Things may (or may not) include beehives, shurikens, mysterious yellow substances and utterly uncomfortable stares. This week's Virtual Console additions, while being pleasant diversions, seem largely intent on teaching you how to disperse dangerous items and substances, often to the detriment of the people in your way.

• Donkey Kong 3 (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Shoot Miyamoto's remarkably famous monkey and woman-stealing pseudo ass, Donkey Kong, in the crotch. Does that punishment seem appropriate for the crime?
  
• Ninja Commando (NeoGeo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): You've just traveled to lovely and moderately sunny feudal Japan, and your first response is to annihilate everything. Obviously.

Nintendo's love affair with the Neo Geo continues this week, giving players who have not yet shelled out for one of SNK's numerous other arcade collections yet another outlet to spend their hard-earned dollars, or rather, points.

• King of the Monsters (Neo Geo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): While already available on the Wii already as part of SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1, it's good to know that despite all of the problems in the world, there are still some disagreements between a giant lizard and an overgrown beetle than can be settled as part of a midtown battle royal. SNK's arcade original King of the Monsters allows players to choose from six different giant creatures and then grapple with the others in order to decide the fate of the city, as long as that fate ends in total devastation.

With Neo Geo games popping up virtually on the Wii, not to mention in more compilations than we can count without taking off our socks and shoes, we've begun looking at the cartridges gathering dust on our shelf and wondering if selling all that plasma to pay for SNK's console back in the early 90s was worth it after all. That said, if you didn't get your fill with Samurai Shodown earlier this month, perhaps this week will scratch your itch.

• Fatal Fury 2 (Neo Geo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): Today's release gives us yet another title in our Neo Geo collection to throw up on eBay. This second installment in SNK's 2D fighting game series lifts the original's pitiful three-character roster to eight, and when first released in arcades in 1992, it also marked a welcome, if obvious attempt to ride on the back on Capcom's Street Fighter 2 hadoken-embroidered coattails.

With the United States swept up in political debate and the world's reliance on oil becoming increasingly problematic, we welcome the Virtual Console's desire to take us back to a simpler and easier time. A time when sprites were celebrated, power-ups were plentiful and men were all called "Ryu." A time when every problem could be solved by the calculated and swift application of a fist. Punching time.

• Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Master System, 1 player, 500 Wii Points): Alex Kidd will stop at nothing to rescue his brother. Leaping across deadly chasms, punching through solid rock and murdering birds with his bare hands -- he's a monster! We can't really identify with that, but don't let that stop you. "Please buy the things that you like."
• Burning Fight (Neo Geo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): Predominantly pugilistic protagonists patrol parks and pound on pesky perpetrators in this post-90s punk-bashing punchfest. POW!
  

The latest update to the Wii's Virtual Console gives those of you with Wii arcade sticks on your shelf a sense of purpose, as well as an excuse to dust them off for a bit of classic arcade fighting, Neo Geo-style.

• Samurai Shodown (Neo Geo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): Once all the rage in arcade parlors when first released in 1993, this first in the still-ongoing fighting game series lets players duke it out using 12 different weapon (and sometimes animal)-wielding fighters. While a bit archaic by today's standards, the game still beats the pants off many contemporary fighters. Plus where else can you see a kabuki performer throw down against a green hunchback doing his best Freddy Krueger impression?

Just when you think you've got Nintendo all figured out, along comes a morning like today. We receive our Wii-kly Update (their name, not ours) and we quickly skip to the new Virtual Console offerings:

• Dig Dug (NES, 1 player, 600 Wii Points): Become Dig Dug, the champion of love and justice, as you drill up, down, left and right, defeating any enemies in your path. Avoid the persistent Pooka and the deep-dwelling but whimsical Fygar as you defeat all the enemies in order to clear each stage. Defeat enemies by hitting them with the harpoon and pumping air into them, or by dropping rocks on them from above.

"Oh," we think, "how nice. Dig Dug. Nothing revolutionary, but it's good to see it." Then, our eyes scan further and we land on this:

• Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (NES, 1 player, 600 Wii Points): Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is an action game released in 1988, but it was never available outside of Japan. Players take on the role of baby Upa, a prince of the Akuyo kingdom. Upa must defeat the enemies he meets along the way by inflating them. Upa can then use these floating enemies to his advantage by bouncing off of or riding on top of them. The prince must also avoid deadly thorns and pits while keeping an eye out for helpful items such as milk (to restore health) and bells (for temporary invincibility) if he hopes to succeed.

...What? A royal, demon-inflating baby? How is that even a paragraph? (Oh, and P.S., he inflates enemies by hitting them with a rattle.) It's like someone put the most insane words they could think of in a refrigerator and set a nuclear bomb off next to it. We love you, Nintendo, but, in the parlance of our times, you so crazy.

Pfft, forget about all that "Ninja Guy Dan Too" rubbish you've heard about on the other consoles. If you want some frenetic action of a HI-YA! caliber, you'd best switch on the Wii and download a game from a time when ninjas still roamed the Earth.

• Ninja Combat (NeoGeo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): As evident in the above video, "Ninja Combat" is quite the efficient and appropriate title. Can your ninja combatant wield a deadly sword? Yup! Is he capable of performing dizzying acrobatic maneuvers and mercilessly slaughtering innocent, roller-coasting bystanders? Certainly! Can he skilfully utilize magic and projectile weapons to defeat his enemies? Shuriken!
  

The Virtual Console provides some intriguing social commentary on tourism this week, with two games allowing us to travel the world and make a mess of it while we're at it.

• Metal Slug (NeoGeo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): Honestly, we shouldn't even have to expend a bullet point on this game. You know what Metal Slug is all about. Dash through some jungles, some mountains, some ruins (they're all to East, just so you know) and shoot everything that isn't part of the background. Everything.
• City Connection (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Travel through cities like New York and London, while marveling at the engineering incompetence that spawned multiple levels of dead-end roads floating in the sky. Driving up and down them is apparently illegal too, so be sure to bump off those pesky police vehicles.
  

Returning from a brief, WiiWare-induced hiatus, the Wii's Virtual Console service offers but a single new old title for your enjoyment this week.

• Skykid (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Join Red Baron of Bird Land as he makes the skies friendlier in this side-scrolling shooter. Enemies must be shot down, bombs must be dropped and the loop must be looped if you hope to survive your airborne jaunt. And try not to screw up the landing!

And that's it. Move along to the next post, folks.

We know there's little chance that the Nintendo faithful among you haven't already circled May 12 on your calendar with your Nintendo World Championships 1990 commemorative Sharpie, but just in case, let us remind you that the WiiWare service is now live. If you can't hop on and browse at the moment, we've taken the liberty of posting the list of initial offerings after the jump.

In more disappointing news, Nintendo is letting WiiWare get all the spotlight this week and refraining from new Virtual Console releases. If you're truly broken up, just pretend that two games were released that you really don't care about. Considering what the line-up's been lately, you should be in pretty good practice.

Do you know what we really, truly and utterly despise about Pokémon games? It's the fact that every time something Pokémon related pops out of Nintendo's red-and-white capsule, we have to go hunting for that "é." You know, the one with the thingy on top. That's a period of 45 minutes we could spend being super effective and writing about this week's Virtual Console releases.

• Pokémon Puzzle League (N64, 1-2 players, 1000 Wii Points): Pit those encapsulated creatures against one another in a battle of manic block rearrangement! Way to go!
  
• Renegade (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Clean up your city by punching and jump-kicking every thug, gangster, villain, lowlife, miscreant and suspicious loiterer you can find. So, pretty much everyone in the game then.

Mother fans, rejoice! EarthBound, also known as Mother 2 and the only game of the series to be released in the US, has been rated by the ESRB for the Wii. While that seems to be a good indication the game is bound for the Virtual Console, we're not going to make that leap without an official confirmation from Nintendo. Besides, given the rabid fan base of the game here, we're half-serious when we say we suspect Nintendo might consider selling the game unchanged for $50 on a disc. We guarantee it would sell like gangbusters.

An ESRB rating is the only outside hurdle the Nintendo-owned property to putting it on the Virtual Console (if that's the route they take). Now wouldn't that make for a clever Mother's Day gift, hm?

[Via VC-Reviews; thanks, Jango311]

Four classic Interplay Sega Genesis games are en route to the Wii's Virtual Console. Dave Perry's classic platformers Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2 will both be gracing the download service, along with the campy claymation action of Clayfighter, and the gross-out humor of Boogerman.

According to the press release, all four titles will be the Sega Genesis versions of the games, despite having appeared on both Genesis and SNES. No word yet on when these titles we be released (but we're guessing it'll be on a Monday).

That landfill of crappy Virtual Console titles has just been given a swift kick-punch of revitalization. Not only that, but we've got a second helping of Phantasy Star for you to digest.

• River City Ransom (NES,1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Save your girlfriend from such heinous foes as "The Generic Dudes" and "The Frat Guys." This beat-em-up was obviously ahead of its time in poignant social commentary and butt-kicking awesomeness.
• Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom (Sega Genesis, 1 player, 800 Wii Points): Having already given us Phantasy Star II, Sega decided to move forward and continue the series, while still forgetting to back up and bring the original Phantasy Star to Virtual Console. It's pretty much exactly like River City Ransom in that way that it's nothing like RCR.

Videos of the titles after the break.

Wii owners might finally get a new Virtual Console title that they actually give a damn about, when the classic brawler River City Ransom hits the service next week. Publisher Aksys has confirmed that they'll be releasing the title next Monday, as part of Nintendo's regular weekly releases.

Hooray for nostalgia and all, but we're getting a bit concerned with the glut of content now available on Virtual Console. Perhaps Nintendo should implement a rating system, to help users distill the garbage from the few titles that are actually as awesome as we remember them.