Every week Cyril Lachel comes down from his giant castle in the hills to provide the final word on all of the classic downloadable games and retro compilations. This is the Retro Round-Up, your official guide to the best (and worst) in classic gaming for the Nintendo Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Join us as we shed some light on what games are worth your five or ten dollars, and what games you should avoid at all costs. For more information about these games (and retro gaming in general) we invite you to check out Defunct Games. Talk about a disappointing week. This week was almost saved by the appearance of an R-Type game, but it`s the wrong R-Type game. And then there`s Spelunker, one of the worst games ever made on any platform. What`s worse, the usually reliable GameTap only gave us one game to review. I guess you`re just going to have to put up with three disappointing reviews. But don`t let that keep you from reading this week`s episode of the Retro Round-Up!

Spelunker
What Is It?
Spelunker is Satan`s love letter to NES owners. It`s as if Broderbund (the company best known for Lode Runner and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) reached down into the pits of hellfire and pulled up the most frustrating 2D platformer of all time. It`s less an action game than an exercise in aggravation. Just when you think you`ve seen the hardest part of the game, here comes yet another level that doesn`t seem adequately designed for this type of character. But let me back up a little bit, in case you`ve never had a chance to experience Spelunker, you play a small dude who is off to investigate scary underground caverns. While it`s a promising concept (hey, the Eidos execs got rich off of recycling that theme over and over again in those Tomb Raider titles), Spelunker is the very definition of a train wreck video game. The problems start immediately. Even a simple task like jumping from the elevator to the next platform is hampered by what has to be the worst fall damage ever seen in a video game. It`s normal in games to have fall damage (even to the point where you lose your life), but Spelunker takes this to the extreme. You will die from falling a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean that you`re probably going to fall to your death four or five times before even advancing to the second screen. And that`s not even taking into consideration the cheap bad guys, all of the timed jumps you have to make and all do the other dangerous stuff that has a tendency of just jumping out and killing you right on the spot. Even if this game was only three levels long, it would still take you weeks to beat ... the game is that hard. What is Spelunker? It`s the most frustrating piece of crap game currently available on the Virtual Console!

Does It Still Hold Up?
No. No, no, no, no, no. NO! I can`t say it enough, this game is the epitome of outdated. I cannot stress this enough, the only fun somebody could have with Spelunker is if they wanted to see a collection of all of the most outdated gameplay mechanics all in one place. The graphics, controls and level designs all look like they are straight out of a terrible Commodore 64 game. But this isn`t some lame-ass C64 title, this is a full-fledged Nintendo Entertainment System game (though, for what it`s worth, there was a C64 version of the game). It baffles the mind to know that Nintendo is actually expecting people to pay $5 for what has to be one of the worst games I have ever played.

Is It Worth the Money?
Can you tell that I`m not going to recommend it? Spelunker could have been awesome; the idea of playing a cavern explorer has a lot of potential ... even for an 8-bit NES game. But this is not an awesome game. Heck, this is pretty much the exact opposite of an awesome game. It`s a shame t...