Nintendo Wii Hanabi Festival

You'd better sit down. The Virtual Console is about to go into OVERDRIVE.

To celebrate the Japanese holiday season famous for it's fireworks Nintendo has launched it's first, possibly not the last, "Hanabi Festival" today on the European and Australian Virtual Consoles. Over the next three weeks we're going to be able to download games that have never been officially released before in PAL regions.

You ok? Well get your jaw off the floor and read on then!

This week is Mario week, and has seen the original Super Mario Bros 2 (600 Points), Japan-only version, and Mario's Super Picross (900 points), has loads of Japanese text so you'll need to be good with Kanji or at guessing, released. I need to pause slightly here because anyone that owned a SNES and had the Mario All Stars cartridge actually had the Japanese Super Mario Bros 2 renamed as The Lost Levels and that is what you'll get on your Wii. Anyway, next week (21 September) is Ninja week, with the NES's Ninja Gaiden and Ninja JaJaMaru-Kun being released. The final week (28 September) is Sci-Fi week, which sees the release of Sin & Punishment...... ?? ....... yes you read that right. Sin and Punishment and Gradius III. Altogether now ...... OH YES!! This is quite possibly the best VC news since the VC was first announced.

On top of this Hudson have announced that they'll be releasing TurboGrafx CD and TurboDuo games onto the Wii's VC too! Games for both systems will cost 800 points across all regions and yet again that means in Europe too! The first three games will be Ys Book I & II and Chou Aniki.

This is this a great day for European Wii fans. We all know that the VC is great but this is the sweetest news yet. Sin and Punishment! I can't wait.

Is this the greatest day for VC news so far? Have your say on the Gameov3r FORUM