Virtual Console Friday: Vampires, Shmups And 'CD-Quality' Sound

It’s Friday, which can only mean one thing: We can all go out and get rip-roaringly pissed on cheap supermarket booze tonight, have a fight and then let the government blame video games rather than cheap booze and supermarket cartels... Yes, it’s new games on the Wii Virtual Console time, with a respectable line-up gracing Nintendo’s little white box via the magic of your broadband connection today.

Firstly, space guns at the ready as Gate of Thunder, the first game from the TurboDuo console back catalogue - and one of the best side-scrolling, shoot-’em-up games released for the system - goes VC. Yes, it’s back, and up for grabs on this week’s Virtual Console for 800 Wii Points!

Set in space, and featuring a ‘rocking CD-quality’ (CD-quality!) soundtrack, it forces players to stop General Don Jingi and his Obbellon army from stealing the powerful energy source ‘Starlight’ from the Planet Aries. So fasten your seatbelts and prepare to save the universe!

Next up is a NEOGEO classic: World Heroes featuring eight unique fighters... (Well, they would be, wouldn't they? Unless they're identical twins.... or were ripped out of someone else's work... gods, PR speak, on a Friday... but SPOnG digresses)... battling it out in ‘mind-blowing’ auditoriums, with a deathmatch mode to keep things spiced up, available now for 900 Wii Points.

Finally, saving the best until last, we have Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, originally released in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, in which you play vampire hunter, Simon Belmont, hunting down the remains of Dracula in order to be saved from a deadly curse – all yours to download for 500 Wii Points!

Not the deadly curse... the game... obviously.