That Super NES space shooter with the picture of that old guy with the banjo on its box is coming back on the Wii, but not on Virtual Console. This is starting to represent a trend of old franchises towards WiiWare instead of Virtual Console.

ZOOM Inc, the developers of the original pre-SNES release of Phalanx have announced that they are going to remake the game on WiiWare with tweaks to the design. The game will be based not off of the Super NES version most people remember but the original Sharp X68000 home computer version.

The new game will release in Japan on WiiWare this winter for 500 points – probably less than a Super NES port would have cost on Virtual Console. No word on releases outside of Japan.

Since the Sharp X68000 version of Phalanx, in addition to the Super NES version there was also a Game Boy Advance port made in 2001. Phalanx will join classic action franchises like Contra, Gradius, Excitebike, and eventually Castlevania in releasing new versions on Nintendo's downloadable games store.