Wii

Castlevania

500 Wii points is an excellent price of admission for this NES classic. The game blazed the trail for its hugely successful successors, and exemplified challenging and rewarding gameplay. It gets a little tricky from here on out, though. Super Castlevania IV, for only 300 Wii points more, seems like a smarter purchase, as it improves on almost every facet of the NES original, including mechanical and graphical upgrades. If you've already (smartly) downloaded Super Castlevania IV, are looking for an even greater challenge, and want to see where the series gets its roots, then give this one a download. For newcomers, however, frustrations may be more efficiently inhibited by downloading the SNES version first.

In the era of the Nintendo Entertainment System, publisher Konami was known for making maddeningly difficult but remarkably enjoyable games. Fortunately, games like Gradius and Contra at least had cheat codes to make the difficulty slightly more reasonable. Castlevania, on the other hand, had no such crutch. In fact, the game had an unlockable "hard" mode instead. But somehow, as frustrating as Castlevania could be, it was still an entertaining game because of its solid action and dark, appealing atmosphere. Castlevania is now available on the Wii Virtual Console for 500 points ($5), and it's every bit as challenging and playable as it was when it was originally released 20 years ago.

The fact that Nintendo would release the original Castlevania on Virtual Console after the superior Castlevania IV almost proves that they're going after the hardcore "Vania" fans. Even so, Castlevania has managed to age a little more gracefully than most other NES games thanks to its top-tier visuals and audio. If anything, your 500 Wii Points will get you a challenging gothic platformer that'll keep you busy for a day or so (even if half of that day is spent trying to get past the Grim Reaper).