This Week In Defunct Games - June 21, 2007

What Is It? It's the arcade light gun game where dropped into a warzone and have to fight your way out without killing innocent nurses and chickens. Oh wait ... that's Operation Wolf. This is Bloody Wolf, the crazy/violent action game for the TurboGrafx-16. You're a one man army with as little equipment as possible ... I guess that's just how you roll. Whatever the case, it's your job to take out the multi-colored enemies in the river, jungle, towns and detention camps. What's funny about this game is that it uses just about every single clich? known to make, including red exploding barrels, enemies in different colored outfits (that denote the kinds of weapons they use), a complete lack of preparation on our heroes part, and a mission that involves saving the President. I'm not saying those are bad things, but we've certainly seen them in countless other games. But what Bloody Wolf lacks in originality it more than makes up for in pure balls-to-the-wall action and excitement!

Does It Still Hold Up? The controls are a little stiff and the difficulty is a bit steep, but outside of a few archaic programming decisions, Blood Wolf is still a solid action game. Don't expect anything deep here, the action is easy and you aren't asked to do more than run around, shoot and save hostages. You can commandeer the occasional vehicle, but even that doesn't change the gameplay too drastically. Bloody Wolf is still fun in much the same way Contra or Gunstar Heroes is fun, it's just a violently good time.

Is It Worth The Money? If you're looking for a fun action game with plenty of death and destruction then you can't go wrong with Bloody Wolf. At six dollars it's hard to pass up something as enjoyable as this, even if the controls are a little tough and there isn't a ton of replay. There's just no denying the fun of playing this classic game, even if it does use every clich? known to man.

What Is It? NES Open Golf is the spiritual successor to Nintendo's first golfing simulator, Golf. Instead of just featuring Mario and a set of clubs, NES Open Golf features a number of popular Mario characters, including the appearance of both Princess Peach and Princess Daisy ... talk about awkward! Although the graphics aren't real strong, NES Open Golf features a wide selection of different courses and enough multiplayer options to keep you busy for at least a couple of hours. While there are plenty of courses to play through, there's just something about NES Open Golf that doesn't feel right to me. Perhaps it's that all of the courses look and feel the same, or maybe it's that the controls are incredibly outdated. Either way, you can have a little fun with NES Open Golf but it probably won't replace Tiger Woods.

Does It Still Hold Up? Golf video games have come a long way since the days of NES Open Golf. If you're a fan of golf then chances are you're going to be more excited by the motion controls used in EA's Tiger Woods game. And it's not just golf games on the Wii, nearly every modern golf game has created a unique style of control, all of which make NES Open Golf feel like the 16 year old game it is. This is still playable, but seasoned golf fans will feel like they've jumped into a time warp when they first start playing this classic simulator.

Is It Worth The Money? Even though it's only five dollars, NES Open Golf just doesn't deliver the same fun and excitement as other golf games on the Wii. Some might want this so that they can remember the simpler times, but even with simple controls this game just isn't as much fun as you might remember. I say stick with the golf games you have for the Wii, there's something soothing about using the motion-sensing control to swing the clubs.

What Is It? Funny story: When I first heard that World Sports Competition was coming to the Virtual Console I had the hardest time remembering what game it was. It wasn't until I decided to boot this game up that I realized that I reviewed this game just two months ago ... how quickly I forget the really bad games. When I first reviewed this game I gave it a solid 20 percent out of 100. I concluded that mashing buttons was no fun and playing this with friends only proved that you need something else to play. Unfortunately my opinion hasn't changed much since April 28. World Sports Competition is still a collection of lackluster games that are absolutely no fun to play. Most of the games require non-stop button mashing and the rest have some sort of fatal flaw that renders them completely useless. With friends you might have more fun, but one has to wonder how many friends you'll have left over after you subject them to this sorry set of mini-games.

Does It Still Hold Up? Like Track & Field before it, World Sports Competition doesn't hold up because it requires you to injure your hands in order to win first place. Do people really care who can mash their buttons the fastest? One of the biggest problems with this version of the game is that there's no way to cheat. When it came to the TurboGrafx-16 original you could use turbo to help keep your fingers safe from carpel tunnel, but not so with this Virtual Console release. This time around you actually have to jam your fingers into the Wii's control over and over and over ... and for what?

Is It Worth The Money? Believe it or not World Sports Competition has a dedicated cult following. There are actually people out there that feel that this is the way Track & Field should have been done, they argue that with five player support this is the perfect multiplayer game. Those people are wrong. World Sports Competition is a terribly flawed collection of piss-poor mini-games that shouldn't have been released then ... and most certainly shouldn't have been released now!