Kid Icarus Flaps Onto Wii U eShop This Week, Headlining New Arrivals

This week’s list of new content for Nintendo’s family of consoles is a bit on the light side, offering just a single game for the Wii U Virtual Console and a handful of smaller games on the 3DS. It looks like that infamous summer drought may have finally struck.

Then again, if we’ve learned anything from this generation of gaming, it’s that things can turn around in an instant. Just because there isn’t much to get excited about this week doesn’t mean that next week won’t hold a random treasure-trove of awesomeness. I don’t have an insider’s look or a crystal ball or anything, I’m just saying that, with so many games now being published digitally and out of the blue, a lack of AAA blockbusters doesn’t mean that a landslide of great smaller games can’t spring up during any given week.

But why speculate what the future holds when we haven’t even dug into what the present has to offer? Again, it’s not much to look at this week, so hopefully Animal Crossing: New Leaf or Shin Megami Tensei IV still have their hooks sunk in pretty deep.

We might as well start with the shortest of this week’s two lists and tackle the Wii U’s single new offering. Already available on the 3DS eShop, Nintendo’s next gen console is now offering the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic, Kid Icarus. You’ll take on the role of Pit, an angel equipped with a bow and arrow on a quest to swipe the Three Sacred Treasures from Medusa’s minions before taking on the snake-headed nuisance herself. You’ll adventure all through Angel Land on your quest, once again proving that maybe old-school game developers weren’t the most creative people when it came to creating names and stories for their 8-bit games.

The Nintendo 3DS only has four games on tap this week, one of which is also available for the DSi. You can grab Cute Witch! Runner on either portable platform while PICROSS e2 and Angler’s Club: Ultimate Bass Fishing are only available for the 3D handheld.

The 3DS lineup is rounded off by Chain Blaster, the arcade shooter that puts the player in charge of a ship that has the potential to save the world from invading swarms of baddies. There’s also a demo available for this one, just in case you’d like to try before you buy.

And that’ll about do it for this week on the Nintendo eShop. As the fall and legendary holiday shopping seasons draw closer, you can expect to see more and more content start to flesh out these weekly offerings. For now, though, maybe there’s something on this slimmed-down list that will catch your interest. If not, there’s always next week.