Bits and Bytes: Make old new again

It's round two of my mini reviews of games that I've been playing on the Wii's Virtual Console. Last week, I looked at Ninja Gaiden 3 and The Adventures of Lolo. This week brings even more goodness!

Blades of Steel (for the NES)
I have to say that I'm not a hockey fan, and by any means this isn't the best hockey game even available, but for back in the day, this fast paced hockey game brought a lot of joy to many people, including myself.

Yes, there are patterns to this game, which makes it almost impossible to lose (make sure you play on the hardest difficulty), but the simplicity makes up for the lack of a challenge. Download this and most people will pick it up in no time.

Contra III: The Alien Wars (for the SNES)
Does anyone else out there reading this remember when this game first showed up for the Super Nintendo? It was an amazing showcase of the machine's scaling capabilities (and unfortunately for its slow CPU that made some games slow down terribly). Still today, this game is a treat for the eyes and provides one of the biggest challenges of the 16-bit Era. Yes, you can play it on medium and get through the game after dying a lot, but try this baby on hard or expert. It'll make you cry. Running and gunning through aliens never felt so good.

Double Dribble (for the NES)
Replace everything I just said about Blades of Steel and replace the word “hockey” with “basketball” and you get the idea. Throw in the fact that this game had some pretty stellar slam dunk animations for the time and you get another simplistic, yet addictive classic.

Gate of Thunder (for the TurboGrafx-16)
The Turbo was a gamer's dream machine if they enjoyed hectic, fast paced and relentless shooters. Here you pilot your ship through 10 or so side scrolling levels that show no mercy. Memorize the patterns of the bosses and levels to make it through in one piece. There are a couple different powerups for your ship that can be upgraded as well. For an old game, it sure still looks and sounds pretty damn good.

There you have it. For $20, you get another set of amazing classics that will easily take up your time before Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out this week.