This weeks releases: Megaman 2 from the NES and Top Hunter from the NeoGeo.

Megaman 2 (NES)

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Not sure how I missed this one … I swear it wasn’t in the Wii Shop Newest Additions list in on Virtual Console Friday … I think it’s one of those unusual mid-week Virtual Console releases !

Pokémon Snap (Nintendo 64)

This is the first Virtual Console game to be ‘updated’ to use special features of the Wii - in this case you can send your favorite snaps of Pokémon to a friend via the Wii message board. Hopefully this is the start of a trend of Wii-izing retro Virtual Console games … ideally we could get some VC releases that in addition to the typical Classic Controller mode, also have some type of new Wiimote based motion or pointer control. The obvious (basically unavoidable) game for this is Duck Hunt, but what I’d really like to see is some VC releases that have control schemes like the Metal Slug Anthology, to put a new spin on the classics.

An update for the Wii Shop became available today (at least in Australia), which allows Virtual Console games to be bought as gifts and sent to a friend via their Wii Number. Unfortunately you cannot send Virtual Console games you have already bought, you have to send them directly from the Shop at purchase time (there are a few I bought in the first few weeks I’d love to give away now …).

The new version of the Photo Channel, version 1.1, is also now available … this is the slightly controversial one that removes MP3 support and replaces it with AAC format support. Luckily, Nintendo has allowed users who bought a Wii with the original MP3-supporting Photo Channel (v1.0) to upgrade to v1.1, and later downgrade back to v1.0 if they want to regain MP3 support. Good move Nintendo, allowing reversible upgrades …. of course it would have been nicer if the new Photo Channel simply supported BOTH MP3 and AAC, but that would have probably required twice the licensing fees …

Happy Birthday Virtual Console !! (The Wii and the Virtual Console service launched a year ago).

This week, we got two Sega Megadrive (aka Genesis) releases, Rolling Thunder 2 and Light Crusader, and one Super Nintendo title, Cybernator.

Light Crusader (Megadrive) - while I’m quick to remind everyone that I’m not a big fan of most RPGs, this one is developed by Tresure, which means it is probably decent.

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This isn’t really Wii or Nintendo related, but an important ‘gaming news’ issue anyway. Most readers who follow general gaming news have probably heard a lot about the Gamespot-Eidos-Gerstmann affair already .. the executive summary is this:

The “sometimes controversial” Jeff Gerstmann reviews the new Eidos game Kane and Lynch and gives it a mediocre score. Most other reviewers agree with his analysis.

Jeff Gerstmann is fired.

Accusations and speculation fly that Eidos put pressure on Gamespot to fire Gerstmann, since Gamespot also has some advertising deals with Eidos.

It looks like Eidos also might have put some fake or misrepresented review scores on the official Kane and Lynch site.

There are lots of interesting responses to these events, debating the state of ethics in game journalism and the state of game reviews in general.

So far there has been little comment of interest from the parties actually involved, but it will be certainly interesting to see how this all plays out. Gamespot has already lost a huge amount of credibility in my book, but lets see how they do the damage control …