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VC Friday: Tee up and club some Monsters
Yours truly has hazy memories of spending an entire summer holiday glued to Mario Golf, unlocking Metal Mario, and jumping on the bed after fluking a hole-in-one (shamefully, I was nineteen at the time). And now, it's the fifteenth N64 game to appear on the PAL Virtual Console. Hell yeah! It might suffer heavily from the N64 fuzz, but for our money it's still the best in its respective series. It's accompanied this week by Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Mario Golf -- Nintendo 64 -- 1,000 Wii Points Wonder Boy in Monster Land -- Master System -- 500 Wii Points Videos of each follow the blue text.%Gallery-42959%
VC Friday: Lonpos finally leaves Japan
Oh goody, Nintendo slashed the price of a WiiWare game in PAL regions. Oh, it's ... Lonpos. The only neat, semi-interesting thing we can bring ourselves to write about Lonpos is that it was a launch title for the Japanese WiiWare service (but for 1,000 Wii Points), and that buying the starter pack and downloading all of Lonpos' extra content would cost you 5,300 Wii Points. We kid you not. Good luck with that, Genki. Lonpos -- WiiWare -- 800 Wii Points There's a video after the break of the game in "action." In short, it's a tangram puzzler, in the vein of Neves. Anybody else detecting a lack of excitement in our tone?%Gallery-19077%
VC Friday: Apes and bikes
Gaming's favorite ape returns to the PAL Virtual Console to cause havoc for arch-enemy Mario Stanley, but don't get too excited: despite being an early Miyamoto game, the 22-year-old Donkey Kong 3 has not aged gracefully. It's also a bit of an oddity in the series, in that it plays more like a shooter than the traditional run-and-jump Donkey Kong fare, so we ... guess it holds some value as a curio.Then there's Enduro Racer, a game in which it is possible to win races by driving in an almost entirely straight line. It would be fair to say Nintendo emerged triumphant in the 8-bit motocross wars. Donkey Kong 3 -- NES -- 500 Wii Points Enduro Racer -- Master System -- 500 Wii Points %Gallery-41214%
VC Friday: Fun! Fun! Strong Bad!
With our shelves and Wii fridges creaking under the weight of new games from the holidays, Nintendo has generously given PAL gamers a week to catch their breath -- at least, we think that's the idea. Both WiiWare titles this week probably only appeal to a handful of people. The fifth and final episode of Strong Bad Episode 5 is great, obviously, but only if you're in the teensy minority who grabbed the first four instalments. Meanwhile, Fun! Fun! Minigolf is allegedly so fun that maker Shin'en felt the need to tell us of its fun-ness twice over. But is a zany-looking chibi minigolf game really the title to stop us from getting our fingers gooey? Hint: no.
