“Bonk’s Adventure,” the TurboGrafx-16 system’s response to the Super Mario Bros. series, is now available on the Wii’s virtual console. Is it worth the money?

The game is about a caveman named Bonk, who has an abnormally large head that is ideal for, well, bonking enemies.

He has to travel through six worlds to rescue Princess Za from King Drool, all the while saving the other brainwashed residents of Moonland.

The game’s graphics are nothing short of outstanding for its 1990 release.

Everything looks and moves incredibly smoothly. For a 2-D game, these are some of the most impressive graphics out there.

The structure of each of the game’s worlds is very unbalanced. World 2 has seven levels while World 4 has one level.

Also, the levels themselves can last anywhere between literally six or seven seconds to a good five minutes.

The longer stages are fine, but why bother to make an area that lasts six seconds and call it a level?

The gameplay in “Bonk’s Adventure” is mediocre at best.

The character walks through each level and its pace slows down even more when it jumps. Bonk just has to walk and hit things with his head; it gets old after a while.

Fortunately the game does have a powerup system in the form of meat that makes Bonk do more damage.

It would be nice if Bonk could do something besides bonk things, though.

All in all, Bonk’s Adventure is a slow-paced game that will probably put hard-core platformer fans to sleep.

So unless you want to spend money to look at the game’s wonderful visuals, save your $6.