Recently, Nintendo granted people who bought the Wii Internet Channel a free VC NES game of their choice. So did I get a classic like The Legend of Zelda? Nope, we went straight down to the bottom of the barrel with The Legend of Kage, a decent arcade game back in the day that never really translated well to home consoles. Even for free, this was a download in futility, as this is easily one of the worst looking and playing games on the VC.

Basically, in this game, you play Kage, a ninja who has to rescue a princess from some bad ninjas. The game's five stages will take you to, around, and finally inside a large castle where the princess (as well as a final boss) await. Though this sounds like a daunting task, Kage is actually a very short game -- you can clear all five stages in ten to fifteen minutes.

The short length was good for an arcade game, but feels like a ripoff for a home edition. And even though there really isn't much to the game, the programmers didn't even get the basic things right. Kage controls like he's had a couple of pints of sake, and the graphics and sound come off like a glorified Atari 2600 release. If you're a fan of ninja games, do yourself a favor -- stick to the classics like Revenge of Shinobi and stay far away from rubbish like this.