Retro games are a hot commodity. With the Xbox Live Arcade and Wii's Virtual Console, it's quickly becoming a prolific segment of the industry. Blogcritics is going to start looking at gaming's generally under-appreciated past in a different way.

Teaming up with classic gaming database Digital Press, Blogcritics will be presenting some lost or under-appreciated classics in short reviews. Extras may include odd facts, the title's impact on the industry, some personal retrospective, different ports the game may have received, and how well they hold up on today's market. Our hope would be to introduce a new generation of gamers, or even those who recently purchased a game console for the first time to those games they missed and the legacy they left behind.

The Game
Yes, it's a Virtual Boy game, and yes, it fits right in with the column's original intention: Introducing a wide audience to the lost classics they've never played yet absolutely should. Wario Land is a brilliant piece of retro gaming, one that both is still fun today, and uses the capabilities of the hardware to its fullest.

While the Virtual Boy languished and bombed at the hands of the video game media at the time, players skipped directly over this red and black gem. Without a true dedicated Mario title for the console, his arch nemesis stepped in to grab the platforming crown. Level design is where Wario stands out, and it may even take some time to realize the depth this lost classic has.

They key (literally) in each stage is, uh, well, the key. Somewhere between the enemies moving front-to-back, and in-and-out of the players view, block busting, jump blocks that send Wario out of the screen to a rear section of the stage, and transformations hides a key to open the final door. This could have been a simple case of running to the right with some superb parallax scrolling.

Instead, Nintendo gave a purpose to the adventure. Exploring everything, even if it may not be in foreground, is critical. For those truly dedicated, hidden artifacts are crammed even deeper. This is a rather short ride, so replay value is crucial.

Boss fights are nearly all classics, and each one-upping the prior. The 3-D effect is used to its fullest, well past the point of being slapped with a gimmick moniker. The same goes for the bonus levels, which require precision front-to-back jumping.

The Present
In a roundabout way, the use of the 3-D to find secret items or exits can be seen as an early precursor to the recent Paper Mario on the Wii. In terms of exploration, the game play mechanic is awfully similar in execution, and imaging how well Paper Mario's latest adventure would have looked here is a dream that will never come to light.

With the passage of time, it's easy to see that the front-to-back (and often vice versa) jumping would have worked on the SNES at the time. A little Mode 7 scaling would have handled this just as well. However, the depth of field provided by the hardware makes all the difference.