Oddly addictive and full of 8-bit sound magic, Balloon Fight is a perfect old-school arcade-style game.

In the game, you’re a bird-thing attached to two red balloons, and the object is to fly up and pop other bird-things’ colored balloons while they either try to pop yours or just float around aimlessly. (You basically kick the balloons.) It’s nice for little snippets of action.

There’s another mode, shown in the video on Nintendo’s website linked below, where the object is to pop as many balloons as you can in sort of a marathon. I’m not very good at that mode. It’s actually rather humorous how bad I am.

The soundtrack is really catchy, especially from an 8-bit NES cartridge game. (Head to the official site, linked below, to hear some of it from the gameplay video.) The gameplay is rather fun, giving enough of a challenge that it’s not boring, yet not being so challenging you give up quickly.

Probably one of the main downsides is the control. It’s rather funky - you keep hitting 2 to fly, or hold down 1, but it’s hard to control your altitude. I’ve found myself right above an enemy, but lose control to drop enough that it’s my balloon that pops instead of the other guy’s.

Also, don’t worry about the Classic Controller for this (or really any Virtual Console game from the NES). The sideways Wii Remote is good enough, especially given that it’s similar in shape and function to the original NES controller.

(Virtual Console, 500 points)
Official Website