yet) controls. But, you could do worse.

Progress: Gave Up -- Third level?

Long ago, in the before-time, I actually did manage to beat the entire StarCraft single-player campaign, without cheats even. But a few years ago a hard drive mishap resulted in the destruction of these records. Recently I've been feeling an itch to try again, and apparently I had already worked my way up to Terran mission 9 (there are ten Terran missions, then ten Zerg missions, and finally ten Protoss).

So I did Terran 10: The Hammer Falls last night, which I can still recall as one of the greatest challenges of my young video game life. There were many setbacks to be sure (remember: Save Early, Save Often), but I eventually powered through, and wiped my opponents off the face of the map before destroying the mission-critical Ion Cannon. They were quite helpless against my victory fleet of invincible Battlecruisers.

I still consider StarCraft's appeal remarkable, given that it is going on eight years old now. The balance struck between complexity and simplicity is commendable. (Where is the DS and/or Wii remake?)

Progress: Zerg Campaign Mission 1

One of the best parts of SA/DX is how fast it can go. With some exceptions (the excruciating casino stage, getting lost treasure hunting as Knuckles, and ... Big the Cat), it is possible to blow through Sonic Adventure in short order without too much trouble. I'm far from the best at it but I do enjoy occasionally winding down a quiet weekend with an afternoon of Sonic Adventuring start to finish.

Something this game did that its followups failed to follow up on was streamlining. The scenery is just as pretty, but there is no obligation, and even little motivation, to stop and drink it in. Despite glitches and one of the most awkward cameras in the universe, finishing a stage in two minutes and only glimpsing its surroundings captures a great deal of the essence of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Progress: finished in 4:46

Definitely a good game, but there are some things really holding it back, which have thankfully all been amended in its sequels. Some gameplay elements didn't sit well with me, like abilities that are poorly documented (I got a "super jump" less than halfway through the game but didn't know how to use it until just before the final boss), the crippled shop (my inventory is full of useless items that I can't sell), and the underwhelming extra modes after beating the game.

The voice acting is terrible - but there's not a lot of it. The endings are also pretty meh, but it's not a big downer. What gets me the most is still the technical limitations, and I'm really, really glad that the format changes saw that they never happened again. The flaws definitely detract from the experience, but not enough so to ruin it; SotN is a fine game despite them.

Progress: 200.4%

It's hard not to have fun when you're playing as the ass-kicking and name-taking Alucard. The castle has a ton of special abilities and equippable items to find, including transmogrification forms (wolf/bat/mist), familiars to tag along and help out, and plenty of expendable offensive items like magic missiles and bombs. One thing SotN is lacking that its followers have in spades is standard weapon types: there are short swords, long swords, and some maces (which are pretty much longer swords), but that's about it.

The Metroidvania formula, even in its earliest incarnation, is pretty solid. But, there are some detrimental elements in Symphony. Most of them are technical - between the two-dimensional particle effects and background parallax, this sidescroller really taxes the Playstation's resources, resulting in some situations of intense slowdown. There's also the bothersome load times when entering an area with new music (and the music itself doesn't loop quite properly either).

There's also the midway point, at which you may think you're beating the game - and in fact you can get a bad ending here - but no, there is an entire other castle in the sky! It brings the game to a more respectable length (I'm currently projecting about 10 hours, where it would formerly have been closer to 6), but doubling the map's size out of nowhere is a little sketchy.

It is quite fun, and I can't wait to wrap the final boss up and try the extra modes, but it's hard to ignore the performance limitations of a sidescrolling game.

Progress: Level 38, 139.0%