This installment of NWR's Virtual Console recommendations hit on three of the four games that came out over the last two weeks, each of which were originally released in 1992. Two of the three are shooters for the Genesis that have never been officially released in North America to this point, and thus carry a higher price tag. While both of them are technically shooters, they approach the genre in significantly different ways. The third game is a crime fighting racer for the TurboGrafx-16.

Chase H.Q. originated in arcades in 1988 and was very well received in its time. It tells the story of Tony Gibson, an officer in the Chase Special Investigation Department. Tony drives a black Porsche that he uses to maneuver through traffic at speeds over 200 miles per hour so he can hunt down criminals.

This game is very simple, short, and unforgiving. It consists of five levels where you chase after a criminal and then ram into his car until it bursts into flames. With this simplicity comes cruel challenge. These chases are on a time limit, and the only way to gain ground on the criminal is to floor it. When you travel at high speeds in this game, it becomes very difficult to avoid neutral cars and the sides of the road, which causes you to spin out. The inherent problem with this is that you have to slam into the criminal's car to win, which causes you spin out. A typical level of this game consists of driving really fast to catch up to the criminal, finding the criminal and hitting him, and then losing all of your speed by spinning out. This repeats until you run out of continues or beat the game. Considering Chase H.Q. is about ten minutes of repetitive gameplay, I can't recommend it for anyone.

In the ever-present shooter genre, Gley Lancer, an import game for the Genesis, made its appearance last week. From what I can only guess by the extremely long Japanese text-driven intro sequence, the story behind the game features a 16 year old girl who steals a prototype space fighter to save her kidnapped father. This matters little though, as the game itself is a standard left to right scrolling shooter. The main twist involves the behavior of drones, similar to what is done in Geometry Wars: Galaxies. Before a game begins, one of several options can be chosen, ranging from always firing straight ahead, to firing in the direction of the D-pad.

Gley Lancer does make use of all three face buttons of the original Genesis controller, and therefore one would be right in worrying about how it would perform with the standard Wii Remote on its side. Thankfully, one of the three actions is simply changing the speed of your ship. By default, this is mapped to the A button on the remote, while the other more important functions are mapped to 1 and 2. I had no trouble moving my thumb off the D-pad temporarily the few times I wanted to change my ship's speed, so the Wii Remote works just fine.

Overall, Gley Lancer is an entertaining and fast-paced shooter game. Reluctantly, this one is recommended for fans. The sheer multitude of other similar games on the VC make it tempting to not recommend at all, but if you are looking for another shooter experience, you probably won't be upset with this purchase. Interesting boss fights, fast moving enemies, great parallax backgrounds, variable difficulty, and high score lists make it an enjoyable experience.

Tired of the same old shooters (like Gley Lancer) on Virtual Console? You might enjoy Super Fantasy Zone, a bizarre twist on the genre featuring colorful visuals and quite a few gameplay quirks. This beautiful Genesis shooter was originally released in Japan and then Europe, so the import version on Virtual Console is entirely in English. The storyline is some nonsense about Opa-Opa avenging his father against the evil hordes who are taking over Fantasy Zone. It plays like the classic Defender, with manual scrolling in either direction and circular level designs. (In other words, if you keep flying long enough in one direction, you'll come back to where you started.) The goal is to shoot down all of the enemy generators to incite a boss battle.

Super Fantasy Zone has some very interesting ideas, like a shop where you can buy new weapons, mobility upgrades, and extra lives with gold collected from vanquished foes. (Yes, this part is similar to Lords of Thunder.) The levels themselves are very easy, as long as you don't fly around haphazardly. The bosses, however, are excruciatingly difficult, especially the very first one. Dying means you lose all upgrades, but bosses drop so much money that you will probably go far if you can build up a bit of momentum by completing the first level. This game is definitely an oddity, and it's a fun departure from the norm for fans of horizontal shooters. Most other players probably won't have the patience (or skill) to get very far in this marked-up import title.