At 30p this is a bargain, though the price will go up around the 20th of the month for this title. The next game will then be 30p for a month, and more expensive afterwards. And so on until summer.
However, as Europeans we are still getting a worse version of the game than the rest of the world.
What you get here runs at 50Hz - a slower speed than the game was originally meant to run at. It is also badly scaled, appearing blurry on both TV and Gamepad. Music and sound effects are also slower, and controls are not as responsive as they should be. I recommend watching a comparison video on YouTube by searching for "nintendomination".
"So what, it's only 30p!?"
Yes, but it is only 30p for a month, then it will be slow (and more expensive) forever.
Contrast this to the USA and JAP versions that run as the programmers (Iwata being one in the case of Balloon Fight!) originally intended - 60Hz. Faster, smoother, better scaling, no borders, more responsive controls. There is no competition.
"Why is this?"
Well, generally speaking, back in the 80s and 90s Europeans were using TVs that could only cope with our own TV signal - PAL. But games were written for the USA/JAP signal - NTSC. Instead of spending the time to reprogram parts of the NTSC games to suit PAL, games companies such as Nintendo took the lazy way out and simply let the 60Hz NTSC game code run 17.5% slower at 50Hz PAL.
And here we are today, still suffering the effects of that decision. There's no reason or excuse to still be living by this 30 year old decision in the days when consoles connect over HDMI, and every TV with HDMI supports 50Hz, 60Hz and more.
"But I remember it at 50Hz! So I want to play it at 50Hz"
Let me ask you this: if you first listened to a 7" record at the wrong speed - later finding out that you've been playing it too slowly - would you want to keep playing it slowly? I suspect not.
"How can this be fixed?"
Nintendo should give us the option of playing these games as originally intended - at 60Hz. In fact, they already do so on 3DS, but for done reason Wii, and now Wii U, are treated differently.
