Our pals at Nintendo haven't exactly pushed the boat out this week with festive spirit sadly. Still it could be worse! We finally have Blades of Steel on the NES, even before North America! For those not in the know this is one of the best, if not THE best ice skating games from the 8-bit era. Very often NES games feel tired with age but the gameplay is still as much fun as ever with this one!

Another NES game in the shape of Skate or Die is also up for grabs on the VC today. It's quite a fun skateboarding game but unlike Blades of Steel it has aged less well. The controls feel a bit clunky by today's standards and the gameplay gets repetitive after a short while. Still childhood fans will no doubt be ecstatic to play this again - I would advise waiting to see if California Games comes out instead!

To complete the non-festive trio is a TurboGrafx-CD game: Monster Lair. This is a part of the Wonderboy series indirectly but shares little in common with the original arcade platformer or the RPG-lite incarnations of the games. Instead this game is more of a cutesy shoot-em-up and shallow platformer rolled into one. It gets repetitive quickly and compared to other similar games from the era it doesn't have much to recommend for today's audience sadly!

Check out this week's reviews:
Blades of Steel - NES - 500 Points
Skate or Die - NES - 500 Points
Monster Lair - TurboGrafx-CD - 800 Points