“I’m the wizard!” it shouts as you choose to be the wizard when you start the game. Stupid, but it stuck in our house. I wasn’t the wizard though, my daughter was. I was the knight. In this scrolling fighting game, not completely unlike Golden Axe or Gauntlet III, each character has different skills but as you die one hell of a lot regardless it doesn’t really matter that much. Yes, it’s a coin-muncher but as it’s on the Evercade …
I’d never played this before, but it’s a nice little arcade game in a similar style to Parasol Stars or Super Snow Bros – a single screen two player game where you clear out baddies by sucking them up into your hoover and then spitting them out before they escape. It’s not very hard, nor is it very long, but it was fun and had some nice big bosses. It was probably made easier as I played it in co-op …
OK, the bad points out of the way with this first. The graphics are poor (yes, it’s a Game Boy Colour game, but still), the writing is awful and it is full of bugs. There’s no end of swearing which doesn’t even work in context, and the JRPG style fighting system is random and broken (not least because your health bar doesn’t physically change half the time, even though the value of it does). What you have to do is …
For something that looks like Pokémon on the Game Boy, boy did this take a turn. It’s a Game Boy game, set in a little village, with a nice beach and a church and a school and a library, but there’s a dark and sinister secret that the locals don’t want to talk about. And you and your friends have just started having nightmares about it. With just three days until An Event, you have to get the truth out …
This isn’t quite what I was expecting. You see, I’ve seen Foxyland (and several sequels) on the Switch eShop and PSN, and this isn’t quite that. It’s actually a Mega Drive version of the game, which had different levels. It’s a basic platformer, where you have to collect a number of gems on each short level as well as optionally collect cherries (get enough and you get an extra life). Foxy can only jump and double-jump, and there’s various baddies, …
Although I own this on the Mega Drive, I don’t think I’ve ever played it. But with it being on the Evercade, as with many other titles, I’m rectifying that. And. completed it, of course. The game is split between a Lucasarts-style point and click adventure game (there’s even a reference to Lucasarts in the form of a cave painting) and a platformer, with simple platforming sections wedged between each location. With simple puzzles and no difficult platforming, it didn’t …
Yes. I played Mega-lo-Mania again, and yes, I completed it again. This time, however, it was the recently released Evercade version! Which is just the Mega Drive version again only on an Evercade cart of course. I chose to play as Scarlet this time through, and for the second time ever, one of the other players managed to stick some people in suspended animation for the Mother of All Battles. Of course, they only had about 10 of them whereas …
My new Evercade cartridges arrived! I have no idea why this is the game I played first, but I did, and because it’s very easy, I’d soon completed it too. I’d never heard of Racing Fever before, but it’s clearly an attempt to bring a game like the Neo Geo titles Over Top and Drift Out to the Game Boy Advance (where this first appeared). I think this also marks the first Game Boy Advance title to appear on the …
I was immediately impressed with Xeno Crisis. It’s a Mega Drive game (tailored here to fit the Evercade’s controls) with great sound and graphics, and really slick and lots of sprites on screen at once. It’s a Smash TV sort of shooter, with screen after screen of baddies to shoot (and the odd soldier to rescue), with each level ending with a boss – some of which are bloody huge. The only issue with the game is it’s so hard. …
Or, in some parts of the game, “Return of Double Dragon”. The thing is, I picked my Evercade up and the Technōs cartridge was still in it from when I played River City Ransom recently and the shelf with all my Evercade games on was easily six feet away and therefore too far to bother with, so I picked something from the cart already inserted and that was Super Double Dragon, which I’d never played before. It’s very much What …
I’m sure I own this on about five different platforms now, but for some reason, the Evercade version is the only one i’ve actually put the time in to complete. Previously, I’d found it very, very, hard, but in fact, it’s not. Once you reach the first shopping centre – only a few screens in – you can buy a power-up which makes you capable of wiping out a lot of foes more easily, so can start grinding to get …
This reminds me a lot of every single platformer for the Spectrum. Especially Ghost Hunters, for some reason. Which is also a Codemasters game. Yes, i know there was a Spectrum version of this too, but I never played it. Anyway, you explore a castle, collect treasure, and eventually reach Maid Marion. Except when I got there, a ladder to reach her was broken. Turns out, you have to get all the treasure to fix the ladder (for some reason …
Two things about this game struck me. Firstly, it’s very much like a much shorter version of The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy what with many of the same (again) puzzles and locations. Secondly, there’s no way this is a NES game, surely? It looks way too good. And when you drop three items on the same screen it doesn’t flicker like mad. And it’s so smooth! And the music is way ahead of that in the other Dizzy games! As …
Good grief that was a long game. Not helped by the fact that nearly two hours in I discovered I’d somehow managed to accidentally sequence break and ended up somewhere without items I needed to progress and no way to return to where they were located. Apparently that isn’t possible, but I did it anyway. So I started again, and that took five hours. Five hours! For a NES Dizzy game with no password system or save games. On the …
OK, so I’ve played a few of these NES Dizzy games now and without wanting to point out they’re all the same… they are a bit? I mean, some of the puzzles are very similar, and there’s a whole heap of asset reuse, but it’s different enough. I think. This was longer than Dizzy the Adventurer, but actually easier. The puzzle solutions were more obvious (especially if you’ve read Alice in Wonderland on which much of the game is based), …
