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. This week we have a bona fide classic and, well, a game that is pretty much the opposite of a classic. First up we have Art of Fighting 2, the terrible Neo Geo fighting game. To balance that out, we also have the TurboGrafx-16 version of Chase H.Q. And if that wasn`t enough, GameTap is introducing us to a brand new show. Will it be worth your time? Find out now when you read another exciting edition of the Retro Round-Up!

Art of Fighting 2
What Is It?
It`s the "exciting" sequel to Art of Fighting, one of the worst playing fighting games released on the Neo Geo. Release two years after the original game, Art of Fighting 2 should have been a lot better than it is. Even Fatal Fury 2 made a stronger argument for why you should play a Neo Geo (and that game was total trash). The good news is that the game is not confined to a bulky story mode, which was one of my main complaints about the first game. The bad news, though, is except for that feature, nothing else has been improved. There are the token new characters, but the graphics certainly aren`t very good, and the backgrounds are the furthest thing from impressive. That`s not to say that all Art of Fighting games are bad, I suggest you hold out hope that Nintendo (or SNK, whoever is responsible) will eventually upload Art of Fighting 3, or, as I like to call it, the only good Art of Fighting game. It`s not perfect, but compared to these two it might as well be BioShock!

Does It Still Hold Up?
The controls are terrible, the graphic aren`t much worse and you`ll hate just about every character added to the roster ... outside of that the game is perfect. All joking aside, this game hasn`t aged well. It wasn`t that strong of a game 14 years ago, but it looks even worse by today`s standards. Nothing about this game (not even the name) has held up well.

Is It Worth The Money?
Do you really need to ask me that? By now you should know that if there`s a Neo Geo game on the Virtual Console that it must be bad. There have been one or two exceptions, but for the most part SNK has unloaded some of their worst Neo Geo games. Where`s Last Blade? Where`s Windjammers? Where`s Breakers Revenge? Where`s Waku Waku 7? Where`s Fatal Fury 3? These are the games that should be populating the Virtual Console, not Art of Fighting 2 and King of the Monsters. Are you kidding me? No, don`t buy this game; just wait until there`s finally a good Neo Geo game uploaded to the Virtual Console.



Chase H.Q.
What Is It?
Long before The Wheelman and Pursuit Force, there was Chase H.Q., a cops and robbers-style racing game that had you pulling over crooks all while endangering the public by driving 200 miles per hour. Originally released in the arcade, Chase H.Q. ended up making its way to more than a dozen consoles and computers. And that`s not all; the game would eventually spawn sequels on both the Sega Genesis and Super NES. These days you can see the influence in Sony`s Pursuit Force seri...