Another single release this week - Lords of Thunder from the Turbo Duo (listed in the Turbografx-16 section in the Virtual Console store, like all Turbo Duo games). Not to be confused with Gate of Thunder, another previously released Turbografx shooter, which also associates itself with the sound produced by a large static electrical discharge, for no apparent reason.

Yup, it’s another shooter with a high quality soundtrack. I prefer my shooters to involve spaceships rather than flying fantasy guys …. not that it should really make any difference.

Again, this week we got just a single release to the Australian Virtual Console shop: The Adventures of Lolo 2, originally released on the NES. It’s a puzzler.

The Adventures of Lolo 2 (NES)

This game could have easily been titled “More levels for Lolo“, since it is essentially identical to the first Adventures of Lolo, with different puzzles.

If you are unfamiliar with the Lolo series (Eggerland in Japan), you can see if the gameplay is your thing by testing The Adventures of Lolo 1, 2 and 3 on vNES.

This week the Australian Virtual Console store saw the release of Super Street Fighter II : The New Challengers for SNES (aka Super Street Fighter II in arcades).

This is the third version of a Street Fighter II released on Virtual Console … the other two being Street Fighter II Turbo : Hyper Fighting and Street Fighter II : The World Warrior, both also arcade conversion to the Super Nintendo. Don’t get me wrong … Street Fighter II is probably still the greatest fight game ever …but do we really need three different versions on Virtual Console ?

Street Fighter II : The New Challengers (SNES)

Compared to the other versions, The New Challengers gives you updated graphics and sound, a few new special moves, and four extra characters; Cammy (a Chun-Li clone with pig tails), Dee Jay, T. Hawk and Fei Long. The downside is that is isn’t as fast as Hyper Fighting … so the decision is tough. I already own Street Fighter II Turbo : Hyper Fighting, so for me the decision is easy; I’m not shelling out more cash for a slower tweaked version.

Shame there is no version with online play like the Street Fighter II version available on Xbox Live Arcade. But then, the lack of Wii titles with online play has become the norm … so I won’t hold my breath for that one.

This weeks releases on the Australian Virtual Console: Riot Zone (TurboGrafx-16/TurboDuo) and 1080° Snowboarding (Nintendo 64).

While I haven’t played it yet, 1080° Snowboarding looks like it really captures the feel of snowboarding. I guess we wouldn’t expect any less from the developers of Wave Rave 64, another game known for it’s great ‘feel’.

1080° Snowboarding (Nintendo 64)

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This weeks Australian Virtual Console releases: Alien Storm (Sega Megadrive) [think Golden Axe mashed up with the sprites from Contra] and StarTropics (NES) [like Zelda 1, but much better].

StarTropics (NES) - this is an RPG in the style of the original Legend of Zelda, but most players agree that StarTropics is much better. If you’ve been tempted to buy Zelda 1 from the NES, skip it and move straight to anything else in the Zelda series, or play StarTropics instead.

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