Super Mario RPG hits Europe VC

Named after the Japanese fireworks season, the Hanabi festival makes another return to Nintendo Wii this week. The Mario factory has announced a number of classic titles for Virtual Console over the coming weeks, including a couple that star the famous plumber himself.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is the first of the new releases and is available on the European Virtual Console now. The game was originally released on the SNES in 1996, and was originally codeveloped between Nintendo and RPG stalwarts Square.

The second Mario offering is Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, which was available for a limited time during Nintendo's first Hanabi Festival last September. While The Lost Levels was originally released in Japan on Famicon Disk in 1986 as Super Mario Bros. 2, Western gamers got a completely different game instead, based on the unrelated Famicon Disk game Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels are available now for 900 and 600 Wii Points respectively. In addition to the new Mario titles, other games in the coming weeks include Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa, Dig Dug, and Spelunker on the NES, and Doremi Fantasy: Milon's DokiDoki Adventure from the SNES.

According to Nintendo Europe's Web site, "some Hanabi Festival games include a small amount of Japanese text but can be enjoyed without knowledge of the language."