PSP World

Worth Your Points? Cybernoid on Virtual Console

One of the most interesting titles from the Commodore 64 era has found its way onto the Wii in North America. Cybernoid is one of this week's virtual Console releases, and it is well worth the 500 Wii Points for those interested in the history of gaming, or just a great action arcade game in general.

Originally released in 1987, this space shoot-em-up received heaps of critical praise, and eventually found its way to the Amiga, ZX spectrum and even NES systems. The player must navigate their ship through maze-like environments in three different asteroids in search of missing space treasure. This game was released before things like sideways scrolling became common, so action takes place in individual 'rooms', one screen after another.

The story of Cybernoid is fairly straightforward: Federation storage depots have been raided by pirates, who've taken valuable minerals, jewels, ammunition and the latest battle weaponry. You have been commissioned by the Federation to retrieve the cargo and return it to storage within a specified time limit. The pirate craft have activated all planetary defense systems, which you must negotiate along with the pirates themselves. If you fail to reach the depot within the time limit, or if the value of your retrieved cargo is insufficient, you must forfeit one of your Cybernoid ships.

Aiding you on your journey are weapon power-ups which can be found scattered around the asteroids. In addition to the standard lasers, your arsenal also consists of bombs, mines, shields (used to provide limited invincibility), bouncing bombs, and heat-seeking missiles. Needless to say that stocks of these items are limited, although collection of special canisters occasionally dropped by pirate ships increases the currently selected weapons stock by one.

Cybernoid is available for download on the Wii now and is rated E for Everyone. Wonder which other Virtual Console releases are worth your points? Check out the official Virtual Console thread on our Nintendo forums.

Screenshot from the NES version of Cybernoid.