VC Tuesday: The Terror of Druaga

Many American gamers would consider today's Japanese VC update to have two winners: the isometric RPG Landstalker, and Konami's wonderful SNES shooter Gradius III. Japanese gamers, for whom, of course, this update is intended, would be just as likely to gravitate toward the Famicom version of Namco arcade "classic" The Tower of Druaga, which, uh, they can enjoy with our compliments. We keep getting fooled by Druaga's appearances in Namco Museum collections into thinking that it's really a good game and we're just missing something, but we really don't think we are. It's a brutally hard maze game with unresponsive controls and no point. It's part RPG and part action game and all arrrrrrggghhhh.

This week's Japanese Virtual Console releases:

• The Tower of Druaga (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)

• Gradius III (Super Famicom, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)

• Landstalker (Mega Drive, 1 player, 700 Wii Points)