Feb. 4, 2008

Step into two very different types of action this week. Either battle the bad guys to save hostages and preserve freedom or bury your opponents with magical jewels. Whatever you fancy, you'll need to be ready for a challenge: strategize as a fearless hero or manipulate special jewels to raise the crush bar. How do you plan to win today?

Two new classic games go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Nintendo adds new games to the Wii Shop Channel every Monday. Wii™ owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points™ to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets. This week's new games are:

OPERATION WOLF™ (NES®, 1 player, Rated E10+ for Use of Tobacco and Violence, 500 points): A group of desperate terrorists is keeping hostages in their jungle fortress. As a member of the elite tactical squad Operation Wolf, you must invade their hideout, destroy their operations, and get the hostages out alive! Maneuver through a series of missions and fight off soldiers, patrol boats, helicopters, and more. The further you progress, the more enemies you'll have to defeat and the harder they'll try to stop you in your tracks (going so far as tossing knives and grenades at you or wearing armor). Each area along your path ends with a boss battle where you'll have to find and exploit each boss's particular weakness. To top it all off, your weapon options are also limited, so you'll need to conserve ammunition and grenades. Operation Wolf is said to be the most valiant and capable unit in the military-can you save the hostages and win the day?

Columns III™: Revenge of Columns (Genesis, 1-5 players, Rated E for Everyone, 800 points): This single-player or multiplayer experience expands upon the game play of the original two Columns titles giving players some extra attacks to spring on opponents. As in the original Columns, jewels fall into a bin, and you have to twist and manipulate them to form matches of three or more in a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line to keep the jewels from stacking up and reaching the top. In Columns III, special magical jewels do things like raise your opponent's crush bar or lower your own, adding an extra element of strategy to the game. This is a great game to play with friends, so download it today and jump into the action!

 I remember playing this game on the Genesis. Brings back old memories.

Have seen a lot of dud games recently but i think we get the 200th game next week so maybe they will give us something better then, just as well there is a backlog of games im wanting to play on the VC already.

Operation Wolf suggests to me that there's been some modding done to the game to allow the Wiimote pointer capability to replace the lack of the actual NES Zapper lightgun.

Can any of our american friends confirm this? :) Also if so, does it have on screen point to make up for the remote not being a real lightgun or does it have to be aimed as such? I had this and the respective gun for the Master System and loved it :D

(Genesis, 1-5 players

What? Genesis had a 5 player option?

 Yep. A 5-player multitap was released relatively late into the console's life, but not many games supported it.

Anyway, what a crappy week. Operation Wolf is just awful, and Columns 3 actually removes some features from the original Columns.

@MrMarc
Not yet. Another half hour to go.

Hopefully next week we'll get a big game. Super Smash Brothers would be awesome. Maybe we'll even get a big third-party game. Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana would kick ass.