I feel like I've been playing Evercade more than any other platform of late. I've just been super in the mood for a lot of the sort of things that system offers — and that system offers a lot of different possibilities across all the cartridges that are available now. (Plus there are several in the works that are very exciting… two of which have already been announced and a couple more I already know about!)
Just lately, I've actually been enjoying the CodeMasters lineup quite a bit. CodeMasters' NES games are rather interesting to me, because I always knew them as home computer games — so playing them on a console is an interesting novelty. I also find them quite intriguing because they don't "feel" like NES games — at least partly due to their music. I don't know offhand if they were using custom sound chips or just making use of the NES' sound chip in a different way to many other developers at the time, but folks like Allister Brimble made the NES' sound chip sing like a Commodore 64, with some astonishingly well put together tunes across various Codies titles.
At the same time, I recognise that a fair bit of CodeMasters stuff might not be for everyone because there's a distinct feeling of "Euro jank" about a lot of it — or at least there is at first glance. Take the time to get to know some of the games, though, and there really is a lot to like about even the most obscure ones.
I'm a particular fan of F-16 Renegade and MiG-29 Soviet Fighter, for example, which are basically two variations on a theme: games that combine vertically scrolling shoot 'em up segments with After Burner-style quasi-3D sections. One interesting thing is that between the two of them, they each have the opposite balance — F-16 Renegade favours the vertically scrolling stages with occasional 3D sequences, while MiG-29 favours the 3D gameplay, occasionally switching to top-down. MiG-29 was also obviously developed a little later, as it's overall rather more polished, featuring in-game music and surprisingly impressive "transitions" between scenes and perspectives.
The other reason I find MiG-29 specifically rather interesting is that I have the Atari ST version on my shelf, and that game is absolute hot garbage. With that in mind, I wasn't expecting much from the NES version, but it turns out it's much, much better. I'd be embarrassed for the poor old ST if this wasn't a fairly common pattern when it came to games that were originally developed for 8-bit platforms and ported to 16-bit ones!
Anyway. Enough talking, time to get in a few rounds for Uncle Ivan before sleep time. Hope you've all had a pleasant day!
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