After a lengthy absence, the Virtual Console Recommendations feature is back at Nintendo World Report. Today, we will take a look at three games released on the Virtual Console service and offer up a recommendation based on how these games stand up to today's standards. If you're new to the site, here's how the recommendations work:

This is a game that stands out as an excellent title which has passed the test of time.  A game recommended for everyone can be counted on to provide a fun experience even years or decades after its original release.

This is a game that may still appeal to fans of the game from its original release, or perhaps fans of games in the same genre, but might not appeal to someone playing the game for the first time today.

This is a game that, despite any hype or nostalgia value that the game might have once earned, it simply doesn't hold up any longer.   These are games that are hard to recommend to even the staunchest fans of the genre.

Today's recommendations are brought to you by Staff Writers Pedro Hernandez and Zach Miller. It's time to fire up the old Wii Shop Channel and give these games another shot at fame and fortune before they become vintage again.

What started as a quirky Nintendo title quickly evolved into one of the biggest multiplayer franchises ever, rivaling even Mario Kart. Super Smash Bros. was the first fighting game which featured Nintendo's greatest characters together, and was easy to get into but hard to let go. The title is different from other fighting games in that instead of depleting the opponent's life bar, you actually add damage to it. The objective is to send your opponent flying off the stage or make him fall from it. All characters had basic moves and a special attack that could be triggered by holding the joystick in one direction and pressing the B button. Despite the simplicity of the fighting engine, fans quickly learned new strategies that made them Smash Bros. pros. Such is the beauty of the franchise.

Nintendo veterans Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, Yoshi, Samus, Fox McCloud and Kirby made up the all-star roster, while underdog and lesser known characters Luigi, Jigglypuff, Captain Falcon and Ness were hidden waiting for you to unlock them. The fighting stages were all based on classic Nintendo games, such as Hyrule Castle and Yoshi's Island. Modes of play include a single-player arcade mode and the main multiplayer mode which allows up to four players to participate in either free-for-all or team battles.

Unfortunately, despite being a great game, Super Smash Bros. is hard to recommend to everyone simply because there have been two sequels (one on GameCube and one on Wii) that have not only improved on the fighting engine, they have more characters, more stages and more modes of play, or even online play. If you love the original SSB to death and prefer it to its two successors, then it is a must buy.

Here’s an unforgettable platformer; in it, you take control of Earthworm Jim, an earthworm fused to a robotic, muscle-bound body. Jim uses his gun, wits, and own earthworm body to fling himself around the imaginative worlds he ventures through to rescue Princess What’s-Her-Name from the evil Queen Slug-for-a-Butt. The game starts out as a straight-forward run-and-gun platformer, but quickly diverges from there into space races, bungee-chord competitions, and an admittedly frustrating timed undersea labyrinth. The game is at its best when Jim is leaping from platform to platform, shooting giant cats and using moose antlers to cross chasms.

The variety of environments, from a giant junkyard, Hell itself, and the inside of a thorn-ridden insect hive inspire awe and hilarity. Earthworm Jim definitely has problems, including some frustrating level design and poorly-structured "alternate" levels (the afore mentioned timed labyrinth gives me cramps), but it’s imaginative and fun overall.

Whenever something becomes very popular, two things are certain: firstly there will be attemtps to try and copy its success, and secondly there will be attempts to mock it. In the mid 1990s, thanks to the huge success of two-on-two fighters like Capcom's Street Fighter II and Midway's Mortal Kombat series, there spawned many imitators hoping to be just as successful as those fighters. Then there's Interplay's Clay Fighter: a game which decided to mock every convention of the genre by making its fighters out of clay and having them duke it out in a cartoon world that makes no sense.

Clay Fighter is a standard two-on-two fighting game whose gimmick is that it parodies the fighting genre. It's characters were modeled in clay then turned into sprites, a similar process to that seen in the early Mortal Kombat games. Characters include Blue Suede Goo, an Elvis impersonator, Taffy, a fighting piece of taffy, Bad Mr. Frost, an abominable snowman, and many more.

The title succeeds in creating a wacky cartoon world, thanks to a great sense of humor and some visually captivating characters. The gameplay, however, is what matters and Clay Fighter is just too simplistic for it to be memorable beyond its presentation. There's very little wrong with the game, but it is just too by-the-numbers for it to stand out among its peers. I recommend this title for fans of the series only.