This week's Virtual Console releases are, in my opinion, stellar. Not only do we get two previously-Japan-only TurboGrafx games, one of them is on my short list of TG favorites. If you're like me, and have any affinity for the 16-bit days, you don't even have to wonder if you should buy these or not.
I'll start with
Bomberman '94, which is so
good that I can really only describe it in clichés, such as "a smorgasboard of greatness" and "it really is the complete package." The graphics are bright and detailed (within reason), the
music is catchy as hell (in spite of the linked video's quality), and the single-player game is pretty strong, with lots of elaborate and clever level designs. OK, yes, it did introduce the kangaroo pals to the franchise, but I'm one of the few Bomberman fans who don't get nerd rage at the sight of them.
And though the SNES/Super Famicom Bomberman games started feeling very similar to
'94 after
Super Bomberman 2, I'd argue that
Saturn Bomberman was really the only one to dethrone it, probably because it took after '94 so very closely, and, y'know, it supported five more players. While
Mega Bomberman on Genesis is a port of '94, it suffers from the usual Genesis handicaps, especially in regards to the music. But now we have the original and best version, and it's totally worth it. And it needs virtually no knowledge of Japanese to play it competently, which makes it all the more sad that it never reached America in the '90s in the first place.
Detana Twinbee is the second VC game this week, and is also really good. This TG version is a port of the arcade game; the first Twinbee that put the series in the 16-bit era after the classic -- if not totally spectacular -- 8-bit arcade and NES/Famicom installments. The arcade version naturally looks a lot better, but you're still getting a solid cute-em-up here.
The
Twinbee series arguably peaked on the Super Famicom, but with Hudson the only company handling TG releases, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for the rest of them to appear in the SNES section. While Twinbee's far from my favorite Konami shooter series (something about the bouncing-bell power-up system doesn't exactly jel with me), I enjoy Detana, and respect it for giving the series its first kick in the bum. If you have the
Twinbee Portable collection for PSP, then you already have the superior version of Detana, but if you want a no-frills sampler of what the series has to offer, this is the one to get.
Anyway, these are just my personal thoughts on these games. If you want something a little more "official" rather than "slobbery," then wait for Jeremy's thoughts in the next
Retro Roundup.
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