What is Nintendo’s latest obsession with scrolling shooters? Today’s Virtual Console update sports TWO shooting titles, Xevious and R-Type III, out of the three releases (the third being Moto Roader). The big difference between the two titles; Xevious has vertical scrolling, while R-Type III features horizontal scrolling! Now the question is, are they worth your hard earned points?

R-Type III: The Third Lightning- If you passed on the first R-Type release for the Virtual Console, you may now pat yourself on the back, you just saved $6! Originally released on the SNES, R-Type III will probably be your best bet for any space shooting madness for quite some time. This game is bound to frustrate new gamers, while making gamers like myself very happy with it’s difficulty. It’s one of those old school games that make you memorize enemy patterns if you any decent chance at survival. Oh, and you also blow stuff up with a ton of lasers!

Final Opinion: Yay

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Xevious- This game has some really deep old school roots. Released in 1983 as an arcade game, Xevious was one of the first vertical scrolling shooters and one of the largest influences on future shooting games. The version available for download today is the 1990 release for the NES. The exact same game was released for Nintendo’s classic NES series on the GBA. Back then you would have had to plop down $20 to own the game. Today it only sets you back $6. A way better deal in my opinion, but if you chose one game to buy today it would be R-Type III.

Final Opinion: Nay

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Moto Roader- Our little TurboGrafx 16 release for the day! This top-down racer is definitely reminiscent of the old Micro Machines series of games. The game is billed as a “futuristic racer”, but in reality it’s just a racing game with a bunch of pixelated cars. Moto Roader also supports 5 players, but good luck finding 4 other people that would want to play this game as much as you. The cool part of the game is that you can buy upgrades for your car before each race, so you can like, blow more stuff up. I would really love to see a release of Micro Machines on the Virtual Console, but I guess this is the best I will get until now.

Final Opinion: Nay

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Don’t get me wrong, this week’s releases are still a decent group of games. I am just disappointed that we all got shafted on snatching up some high profile Nintendo games this week. We are due to see some classic games in the coming weeks from Nintendo, so I would definitely conserve some points until then.

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