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), …
I’d never played this Dizzy game before, although many parts of it seemed familiar. Was is a retitled reworking of another one, perhaps? It was much, much easier than Treasure Island Dizzy, not least because it looks like the only way you can die is by falling in water, and I only did that once. There’s a bit of an anticlimax at the end too when you don’t get to fight Zaks like I was sure you would (and I …
There was a lot of hype surrounding this game before and soon after it’s original release on the Mega Drive. Not least because it was a home made but professional quality Mega Drive game coming out some 20-odd years after making a Mega Drive game had been a financially viable prospect. It looks amazing, and has some fantastic animation (especially on the fox you control), and I saved a load of money getting it for the Evercade instead of other …
OK, so it’s no Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker, and it does only have an overhead view with no zooming and a shot guide which isn’t even nearly granular enough for a pool game, but I was somewhat hooked. Even with the way you play a frame (on your own!), then have to do a trick shot, and if you fail the trick shot, you have to play another frame. You only progress to the next round if you – lets …
Not a huge amount to say about this, aside from I’d never played it before and it was much like the first game only you can play the levels in any order. It has some good, mostly dinosaur based, bosses, a stupid plot about cavemen (who live in tents rather than caves) and a magic crown. I mean, I know there’s some issue with cavemen existing around the time of dinosaurs but magic now? Come on. It’s definitely a game …
Although I’d heard of this game, I’d always put it down as a poor-man’s Street Fighter II, like so many other 16bit games that turned up around the same time, like Body Blows and Art of Fighting and Eternal Champions and so on. Turns out, it’s actually much better than I’d convinced myself. In fact, it’s almost as playable as Street Fighter II itself. Sure, it has a number of shameless clone characters and backgrounds, not to mention moves, but …
I’m a fan of the original Mappy, and it’s the first game I test whenever I set MAME up on yet another device, but I’d never heard of Mappy Kids. I was expecting it to be similar to the original, but actually it’s totally different. Instead of being some hybrid of Bonanza Bros and Burger Time, it’s a side scrolling platformer where you have to collect money and valuable items. At the end of each level you play a minigame …
Well this is a lovely wee game. it’s a simple premise – run round the platforms avoiding baddies and touching all the uncoloured wall and floor tiles to paint them. It has a very 1980s arcade type game feel, and everything is all tiny and cute. It’s on the Mega Cat Evercade cartridge, which I understand to contain new games for old consoles, and this is presumably a NES title? It’s pretty good, anyway, and my only complaint is that …
This is supposedly an old NES game the Oliver Twins never finished, but released a couple of years ago after a campaign to get it completed. It’s a pretty simple side-scrolling platform game, which doesn’t really stand out in any way (aside from being incredibly easy!) but does look and sound good for a NES title. There are only 15 or so levels, and they’re not especially long. Most of them have a powerup which you can collect which makes …
