Joe & Mac Returns (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Another two player Evercade game. I’ve played Joe & Mac (Caveman Ninja) before, and the sequel, but hadn’t even heard of this. In fact, I thought it was the sequel when I started it up. As it turns out, it’s a completely different sort of platformer. Whereas the other two Joe & Mac games were sideways scrolling platformers where you club baddies, Returns is a two player Bubble Bobble/Snowbros/Rodland type single screen “clear the baddies” type game. You still club …

Knuckle Bash (Evercade): COMPLETED!

I broke out the Evercade VS for some games with my daughter, and this was one of those we played. It’s a Final Fight clone by Toaplan, and is very silly and badly translated. You’re wrestlers, I think, one of whom is Elvis Presley, and you have to fight your way through the streets and buildings to take down the bad guys, some of whom join your cause. It’s hilarious. But not (always) intentionally so. It’s just so ridiculous. Like …

Batsugun (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Well isn’t this a slick little arcade shooter? I’ve heard of it before but never played it, and I don’t generally get excited over shoot ’em ups as they’re not really my favourite genre, but I couldn’t help be impressed with just how much is going on at any one time on this. I suppose in some ways it’s an early bullet hell shooter, in that there are so many bullets coming at you the main focus of the game …

Sküljagger (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Sküljagger (no, I’d never heard of it either) is a Bad Game. Originally a SNES game which seemed to have been completely ignored at the time, it’s yet another 16-bit platform with literally nothing going for it. It seems to have a pirate theme or maybe a viking theme or who actually knows, or cares? You have a sword and have platforms to navigate. Wow. Even at the time this can’t have been more than a 5/10 title. It’s janky …

The Little Tales of Alexandria (Evercade): COMPLETED!

This game is a very short narrative discovery game for the Game Boy, released on an Evercade Indie Heroes cartridge. You’re a girl in a block of flats, you talk to people, find cats, and then it ends. There’s not really much else to say. It has some charm, but there’s very little here even for this genre, and it’s a bit clunky and collision detection is all over the place. My guess is it’s built on an engine like …

Alien Breed Special Edition ’92 (Evercade): COMPLETED!

I seem to remember this getting really good reviews upon original release, but I’m struggling to see how. I did look up some of them, and came across this incredible bit of art editor drunkenness from Amiga User International, which attempts to show the screen that comes up when you access a computer terminal, but fails, rather than any of the actual game itself. Incredible work. And also look out for some great whitespace issues: Anyway, that review also tells …

Project-X Special Edition (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Bloody hell that was hard. Save states at the start of each level and still the last couple of levels were near impossible. Although I loved this back on my Amiga, what I hadn’t realised back then was how poor the collision detection was, which, coupled with the jerky movement, caused so many deaths as I slammed accidentally into walls as I tried to scrape by. Perhaps this was because the first two levels are pretty easy but I never …

Nebulus (Evercade): COMPLETED!

It’s not often I play the C64 version of a game I liked on the Spectrum (and in this case, the Game Boy too) and think, you know, this is actually better. But it is. The animation of your main frog/gonk guy especially is really nice, and the vertical scrolling is less jerky. it’s great. And hard. Very hard. Previously, I don’t think I’d ever even passed level 2, so I’d not experienced how much of a mind-stewing maze the …

Wardner (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Although it wasn’t often I came across Wardner in the arcades, it was a game I played whenever I got the chance. I don’t know why though, because it’s so hard my ten pee would last mere seconds. Now, with the advent of Press Select to Insert Coin, I can just slot unlimited magic money into the machine! The future! Playing it now, I realise that it’s actually quite a lot like Alex Kidd. No janken, of course, and you …

Cybernoid (Evercade): COMPLETED!

This week, the next two Evercade cartridges arrived. Cybernoid is on the new C64 cart, and I was a big fan of the original (albeit on the Spectrum) so it’s the first thing I started up. Thankfully, the Commodore version is very similar to the Spectrum one, although with more muted colours and a different ship design. It’s still a pretty good game, although it’s very easy to die due to the random nature of some of the spawns. For …

Bionic Commando (Evercade): COMPLETED!

I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever played the NES version of this before, and my understanding is that it’s very different. Perhaps you can even jump in that? You can’t in this, the original arcade version, in any case. (EDIT: You can’t jump in the NES version either. Curious.) So, as I’m finding with these Capcom arcade games on the Evercade EXP, Bionic Commando is another money-eater. There’s no way in hell you’re supposed to be able to finish this …

Forgotten Worlds (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Aside from a demo for the Spectrum version of this scrolling shoot ’em up, I don’t think I’ve ever properly played Forgotten Worlds before. I know Your Sinclair raved about it, but the controls (which are crying out to be twin-stick before that was a common thing) always seemed too fiddly to bother with, so I never really tried. Turns out, that I was right. OK, so in the arcade you have a stick to move, and a rotary dial …

Final Fight (Evercade): COMPLETED!

You know, I’ve realised there’s a flaw in playing arcade games on a non-arcade device. You just keep piling virtual coins in until you win. Sure, you can do this on MAME, and yes, the EXP does have a credit limit option, but still – completing a game is as much an exercise in pressing “insert coin” as it pressing punch and kick. Because ain’t nobody limiting themselves to 3 credits unless they’re masochists. The game is as it ever …

MERCS (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Is it MERCS not Mercs? Everywhere seems to say it in all-caps, but why? It’s not an acronym. In this TED Talk I’ll be explor… Not really. I don’t care. What I do care about, however, is that this, a three-player game, is one of the Capcom games built into the strictly single player Evercade EXP. Seems an odd choice to me, but then I suppose it’s another title to show off the EXP’s tate (or TATE? Answers in the …

Lightning Swords (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Oh would you look at that. My Limited Edition Evercade EXP finally arrived! And with it, a big pile of games – some built-in, and two Arcade cartridges. So, what will I play? Why, Lightning Swords, a game I’ve never heard of, of course! Imagine if Revenge of Shinobi was Rolling Thunder, and you’re most of the way towards what Lightning Swords is. A sideways scrolling swordy-slashy game with hundreds of identical foes and a few bosses. You can pick …