Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, an excellent (and rare) Turbografx-CD game that only saw release in Japan, and due to the rarity of the system itself and the game being overinflated in price due to its popularity, you'd have to pay out the ass for it. It also got a SNES remake that had a lot of features removed and a PSP remake under the name "Dracula X Chronicles" which didn't really do it justice, but hey, packaging in Symphony of the Night was enough of an incentive to buy it anyway.

But lucky you, it's now available on Virtual Console, in its original unedited format, for a mere $9. For that price, you get a top-notch Castlevania title with an excellent Redbook soundtrack, multiple stage routes, two playable characters, and the same high level of challenge that the series is known for (albeit considerably easier since the game auto-saves between stages, and you can restart from any stages you've reached).

If you're at all a fan of the series, this is a prime chance to own perhaps its rarest title for a very reasonable price. Jump on it!

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I wouldn't be lying if I said that TMNT: Turtles in Time on the Super Nintendo was one of the best side-scrolling brawlers ever made. Hell, it may even be #1. But somehow Ubisoft Singapore managed to throw a perfect no-hitter on everything that made the original great. Gone are the bright, colorful and cartoonish graphics, catchy tunes and bone-crunching sound effects, excellent hit detection and frenetic gameplay. Now we have an ugly, terrible-sounding, poorly controlling, sluggish mess that doesn't satisfy on any level. I'm just glad I played the demo before I plunked down the $10 asking price; this is truly awful.

Do yourself a big favor and hunt down a copy of the SNES game instead; it's a far better use of your time. Or, if that's not an option, just pay $5 and get the original TMNT arcade game instead, also available on Xbox Live. It's a perfect port of the arcade classic, and far more worthy of your time.

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A shooter known for its intense action and yet heavy emphasis on planning and strategy - you'll have to rapidly swap between black and white polarities to destroy opposing ships quicker, absorb same-colored bullets, and be careful to always kill enemies of like color in groups of three to keep your chain going and your score climbing. As an added bonus, you can even upload your high scores (and demos) to the online service for others to watch and be amazed by.

I can think of few better ways to spend $5 on Xbox Live Arcade.

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The logical followup to Mega Man 9's runaway success, featuring eight new robot masters, 13 new stages, multiple stage routes, an even sillier storyline, and plenty of platforming and boss fights to keep you entertained. Hardcore fans will also have a ton of new challenges to complete for bragging rights, and being able to play as Protoman right off the bat is a first for the series.

The stage design feels a bit generic this time around; with few exceptions, everything here has been done before in previous games, and the new obstacles aren't much to write home about. A stark contrast to Mega Man 9's creative obstacles, to say the least. The music also falls flat; it's not terrible, just rather low-tempo and forgettable, but that's a pretty big omission for a Mega Man title. Hell, I still have Metal Man's theme stuck in my head for at least a week every time I replay Mega Man 2.

In spite of these faults it's still a very fun game, but definitely not Classic Mega Man's strongest entry. But hey, even at his worst, Mega Man is still a hell of a lot more fun and engaging than, say, God of War.

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One of the best RPGs on the original Playstation, and it's available for dirt cheap. What more do I need to tell you? Buy it! Download it to your PSP or PS3! Play it! You shall not regret it.

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I'll be one of the few to admit that Ocarina of Time disappointed me; the "biggest, baddest Zelda yet" somehow managed to omit the Zelda theme (replaced by some of the most annoying tunes ever), have a game world a third the size of Link to the Past's, almost did away completely with the non-linearity element, and it sticks you with the most annoying sidekick in gaming history.

Majora's Mask fixed three of those, at least, and once you get past the annoying introductory stage it's actually quite fun. The main quest is much shorter (consisting of only four dungeons), allowing much of the gameplay to be based based around side-quests and minigames. You're also given four different forms to play as (Link, Deku scrub, Goron and Zora), which adds a whole ton of new explorable areas and abilities to mess around with, as well as numerous other masks that give special traits (such as being able to run faster with the Bunny Hood equipped).

Now for the annoying stuff. The biggest for me is that it uses the same awkward control setup as OOT; most notably the context-sensitive "A" button that never seems to make up its mind about what it should be doing and when. You'll also be pausing and swapping items a lot more this time around simply due to the sheer number of masks you collect. Finally, and perhaps most annoying, is the fact that you're constantly under a time limit in the form of three-day cycles; if you don't rewind time by the end of the third day you'll lose all progress you made since your last trip and you'll have to do it all again. It also limits the amount of exploring you can do in any one trip, and you'll likely have to devote an entire time period to completing the dungeons (which are among the most complex in the entire series).

Majora's Mask is another solid adventure title, though its unconventional style may alienate some Zelda fans. But hell, at a price of only $10, you might as well give it a shot if you didn't get a chance to play it back on the Nintendo 64.

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More shmups ahoy. R-Type Dimensions is pretty much a two-for one deal, featuring R-Type 1 and 2 with two player co-op, 3D visuals, and the ability to skip to any stage you've completed so that you can practice them without having to play through the earlier stages a billion times; a useful feature considering that these games are notorious for throwing relentless swarms of enemies at you and stripping you of all of your power-ups upon death (which is a real pain in the later stages).

As I mentioned before, the game has 3D visuals, but you also have the option to play with 2D sprites. The catch, though, is that you don't pick one of these two and then stick with it throughout the game - you swap between sprites and 3D models on the fly during the game by pressing the Y button. While it's not an especially practical feature, it is a pretty cool novelty.

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Another overhead shooter, but this time in a futuristic Japanese setting - you fight everything from pagodas on tank treads with missile launchers in the windows to Oni-headed ships to what looks like some kind of goddess' face with floating hands that fly around and punch at you, Star Fox 64 style. Meanwhile, you get two little helper ships that can be programmed to work in a number of ways and any of three elemental weapons - fire missiles, lightning beams or a rotating water shield. As you can expect of a Compile shooter, it moves very quickly and it's extremely challenging, but it never gets particularly frustrating. Plus, it's a $40 game being sold for $8 through a legal medium, so I couldn't turn that down either.

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(Oh, and if you care, M.U.S.H.A. stands for "Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor".)

 

 

Yeah, it's just Uno. The card game.

But I can't stop f'ing playing it.

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A great fighter featuring stylish, colorful 2D graphics, a wide variety of characters and some solid mechanics. It's also widely regarded as the series' definitive game; every sequel that followed steadily grew worse and worse until we were left with some truly awful 3D abortions known as "Samurai Shodown 64" and "Warrior's Rage". But hey, at least we'll always have the original two games to fall back on for some good, blood-spraying 2D fun.

The Xbox version of the game features online play; however, I must recommend that you spring for the Wii version instead solely because the Xbox controller's D-Pad is one of the clunkiest, most unresponsive pieces of shit ever. If you have one of those rad Street Fighter IV fightpads, though, go ahead and shell out for the Xbox version.

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