The two Double Dragon games on NES are markedly different from their arcade counterparts — and a great deal of fun in their own right.
Double Dragon II: The Revenge plays up the platform game elements quite considerably — and also introduces the simultaneous two-player mode that was absent from the original NES game. It’s a great brawler well worth spending some time with today.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
Top Racer (originally known as Top Gear in the west) has a long and proud tradition — and it’s a classic vanishing point racer that still holds up super-well today.
When it originally released on Evercade as part of the Piko Interactive Collection 1 cartridge, you could only play it in single-player against the computer. With the advent of the Evercade VS, though, split-screen funtimes are yours for the taking!
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
You can dance if you want to, and leave your friends behind. In fact, you’ll have to, since Tanzer is a single-player game — and one of the most exciting games in the Evercade’s launch lineup.
Taking on the role of some sort of cybernetic ballet dancer fleeing a deadly plague, it’s your job to travel through time and beat the crap out of all manner of robotic and alien nasties. Why? Not sure. It’s fun, though, and very hard!
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
Interplay put out a fair few “claymation” games in their time, of varying degrees of quality!
One that was on the slightly better end of things was Claymates, an inventive and enjoyable side-scrolling platformer with some interesting level design and some peculiar mechanics.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
Pac-Attack is an unusual and highly memorable puzzler from Namco with a bit of an interesting history!
Those of you who listened to our end-of-2020 podcast episode will also recall that Chris declared it his Game of the Year 2020, despite the fact it released in 1993. Our recent discovery of it is all thanks to the little wonder-machine that is the Evercade — and you can enjoy it too as part of the Namco Museum Collection 2 cartridge for the system.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
One of the interesting things about fully exploring retro gaming is discovering the subtle differences between different versions of a game.
Back in the early to mid ’80s, there were sometimes quite significant differences between the various platforms’ take on an established game. This was due to a combination of factors: most frequently it was down to the technical limitations of the host platforms, but sometimes it was due to the programmers responsible for the ports not having all of the resources they needed, and consequently having to do the coder’s equivalent of holding things together with sticky tape.
Namco’s port of its classic arcade title Dig Dug for the Famicom — easily accessible today as part of the Namco Museum Collection 1 cartridge for the Evercade retro gaming platform — is a good example of (probably) the former. Either way, it’s a distinctive version of Dig Dug that is well worth playing, even if you’re well familiar with the arcade original!
Today’s Evercade game is a cross-platform Atari title — it’s Desert Falcon, which was primarily designed for the Atari 7800, but which also got a 2600 version.
Desert Falcon is an isometric perspective shoot ’em up in which you take control of a majestic bird who has a real grudge against Sphinxes. By collecting combinations of hieroglyphs, you’ll be able to equip yourself with a variety of special powers — or, sometimes, hindrances — to make your task a little more interesting and unpredictable.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
One of the nice things about modern, curated compilations of games from old platforms is that they provide an opportunity for “lost” classics to finally get an audience.
In many cases, “lost” classics were completed and reached a full prototype phase, but just never ended up getting duplicated and distributed to the public. Sometimes this is understandable; at other times, it’s a bit of a mystery.
Aquaventure for Atari 2600, which you can play not only in Atari Flashback Classics but also as part of the Atari Collection 1 cartridge on Evercade, definitely falls into the latter category. This game is good, so why didn’t it get released?
Continue reading Aquaventure: The Game That Deserved a Release
Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure is a game I was prepared to write off as yet another ’90s mascot platformer filled with grossout humour.
And to be fair, it certainly is that, but it’s actually a pretty solid game, too. With strong animation, good quality music and sound effects and some responsive controls, it’s a surprisingly good platformer — albeit one that has a bit of trouble with its overall pacing.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
I am bad at pool. Real pool, that is. But also video game pool. Although I am marginally less bad at video game pool than I am at real pool.
Data East’s Side Pocket, seen here as part of the Data East Collection 1 cartridge for the Evercade, at least makes the experience of being bad at video game pool pleasantly entertaining by providing a smooth jazz soundtrack, some pretty ladies and a series of completely unreasonable trick shots with which to challenge yourself. Plus no onlookers who have had a few too many pints laughing at your incompetence. Ideal.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
MoeGamer 