Turn-based strategy games on consoles are old hat by now, but Shining Force on the Sega Genesis was one of the very first (and very few) games of this genre to inch its way out of the formative primordial ooze of the early 1990s. While rather primitive by today’s standards, the original featured a huge cast of playable characters and what was then a new brand of tactical gameplay. Now released for the Wii Virtual Console, Shining Force shows its age in presentation and doesn’t have much of the crazy complexity console strategies are so fond of these days. But with a roster of 30 recruitable characters and a lengthy adventure that easily lasts 25 hours or more, this retro role-playing game is well worth the 800 Wii points ($8).

Evil almost always returns after 1,000 years. This is why you need to get your ancient seals regularly checked and replaced.

The story is set up in classic RPG fashion. One thousand years ago, an evil being known as Dark Dragon was sealed away by the Ancients, an advanced civilization of sages that we can only assume were just waiting around for a chance to banish something hideous to an alternate dimension. Not being the sort of villain to take this lying down, Dark Dragon vowed to return one day to take up his two favorite hobbies: mass destruction and global domination. The predicted time has finally arrived, and the kingdom of Runefaust has launched an unprovoked offensive upon other lands that seems to center around the collection of certain ancient relics. The hero (who is, of course, a talented teenage swordsman) finds that his homeland of Guardiana is one of the first to fall to the advancing armies, and he gathers up a stalwart crew of companions in an attempt to protect other countries and ultimately defeat the forces of Runefaust. While the story itself is fairly clich