VC Tuesday: Adventure Mountain

This week brings another rare (not Rare) Nintendo 64 release, and a seasonally appropriate one at that. 1080 Snowboarding is making its appearance on the Virtual Console for the first time. When it hits the American download service, we look forward to playing it and pretending it's cold outside. Until then, we can just look at screenshots and pretend we're playing it and pretending it's cold outside.

The other two releases are distant cousins. Adventure Island is a remake of Westone's original Wonder Boy game with a different protagonist (which, of course, spun off into its own series), and Monster World IV is part of a Wonder Boy spinoff series. It's ... a lot more confusing when they release two of them at a time like this. We're all familiar with Adventure Island, at least.

• Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima (Hudson's Adventure Island) (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)

• 1080 Snowboarding (Nintendo 64, 1-2 players, 1000 Wii Points)

• Monster World IV (Mega Drive, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)