#oneaday Day 663: Ten of my favourite Evercade cartridges

I've got a relatively ambitious Evercade-related project in my mental "to-do" pile, but I haven't yet found the time to kick that off. So in the meantime I thought I would spend some time talking a bit more about the thing I spend my days working on.

There's a weird sort of culture a lot of people have about not talking about where they work. I understand it to an extent — if people know where you work, that can open you up to harassment as a result of something your workplace did or announced, plus people can (incorrectly) assume that anything you post on a personal account or site is you somehow acting as a "spokesperson" for that brand. In less enlightened workplaces, too, management can spy on the things you do in your free time and inevitably make the least charitable interpretation of the things you say possible so that they have ammunition to treat you like shit at work.

Thankfully I have not suffered the latter for a good few years now, and I am using this paragraph to make abundantly clear that although I work for Blaze on the Evercade project and related products, this post is my opinion only and does not, in any way, reflect the opinions, values and anything else about my employer. I am writing this post 'cause I love Evercade, and have done since I took a chance and splashed the cash on that "All-In" bundle back in 2020.

Anyway, what I want to do today is pick 10 Evercade cartridges I particularly like and share them with you. There may be some cartridges in this list that are no longer available due to the expiration of licensing agreements between Blaze and the license holders, or all manner of other circumstances, and I make no apologies for this; something good doesn't stop being good just because you can't buy it as easily any more.

With all that in mind then, let us begin:

Namco Museum Collection 1

Although both Namco Museum Collection cartridges for Evercade have not been available for a while due to Namco deciding to be extremely weird about releasing their stuff on physical media these days, they remain highlights of the Evercade's launch lineup — and since they formed the part of several launch bundles, there are a fair few copies out there to be found relatively easily.

I have a tough time picking a favourite out of the two, but on balance I think it has to be the first one, which features some all-time classics and favourites, plus some interesting curiosities. On the classics front, you have good versions of Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Xevious and Mappy, while on the lesser-known front you have the excellent (and surprisingly accessible) strategy game, Metal Marines, plus the awesome space sim Star Luster. And this is just my personal favourites from the cart; there's also Mappy Kids, Libble Rabble, Battle Cars and Quad Challenge, too, making it a well-rounded and fun collection.

Data East Collection 1

If there's one cartridge I feel like I plop in the Evercade more than any other, it has to be Data East Collection 1, for two main reasons: Burnin' Rubber and Midnight Resistance. Both are truly excellent games for very different reasons, but they do have one thing in common: great music.

That's not all that Data East Collection 1 offers, though. There's the beat 'em up action of Bad Dudes and its spiritual sequel Two Crude Dudes, a good version of BurgerTime, the excellent (if totally unrealistic) pool game Side Pocket, the manic puzzler Magical Drop 2, the colourful platformer Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics and the one-on-one fighters Karate Champ and Fighter's History. All of these games have something worthwhile to offer in 2026.

Jaleco Collection 1

Jaleco is one of those publishers I feel people often forget about, but when you look at their library of stuff you realise they've actually put out a lot of bangers over the years. Jaleco Collection 1 features some stars from their console lineup, including the beat 'em ups Brawl Brothers and Rival Turf!, the firefighting action-adventure The Ignition Factor, the sci-fi top-down run-and-gun Operation Logic Bomb and more.

I don't think I've ever loaded up Bases Loaded but I believe it's a relatively well-regarded baseball game from the 8-bit era, and likewise for soccer with Super Goal! 2. Super Earth Defense Force is a solid scrolling spaceship shooter, Astyanax and Totally Rad are decent 8-bit platformers, and City Connection is a really fun arcade-style game that only really suffers due to its excruciating music. There's not a bad game in this bunch, so I come back to this cart frequently.

Gaelco Arcade 1

The two Gaelco Arcade cartridges are some of my all-time favourites from the Evercade library, but I think the first one just about has the edge in terms of the number of games I keep coming back to. My personal standouts are the brilliant World Rally, which has possibly the best handling of any isometric racer of the era; the unusual gameplay of Glass; and the wonderfully silly run-and-gun action of Biomechanical Toy.

If you're unfamiliar with Gaelco — and I'd forgive you if you are, since I'd never heard of them prior to us putting this cart out — this is a great way to get to know them. Expect polished visuals, challenging gameplay and some truly excellent digitised guitar noodling.

Renovation Collection 1

This one won't come as a surprise to anyone, as it's an oft-cited favourite from many longstanding Evercade fans. Featuring an extremely cool range of 16-bit games, many of which have an awesome anime style about them, there's a ton of value on this cart. Highlights for most are Valis and Valis III, El Viento and Arcus Odyssey, but there's plenty more to enjoy here, too.

Gaiares and Sol-Deace are good (if very tough) shoot 'em ups. Granada and Final Zone are great multidirectional shooters. Dino Land is a fun and quirky take on pinball. Traysia is a solid RPG if you go into it with the appropriate expectations (it's channelling Ultima, hard). Beast Wrestler is the weak link for many, but I bet you can find some fun there if you try hard enough.

TheC64 Collection 1

In the absence of some good Atari 8-bit cartridges — we haven't yet got a commercially licensable Atari 8-bit emulator we're happy to work with just yet — I will have to satisfy myself with its great rival, the Commodore 64. Fortunately, the three C64 collections we've put out to date include some of my all-time favourite games, and while I will always prefer the Atari versions in most cases, the C64 versions are good, too.

My personal highlights in this collection are Lee (originally Bruce Lee but now not for hopefully obvious reasons), Jumpman and Gateway to Apshai. There's a really broad mix of games in here, including some real legends (Impossible Mission!) — plus the two "Games" games are great with friends. I know home computer games are a hard sell for some people who grew up with consoles, but honestly, the three C64 collections plus the Thalamus cartridge are a great in-road for the curious.

Duke Nukem Collection 1

It felt like we'd finally hit the big-time with this cartridge. Duke Nukem is a huge license to land, and the fact we got the excellent Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered as an exclusive was, for me, the moment we had really got a proper "killer app" for Evercade.

Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered is, of course, great, and probably the best way to play these shareware classics today. Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown has its detractors, particularly as there are more recent ports of Duke3D that run more smoothly and control a bit more elegantly with a controller, but it's one of those things where if you take it on its own merits and consider that it was running on a platform that, despite having a 3D focus, was still just a little underpowered, is actually perfectly competent and enjoyable. The exclusive levels are a hoot, too — if extremely tough!

Sunsoft Collection 2

Sunsoft is one of those developers that, again, I suspect few people would count among their absolute favourites, but they have a really solid back catalogue of titles to draw upon. This second collection of their games is my personal favourite, primarily due to the presence of the excellent Ufouria: The Saga, which is a truly great exploration platformer.

I'm also a big fan of Pri Pri Primitive Princess!, which is an interesting puzzle game that very much feels like it may have been a home computer game at some point in the past. By this I mean that it's clunky but creative, and if you come at it with the right mindset you'll be well and truly hooked.

Toaplan Arcade 3

I knew I wanted — no, needed — to include a Toaplan Arcade cartridge in this list, and after much deliberation I settled on this third one, primarily for Batsugun and its variant, Batsugun Special Version. Out Zone and FixEight are a hoot, too, Truxton II is just as punishing as its predecessor (but fun once you get into its groove), Ghox is a weird but cool take on Breakout, and Vimana is probably the company's most accessible shoot 'em up.

Toaplan's arcade games are among some of my favourites in the Evercade library, and this is an excellent cartridge full of some of their best titles.

The Turrican Collection

Despite being a home computer gamer in the '80s and early '90s, Turrican is a series that completely passed me by. I always saw gushing praise for it in magazines of the era, but never actually got around to playing it myself. I don't think I ever even played a demo for it. This is a shame, because with The Turrican Collection I've discovered that I like Turrican a lot.

I've also discovered that, unsurprisingly, those who criticise it for having sprawling, meandering levels in which it's easy to get lost were exaggerating somewhat; there's always a clear path forwards, and whether or not you go exploring for goodies is up to you. Plus as the series goes on, it settles into a more "Japanese-style" linear formula, culminating in the technically gorgeous Super Turrican 2. Absolutely banging soundtrack, too.

And there we are. Ten of my favourite carts. Ten of my favourite carts. They might not be yours. But they are mine. And, honestly, if you asked me on another day, I could probably pick out ten more favourites, and repeat the process many times over. In fact, I can find something to love on every single Evercade cartridge — and I'm not just saying that 'cause I work on them. I really am thrilled to do what I do — and I hope that comes across in my contributions to the products in question!

Now after all that, I think I'll go boot one of these up and have a nice retro evening…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 662: Nexus announcement day

I get to talk a bit about the day job today! I say "get to" like someone hasn't been allowing me to do so. What I mean is: we had a big announcement today, and I'd like to talk about it!

That announcement was for Evercade Nexus, a new Evercade handheld featuring a much bigger, brighter screen, significantly louder speakers, dual analogue sticks and a host of other cool features. You can see the trailer here:

Evercade has always been a platform that plays a wide variety of retro games — the library actually covers six different decades (from the 1970s up until today) — but Nexus has been designed with a bit of a '90s flavour, hence the somewhat different look and feel to the new trailer. The dual analogue sticks are designed to complement 3D games from the 32-bit era that we already have in the library (and have planned for the future), as well as our upcoming brand new native ports of 64-bit legends like Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, and these games all hail from the '90s, so it makes sense for the branding to reflect that.

You can still play classic Atari games on it as well, though, (plus, of course, all the other classic consoles the Evercade library covers!) and the bright colours found in your average old-school pixel art title will look lovely on that screen — plus with the all-new extra-loud speakers, you can subject everyone in the vicinity to the sound of Pitfall Harry and/or Lara Croft falling to their death for the umpteenth time.

I've said it before, but I'm super proud to work on Evercade. Ever since I first went for the "All-In" bundle of the original handheld back in 2020, which came with the first 10 cartridges released for the platform, I knew it was something special — and hoped that one day I would be able to be part of it. Well, now I am part of it — I have been for some time, and will hopefully continue to be for a long time yet — and it's a delight to be able to look at a product like the Nexus and think that I played a part in that, along with every cartridge release we do.

It's an interesting feeling to have lived long enough to remember these games from first time around vividly enough to still be excited about helping rerelease them on a new device. I never stopped loving games like (Bruce) Lee, MegaMania, Checkered Flag and myriad others — it's a genuine privilege to have been part of making official rereleases happen. Right now I'm working on the Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie double pack that is bundled in with Nexus, and it's hard work, but also immensely rewarding when I think about how good this release is going to be when it's finished.

And there are many more exciting games coming down the road — including a bunch more of my all-time favourites. I can't wait to share them with you all, and if you're new to Evercade, I hope you'll consider jumping on board with Nexus or one of our other devices! Preorders for Nexus open tomorrow — you can find out more here.

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#oneaday Day 572: Some stuff I've written this year - Evercade edition

As you may or may not know, I work for Blaze Entertainment on the Evercade retro gaming console. I write the manuals for the cartridges, and I also put out a variety of digital Stuff to support our releases, much of which ends up on the Evercade blog and YouTube channel. So today, the last day of 2025, I'm going to share the stuff I've written for the Evercade blog. 'Cause I bet you haven't read it, have you? Hmmmmm?

What's on the Cart? Indie Heroes Collection 4

What's on the Cart? Indie Heroes Collection 4

The "What's on the Cart?" posts are intended as a preview of upcoming cartridges, but they also provide a nice summary of everything that's on a particular cartridge. We kicked off 2025 with Indie Heroes Collection 4, which included 11 games, many of which were released through our "Game of the Month" programme in 2024. That's where for a hefty chunk of the year, Evercade devices play host to a game that any owners can play for free, even if they don't own the cartridge it's usually on. We've used this system to showcase both new indie titles (which end up on the Indie Heroes cartridges) and games from the system's back catalogue.

Indie Heroes Collection 4 is a fun compilation. Some of the individual games had a bit of a "meh" response from the community when they came up as Game of the Month, but the cartridge as a whole has proven to be quite well-regarded thanks to a few particular standout titles — notably the arcade-style Dig Dug/Bomberman fusion that is Murtop, the point-and-click adventure Batty Zabella and the excellent platformer Flea!2.

Golden Oldies: Data East Collection 1

Golden Oldies: Data East Collection 1

To go along with the "What's on the Cart?" previews, we also kicked off a similar retrospective series looking at cartridges from the back catalogue that are still available. One of the most popular from the Evercade launch lineup is Data East Collection 1, which includes some absolute bangers like Burnin' Rubber, Magical Drop 2, Side Pocket and Midnight Resistance. This is one of my personal favourite cartridges from the library, so I was more than happy to give it a bit of love.

Evercade features update: March 2025

Evercade Features Update: March 2025

Although Evercade is a plug-and-play system, we add new features to it through firmware updates throughout the year — typically after fan requests for such features, but also just because we think they'll be cool. In March of this year, we introduced DIP switch support for arcade games, which allows you to customise the difficulty of games on the purple arcade cartridges. This was, as you might expect, rather well-received!

Highlight of the Month: Midnight Resistance

Highlight of the Month: Midnight Resistance

This year, we switched the indie-centric Game of the Month for Highlight of the Month, a showcase of games from our back catalogue of cartridges that are still available. The opening salvo was Data East's excellent Midnight Resistance, a top-tier 16-bit run-and-gun title with a killer soundtrack.

Highlight of the Month: Zool

Highlight of the Month: Zool

We followed this up with Gremlin's high-speed platformer Zool, who is not an ant. He is a ninja from the Nth dimension!

What's on the Cart? NEOGEO Arcade 1

What's on the Cart? NEOGEO Arcade 1

We teased NEOGEO coming to Evercade at the end of last year, and this year we released our first three NEOGEO Arcade cartridges. The first of these, imaginatively titled NEOGEO Arcade 1, features Metal Slug, The King of Fighters 2000, Sengoku and more, and it proved to be immensely popular! Given that original format NEOGEO cartridges have always commanded a hefty sum ever since they were new, this cart is solid value for some truly excellent games.

The Evercade Easter Egg hunt

The Evercade Easter Egg Hunt

A bunch of classic games have hidden features, known as Easter eggs, because you're supposed to hunt for them, see? In this piece, we explore some of the best examples available on Evercade, including hidden games, sneaky programmer credits and more. Plus the Evercade system itself has a bunch of hidden Easter eggs, too!

What's on the Cart? Atari Arcade 2

What's on the Cart? Atari Arcade 2

With Atari's acquisition of the properties that originally belonged to Stern Electronics, they suddenly had a bunch more games available to license, including all-time classics like Berzerk, interesting rarities like Rescue and Maze Invaders, and the excellent Tazz-Mania, a game I'd never heard of before, but which is now one of my favourite arcade blasters. This post takes a quick look at the 10 games on this fun cartridge that will particularly appeal to those who appreciate early '80s arcade games.

Highlight of the Month: Old Towers

Highlight of the Month: Old Towers

The next Highlight of the Month was Old Towers, an excellent "modern retro" indie game with a simple premise and execution, but a series of increasingly challenging puzzles for you to contend with. This game is a fine showcase of the sort of stuff publisher Mega Cat Studios puts out, and, while relatively short, puts up a stiff challenge while it lasts.

What's on the Cart? Windjammers, Karnov & Friends

What's on the Cart? Windjammers, Karnov & Friends

We broke from our usual naming convention for this one because we figured that no-one would know who "PAON" were. These games were originally published by Data East, but we couldn't call it Data East Arcade 3 because the rights for the Data East name and mark are with a different company to that which holds these five games. Isn't licensing fun? Anyway, this cartridge sneakily marked our first NEOGEO game, releasing a little while before the first NEOGEO Arcade cartridge came out, and features some fan favourites. Although Windjammers and Karnov are the best-known games on this cart, don't sleep on the relatively little known Vapor Trail and Rohga: Armor Force, as both are spectacular shoot 'em ups.

Evercade Features Update: 5th anniversary edition

Evercade Features Update: 5th Anniversary Edition

This year marked the fifth anniversary of Evercade, a console which successfully released in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and which has continued to thrive in its niche ever since. For the occasion, we put out a hefty firmware update including a variety of cool features, including a brand new hidden game!

Highlight of the Month: Alligator Hunt

Highlight of the Month: Alligator Hunt

Highlight of the Month continued with this exciting gallery shooter from Gaelco, in which two skateboarding kids blast into space to do battle with alligator-like aliens.

Evercade Game Spotlight: Roguecraft DX

Evercade Game Spotlight: Roguecraft DX

One of my favourite releases of the year was Roguecraft DX, an enhanced and expanded version of a new Amiga game that first came out last year. We worked closely with the guys at Badger Punch Games to make the Evercade version the definitive way to enjoy this game, and we absolutely succeeded.

Highlight of the Month: Worms

Highlight of the Month: Worms

We helped Team17 celebrate Worms Armageddon's anniversary with a showcase of the Mega Drive version of the original Worms. This version is a good, simple way in to a classic series that gets more complex with later installments.

What's on the Alpha? TAITO edition

What's on the Alpha? TAITO Edition

We released the third of our Evercade Alpha bartop arcade units this year, this time themed around TAITO games. In this piece, I took a look at the included games that are built-in to the machine.

Evercade Game Spotlight: Alcon

Evercade Game Spotlight: Alcon

As part of Toaplan's 40th anniversary celebrations, I put out a few Evercade Game Spotlight pieces on some favourite games from this developer's back catalogue. Alcon is a personal favourite, featuring deliberate pacing and a player-controlled power-up system.

Evercade Game Spotlight: FixEight

Evercade Game Spotlight: FixEight

Toaplan's anniversary celebrations continue with a look at their second run-and-gun title, FixEight, the follow-up to Out Zone. This is one of Toaplan's most accessible games, and well worth a playthrough for its sheer ridiculousness.

Highlight of the Month: Truxton

Highlight of the Month: Truxton

Following on from the anniversary celebrations, the next Highlight of the Month was Toaplan's classic vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, Truxton. This is a hard game, but an immensely rewarding one once you get to grips with it. You'll need practice and memorisation, though!

Highlight of the Month: Flea!

Highlight of the Month: Flea!

Since Flea!2 appeared on Indie Heroes Collection 1 at the start of the year, we thought it would be nice to showcase the original. So we did!

What's on the Cart? The Llamasoft Collection

What's on the Cart? The Llamasoft Collection

In our most packed cartridge to date, we brought you 27 Llamasoft classics in The Llamasoft Collection, including the first VIC-20 and Atari ST games on Evercade! Having grown up with Jeff Minter games, I love this cartridge, although it's a shame we weren't able to squeeze the Atari 8-bit version of Attack of the Mutant Camels in there.

Golden Oldies: Irem Arcade 1

Golden Oldies: Irem Arcade 1

Irem Arcade 1 is a fan favourite that unfortunately our license is expiring for next year, so we thought it would be a good time to celebrate the wonderful games in this collection, including classics like R-Type and Moon Patrol, plus lesser-known hits like In the Hunt and Lightning Swords.

Evercade Features Update: October 2025

Evercade Features Update: October 2025

A relatively small update for October 2025, but including a couple of highly requested features: the ability to reset saved high scores for arcade games, and a "suspend save" feature for Roguecraft DX, allowing you to leave a game half-finished and pick it up again later.

Batty Zabella: Full Walkthrough and Guide

Batty Zabella: Full walkthrough and guide

I'm generally quite down on sites using "guide content" as SEO bait, but I must admit I do enjoy writing a good guide. So in time for Halloween, I thought I'd give people a helping hand with the excellent Batty Zabella from Indie Heroes Collection 4.

Highlight of the Month: Mr. Gimmick

Highlight of the Month: Mr. Gimmick

Sunsoft's hard-as-nails platformer was the next Highlight of the Month, giving everyone the opportunity to enjoy the excellent music on the first level, at the very least. I managed to get a bit further in order to take some screenshots!

What's on the Cart? Activision Collection 1

What's on the Cart? Activision Collection 1

For me, Activision Collection 1 is one of our most exciting releases, as these games haven't had a standalone rerelease since the PlayStation 2 era. I also love these games — particularly River Raid, MegaMania and Crackpots, plus I've discovered an appreciation for Demon Attack now, too.

What's on the Cart? Rare Collection 1

What's on the Cart? Rare Collection 1

A surprise announcement for many was our partnership with Rare, bringing together a selection of the company's finest home computer, console and arcade titles. Yes, you can finally play Jetpac and Sabre Wulf on Evercade! Also Battletoads, R.C. Pro-Am and the Conker game from before he went all naughty.

Highlight of the Month: The Astyanax

Highlight of the Month: The Astyanax

The final Highlight of the Month for the year was Jaleco's The Astyanax, a platform action game in which you wield a powerful fire axe as you attempt to defeat an evil wizard. Capturing footage and screenshots for this game gave me a new appreciation for it, since it's one I hadn't spent a lot of time with up until now.

Activision Collection 1: Words from the Designers

Activision Collection 1: Words from the Designers

We didn't have room to include all the "letters from the designers" in the Activision Collection 1 manual, so I reprinted them here.

Evercade Game Spotlight: Atic Atac

Evercade Game Spotlight: Atic Atac

I'm always keen to help people understand more complex, tricky retro games — particularly those which I've only just learned how to play properly myself. In this article about Atic Atac by Rare's predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game, I outline exactly what it is you're supposed to do and even provide some maps!

Evercade Game Spotlight: Knight Lore

Evercade Game Spotlight: Knight Lore

Then I went and did the same for pioneering isometric adventure Knight Lore. I may suck at the game, but at least I know what you're supposed to do now.

And that's your lot for this year! I hope you've enjoyed these digests of my posts from the year gone by, and if I don't hear from you before the time comes, a very happy new year to you all.

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#oneaday Day 563: My top 10 Evercade games for 2025

It is, of course, my job to love and appreciate everything we release for Evercade — and for sure, there is not one single game from the library that I have not been able to "find the fun" with to date.

But of course there are some that I like more than others. So in the spirit of all the "top 10" lists that are going around right now, I thought I would go through my 10 favourite Evercade games that we've released this year, drawn from all the cartridges we released in 2025: Indie Heroes Collection 4; Broken Sword Collection; Atari Arcade 2; Tomb Raider Collection 2; Gremlin Collection 2; Windjammers, Karnov & Friends; Roguecraft DX; NEOGEO Arcade 1; TAITO Arcade 1; TAITO Arcade 2; NEOGEO Arcade 2; NEOGEO Arcade 3; Activision Collection 1; Rare Collection 1 and The Llamasoft Collection.

DISCLAIMER: You are an intelligent person and I should not have to say this, but I am going to anyway. The following list represents my personal opinion and does not reflect any sort of professional judgement or the collective opinion of my employer. It should not be taken as any particular games or cartridges having received any sort of preferential treatment, either personally or professionally, nor that I have received any sort of incentive (financial or otherwise) from any of the license holders to feature their games on this personal blog that no-one reads. Also any cartridges that do not end up featured in this list does not mean I think those carts are shit, it means I have 10 slots and a lot more than 10 games to choose from.

Got that? All right, let's Top 10 this thing.

10. Twinkle Star Sprites

I think Twinkle Star Sprites was one of the first NEOGEO games I was ever introduced to, back when DotEmu did those absolutely terrible ports for PC a while back. I was sold on it by the promise of it being a blend of shoot 'em up and puzzle game — two genres I adore — and that is exactly what it provides: the frantic action of a shoot 'em up, combined with the competitive piece-matching, combo-building and garbage-throwing that is the competitive puzzle game genre.

It's a super-fun game, which I only put relatively low in these rankings due to the inevitable "arcade bullshit difficulty" that it pulls on the solo player from partway through proceedings. If you have the opportunity to challenge a friend, take it — there really is nothing quite like it.

9. Rohga: Armor Force

I'd never heard of this side-scrolling mech 'em up until we started work on the Windjammers, Karnov & Friends cartridge, but it quickly became a favourite with its gorgeous anime-inspired pixel art, its rocking soundtrack and its excellent gameplay.

Taking a strongly cinematic approach despite the relatively limited tech it's running on, Rohga: Armor Force is a thrill ride of a shoot 'em up that offers something just a little bit different from the norm. If you enjoy making things explode in a hail of bullets from a side-on perspective, this is definitely one you need to spend some time with.

8. Atic Atac

Atic Atac is a game that I played back in the day — I think on a friend's BBC Micro — and while I never understood what you were supposed to do in it back then, I found it immensely striking for a number of reasons: its top-down perspective; its personality-packed sprites; and the unusual "chicken" health bar, where your proximity to death is depicted by how picked clean of meat a chicken carcass is.

Now I know what you're actually supposed to do in Atic Atac, I like it even more. It's a nice evolution of the formula established in games like Atari's Adventure and Haunted House, and its randomised elements and multiple playable characters make it eminently replayable.

7. Murtop

I absolutely adore the minor trend there's been of modern developers making brand new games that look and feel like classic arcade games. Last year we had the incredible Donut Dodo, and this year we had Murtop, a blend of elements from Dig Dug and Bomberman. Best of all, the version for Evercade was specially redesigned to look great on a horizontally oriented display — it looks especially good on the 4:3 screen of Evercade Alpha.

Murtop is one of those games that is very easy to learn, but tricky to master. It's also a game where you will feel a sense of absolute exhilaration when you have "the perfect run" that just sees your score continuing to escalate. Also it has a brilliantly energetic soundtrack that has been stuck in my head ever since we featured it as a "Game of the Month" title in 2024.

6. Super Gridrunner

The Llamasoft Collection is a massive pile of woolly goodness from the one and only Jeff Minter, and there are a lot of games I really like in this collection — including some that I've only played for the first time between this cartridge and Digital Eclipse's interactive Llamasoft documentary.

If pushed, though, I'd have to pick an old favourite: Super Gridrunner, originally released on Atari ST. This frantic blastathon has beautiful, distinctive presentation, challenging gameplay and a wicked (occasionally sadistic) sense of humour. It's been a favourite of mine ever since we had the original ST version on floppy disk (I still have it!) and it's a delight to be able to play it on Evercade.

5. Garou: Mark of the Wolves

I'm not a Fighting Game Guy. I played and enjoyed Street Fighter II back in the day, and I've had some fun with the Dead or Alive ladies over the years, but most fighting games released post-Street Fighter II overwhelm me with their complexity. As such, I've never really found a good in-road to the genre, despite appreciating 2D fighting games in particular from afar thanks to their beautiful character art and animation.

For some reason, Garou: Mark of the Wolves clicked with me almost immediately. I think it's because it's specifically not overwhelming in any way: there's a relatively small cast of playable characters, making it easy to pick a character you want to get to know better; its mechanics are straightforward to understand; its special moves are relatively easy to perform; and it has an excellent "make the game easier for me" button any time you have to continue, meaning if you're primarily in it to see all the beautiful stages and the various endings, you can do that without too much frustration.

4. Tazz-Mania

This is another game I'd never heard of prior to our work on Atari Arcade 2, but it became an immediate favourite thanks to its simple but compelling gameplay. It's one of those games that you can feel yourself getting better at — and see yourself improving by climbing up the score rankings.

As an arena shooter, there's not a lot here that you haven't seen before, but its solid mechanics and little twists, such as the player character's rapid-fire machine gun and the walls closing in on you as you attempt to clear each stage, help elevate this well above being a simple Robotron clone.

3. MegaMania

Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for an official modern rerelease of Activision's Atari 2600 output? I absolutely adore these games, and it's always been a bit frustrating to me how dodgy the emulation of them is in their last official rerelease, Activision Anthology.

While our Activision Collection 1 cartridge may lack Tainted Love and its ilk on the soundtrack, it's a collection of 15 great games, all of which I absolutely love having easy access to again. I could have picked any number of these for my top 10, but going purely on the number of times I've played it since the Activision Collection 1 cartridge came in, I think MegaMania has to take the top spot.

2. Metal Slug

Metal Slug is a series that I've always meant to explore, but have somehow never gotten around to. Now I have no excuse — and as I could have predicted, I really like it. Now, I'm sure there are some of you out there with strong opinions as to which Metal Slug is best, but I'm going with the first one purely because, so far, it's the one I've played the most of and got the best at.

It's a brilliant example of why the NEOGEO is so beloved for its pixel-pushing capabilities — despite the series, collectively, being some of the worst-performing games on the platform in terms of slowdown — and just a great run-and-gun shooter that is easy to get into and incredibly satisfying to get better at, a little bit at a time.

1. Roguecraft DX

Finally, I have to put the wonderful Roguecraft DX at the top spot for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it's a really good game, taking the traditional roguelike formula and making it incredibly accessible while resisting the temptation to overwhelm players with mountains of persistent progression and unlocks. Secondly, it's a brilliant showcase of why the Amiga rocks. And thirdly, the folks at Badger Punch Games, whom we worked with closely to get this release out the door, are really lovely chaps.

Roguecraft DX is an endlessly replayable, delightfully fun game that is eminently suitable to both quick handheld sessions and longer session in front of the TV. It's my number one highlight from our releases of 2025, and I'm thrilled to have been part of making that release happen.

So there you go: my top picks for the year. It's been an incredible year to be part of the Evercade project, and next year promises to be even more exciting. But you'll just have to wait and see what we have planned for you, non?

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#oneaday Day 536: Restlessness

I've been weirdly "restless" with regard to the games I feel like playing of late. I have a bunch of cool things on the go — Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Death end re;Quest: Code Z, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles and probably some others I've forgotten about — but I'm having real trouble feeling settled of an evening. For the last few evenings, I've been playing nothing but Evercade games (hence yesterday's post) specifically, a combination of Spectrum classic Atic Atac (which I finished for the first time last night!), Activision 2600 games and various NEOGEO games.

And I've been having a lovely time doing so! Part of me, of course, feels like I "should" play at least one of those "big games" I have on the go, but honestly, just recently I've been feeling a tad run down, and thus some straightforward, right-to-the-point retro gaming has been pretty much what the figurative doctor ordered. Nothing to "commit" to, but something enjoyable and satisfying to engage with — and helping to broaden my experience with and appreciation of some games I might not have had the opportunity to spend a ton of time with previously.

The NEOGEO stuff is probably top of the heap in this regard. When I was young, the NEOGEO was the great legendary white whale that we only ever saw from afar (and occasionally on GamesMaster) and that no-one ever actually got to touch. Given that arcades were only really found on the seafront during my childhood and adolescence, I don't think I ever saw a NEOGEO MVS in the wild back in the day, so my sole point of reference for the machine was the fact that people talked about its cartridges costing a frankly remarkable three-figure sum each.

I always struggled to understand quite why NEOGEO games were so expensive back in the day, but I suppose a lot was riding on the fact that you were literally getting arcade-perfect games, due to the console model, the AES, having fundamentally the same guts as the MVS arcade machine. These days it seems especially absurd, given that pretty much all NEOGEO games are, as you might expect, short-form arcade-style affairs, and thus rather on the short side if you're counting "press start to end credits" as a game's "length". Can you imagine an entitled Steam reviewer pitching a fit over a game that cost £120 and lasted twenty minutes? I certainly can.

But then that's not the whole story, is it? As arcade games, NEOGEO titles were — are — inherently replayable: for high scores, for greater mastery, for competition with friends. Granted, there's probably a cap to how good you can get at something like Metal Slug or Shock Troopers, but fighters like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and the The King of Fighters series can potentially keep you busy forever if you have at least one other person to play with. When you consider it in those terms, that three-figure sum for a single game doesn't seem quite so unreasonable — particularly when you bear in mind that the three-figure sum gets you the whole damn game with no updates or DLC.

Yes, I know it's a cliché for old men like me to rail against modern games with DLC roadmaps and other such nonsense, but when you look at something like, say, The King of Fighters 2000, which has a whopping thirty-six characters in it, it's hard not to feel a bit nickel-and-dimed at modern fighting games with multiple "season passes". At the other end of the spectrum, the relatively limited playable cast of Garou: Mark of the Wolves makes it much easier to pick a single character you might want to get to know how to play a bit better, rather than overwhelming you with a huge amount of choice right from the get-go.

And then, of course, NEOGEO games don't cost three-figure sums any more, unless you're going for those original cartridges — in which case they are, as you might depressingly expect, at least three or four times their original asking price today. The NEOGEO carts for Evercade are twenty quid and have six games each — and I don't think it's a spoiler to say there's more coming next year.

So yeah. There's definitely value in these games, as "short" as they might seem to be. And apparently they're just what my brain is craving right about now. So I will continue to enjoy them for as long as my brain desires them.

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#oneaday Day 535: Five of my favourite Evercade games

Yes, I know Metal Slug's not on this list. Call it a runner-up.

As you hopefully know, I do a lot of the blog posts on the Evercade website. I had a small flash of inspiration the other day for a recurring series of posts where I and the other chap who has started contributing to the site alternate between just doing a grab bag of our favourites from the library. No particular theme, just "here's five games I, personally, like, and think you should spend some time with".

We've already got this week's blog post covered, so I thought I would use today to shamelessly pinch my own formula — and I'm making no promises that I won't pick these exact five for the first time I do the new feature over on the Evercade site. If I do, I will probably talk about them marginally more professionally.

But for now, dear reader, with apologies to Rob of the excellent Beyond the Scanlines YouTube channel, here are Five Evercade Games I Just Think Are Neat. Note that these are not "the five best games on Evercade", they're just five arbitrarily chosen games that I particularly like. So if I missed your favourite, don't worry; I probably like it too.

Burnin' Rubber

Hailing from Data East Collection 1, one of the Evercade's launch lineup, Burnin' Rubber almost certainly holds the crown for the Evercade game I have, over the last five years since the system's launch, spent the most time in.

For the unfamiliar, Burnin' Rubber is a follow-up to Data East's arcade game Bump 'n' Jump. Indeed, in some locales this console version is just known as Bump 'n' Jump, but it's considerably enhanced and expanded over its arcade predecessor, making it more of a sequel — and a much better game. The concept is simple: drive your car up vertically scrolling stages, avoiding obstacles and smashing other cars out of the way either by ramming them into walls or leaping into the air and crashing down on them from above.

Burnin' Rubber is easy to learn but hard to master, and to date I haven't yet managed to beat it. But it's infectiously compelling thanks to its combination of straightforward controls, challenging but fair gameplay and inordinately catchy music. Ever since I first played it back on the original Evercade handheld, it's been a firm favourite of mine, and absolutely one of my top titles on the entire platform.

World Rally

Staying on the vehicular theme, World Rally from Gaelco Arcade 1 is next up. This high-speed isometric racer has absolutely sublime arcade-style handling, and is a real "in the zone" kind of game that probably makes you look like a superhuman to anyone watching over your shoulder.

Its genius lies in its brilliantly handled controls: rather than giving you complete freedom to turn your car in any direction, World Rally kind of "snaps" your car to the correct orientation as you exit a corner (assuming you remembered to actually steer around it) in a sort of "slot car" fashion. This prevents frustrating instances of oversteer and keeps the game pacy and accessible while still offering a gradually escalating challenge factor through increasingly complex courses.

Presentation is lovely, particularly with Gaelco's trademark low bit-rate digitised guitar noodling on the soundtrack. The sequel is lovely, too, and arguably looks nicer, but I think the original has the slight edge for me, personally.

Night Stalker

Possibly my favourite Intellivision game? It's definitely right up there with Tower of Doom and Cloudy Mountain. Anyway, Night Stalker is, for me, the best game on the Intellivision Collection 1 cartridge, and a game I come back to regularly.

The concept is straightforward: you're stuck in a maze, and robots are coming to get you. You must shoot the robots before they get you. The longer you survive, the more dangerous the robots get. You move slowly and have limited ammunition, so you need a certain amount of strategy to survive — and the ability to adapt as the situation changes.

Night Stalker is super-simple, atmospheric and enjoyable to play. We also mapped the Intellivision's somewhat idiosyncratic "disc and keypad" controls to the Evercade directional pad and buttons in an eminently sensible way, making it arguably more fun to play on Evercade than on original hardware. I'm sure there's some sicko out there who is all like "no, the Intellivision hand controller is the optimal way to play, actually", but for human beings with functional hands, you'll thank us for our control mappings on this one.

Tomb Raider

I enjoyed the original PC version of Tomb Raider back when it was current, and I remember not liking the PlayStation control scheme all that much — perhaps because I was so accustomed to the PC's keyboard controls. But returning to the series when we released Tomb Raider Collection 1 for Evercade gave me an all-new appreciation for this game's methodical puzzle-platforming.

Yes, the combat kind of sucks, but that's why I picked the first Tomb Raider: it's not a particular focus, whereas later games tried to play up the combat to varying degrees. You'll have the odd encounter with some nasties to deal with, but the majority of your time will be spent by yourself figuring out exactly how you're going to scale the enormous structure in front of you and probably breaking Lara's legs a few times in the process.

It's fashionable to bash the early Tomb Raider games today, but approach them with the appropriate mindset — i.e. that they're not Super Mario 64, nor are they trying to be — and there's a lot of fun to be had across the five games available on Evercade.

Shock Troopers

It's been a delight to get to know the NEOGEO a bit better with our NEOGEO cartridges for Evercade. Shock Troopers, which is on NEOGEO Arcade 1, is actually one of the games I did know reasonably well beforehand — in fact, it was one of the first NEOGEO games I ever played, with dotEmu's awful PC port from a few years back — but having it on Evercade is giving me a sense of rediscovered appreciation for it.

Shock Troopers isn't a remarkably original game — it's a top-down run-and-gun, Commando-style, albeit not scrolling exclusively vertically. Where it shines, though, is in how satisfying it is to play. Weapons have a real sense of oomph to them, ripping through enemies and blowing up vehicles and structures. The different characters all handle differently, catering to different play styles. And the game offers a stiff but fair challenge that allows you to make gradual progress if you stick with it and learn the enemy encounters. Plus multiple routes through it add replay value — along with a two-player mode.

It's one of the best-sounding NEOGEO games, too, with some excellent digital music and meaty sound effects. One day I might even be able to get beyond the second stage without having to credit-feed — but regardless of my own ineptitude at it, it's a game I always enjoy every time I fire it up.

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#oneaday Day 518: '80s Activision had the juice

I frigging love '80s Activision games, particularly on the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit. I grew up with the ones on Atari 8-bit, of course, and since I never had a 2600 back in the day, those are a (relatively) more recent discovery. But I adore every one of them, and I'm beyond thrilled that I've been part of bringing them back to a new audience on Evercade.

The first of our Activision cartridges isn't out yet, but I, of course, have a copy. Perks of the job and all that. It's already becoming one of my most-played Evercade cartridges, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

We're actually doing three collections in total (this isn't Super Secret information, it was in our press release) and I've been largely responsible for the curation of said collections. All three of them are very strong indeed (you'll have to wait and see the lineup for the others, which are coming next year!) but this first collection comes out of the gate swinging with some of my absolute favourites.

My personal highlights are MegaMania, Enduro, Crackpots and River Raid, with honourable mentions to Beamrider and Demon Attack, games I've gotten to know a bit more recently.

MegaMania is one of the absolute best fixed shooters of the early '80s. Pitting you against waves of strange household objects, this "space nightmare" keeps things constantly interesting, as each wave has its own distinctive movement pattern — and then once you've cleared a complete loop of all of them, they go and change up their patterns a bit, just to keep you on your toes. It's a beautiful example of how utterly elegant some early games can be: it's simple to understand, has a brilliantly paced difficulty curve, a well-crafted scoring system and is endlessly replayable.

River Raid is, of course, a pioneering vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, whose noteworthy features include the ability to adjust your speed as you fly and the necessity to refuel your aircraft while negotiating obstacles and blasting enemies. The fact that this game was crammed into 4 kilobytes of ROM will never not be amazing to me. Carol Shaw was an actual wizard — not just for the game's technical accomplishments, but for the fact that, like MegaMania, it's an incredibly well-paced, considerately designed game that is likewise replayable until the end of time.

Enduro is the spiritual precursor to the home computer game The Great American Cross-Country Road Race, a game which I played as a child many years before I ever encountered Enduro for the first time. Enduro is, partly by necessity of the more primitive hardware it's running on, a simpler game, but I think its simplicity is also a core part of its appeal. All you have to do is overtake a set number of cars as a full day-night-and-weather cycle of a set duration proceeds: overtake 200 cars on the first day, then 300 each day thereafter. Your final score is how many "miles" you successfully drove before failing to qualify for the next day, and the score is presented using a lovely rolling analogue counter effect. I would have loved that as a kid — hell, I love it now.

Crackpots is a relatively recent discovery, and a game I feel I would have probably been terrified of as a kid. Again, the concept is simple: bugs are climbing your building, and you must drop flower pots on them. With each wave of bugs cleared, a new colour appears, and each colour of bug has a distinctive movement pattern. When you've cleared one loop of all the bug types (black, blue, red, green) the cycle repeats, but faster. The bugs chew through a layer of your building every time you let too many past you, and this affects the pace of the game from thereon. After too many layers of your building have been eaten, the game is over. It's pure high score fodder, and once again, beautifully paced and designed, with a dynamic difficulty level that raises and lowers according to how well you're doing.

Beamrider is, in essence, another fixed shoot 'em up, but it probably has more in common with Atari's Tempest than anything else, in that rather than moving freely, you switch between distinct "lanes" that the enemies proceed down. Thus there's a much stronger element of precision and even strategy to Beamrider than some other games, and the presentation, considering the host platform, is very good indeed. It's another game I got to know quite recently — there is an Atari 8-bit version, I believe, but I never encountered it back in the day.

Demon Attack is a game that I became familiar with after watching Classic Game Room's Atari 2600 reviews many, many times. It's a very simple fixed shooter, in which all you have to do is blast demons in the sky above you. Only three demons appear at once, and only one of them fires at you. It should be primitive and stupid and dumb, but it's incredibly compelling, particularly once the pace of the game increases and the demons start splitting into smaller bits. This one actually wasn't an Activision game back in the day; it was by Imagic, but Activision got the rights to all the Imagic stuff at some indeterminate point in the past. So yes, the Evercade Activision cartridges will have some of the Imagic stuff, too.

I'm quite fond of Activision Anthology on the PlayStation 2, but the last time I played it, I spotted quite how poor the emulation is in that version. It's not altogether surprising — there have been 23 years of advancements in emulation since — but, given how accessible good quality emulation of these games is about to become with the Evercade cartridges (and, hell, how easy it is to get 2600 up and running on systems like MiSTer and cheapo Chinese handhelds) it's a little hard to go back to. The built-in "badge" challenges, weirdo visual effects and '80s soundtrack are fun, though. I feel like we'll never see a compilation quite like that ever again.

But anyway. I am banging on about this because I spent today making a video about the upcoming cartridge. Watch out for it on the Evercade YouTube channel soon!

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#oneaday Day 514: Up to the Atic

For the last few days, I have not been playing any of the new games I have. I have, instead, been mildly hyperfixating on Atic Atac for Spectrum, which is part of the upcoming Rare Collection 1 cartridge that we're releasing for Evercade. I have ostensibly been doing this so I can better inform the Evercade community about how to get the best out of this game, but honestly I've just been having a lovely time, too.

Atic Atac is a game I have fond memories of, though not because I had it as a child — none of Rare predecessor Ultimate Play the Game's titles were on Atari computers. I don't actually remember where I played it for the first time, and it was only once I ever played it. I believe it was the BBC Micro version I played rather than the Spectrum version, which means I probably played it at my friend Matthew's house, but the details are hazy and unimportant.

What I do remember about Atic Atac is that I thought it was a really cool game for a few reasons: firstly, its top-down perspective, presented with bold, colourful, almost vector-esque lines; and secondly, its unusual health display, which was presented as a roast chicken gradually being stripped down to the bone. When all the "meat" was gone, you lost a life.

For years, I never actually knew what the point of Atic Atac was, though. When I played it as a child, neither I nor whoever it was who was proudly showing it off to me knew what you were supposed to do, so we just had a lovely time wandering back and forth through rooms, throwing axes at monsters. And, indeed, it is possible to enjoy Atic Atac like that if you so desire; there's even a score function based entirely on the enemies you defeat, so you can challenge yourself to get as high a score as possible before succumbing to inevitable death.

Spending some proper, protracted time with it now, though, I'm finding it very much my sort of game, in that it's something of a blend between the Atari 2600 classics Haunted House and Adventure, with a dash of early-format text adventures in there. Not in terms of how you interact with it — Atic Atac is out-and-out an action game — but rather in terms of its core structure of wandering a map, searching for specific "treasures" and your end goal being to return all of said treasures (three pieces of a key, in this case) to a specific location: the starting room.

What I often find with home computer games from this period — particularly those that originated on the Spectrum, for some reason — is that it's easy to assume they're a lot more complicated and confusing than they actually are. And such was the case with Atic Atac; at its core, it's a game about getting to know a map, unlocking doors and hunting for treasure, nothing more. Sure, there's a couple of additional wrinkles — most notably, a few special items counteracting a few "special" monsters that appear at various points — but the basics are simply explore maze, unlock doors, get treasure, escape.

One thing I have really enjoyed doing with Atic Atac is manually making a map, adventure game style. This is mostly fairly straightforward to do, though there are a couple of instances in the game where it defies its own laws of physics to squeeze rooms in where there "shouldn't" be any, which makes mapping those particular portions a little challenging, but for the most part it's easy enough to map. The tricky thing, then, is systematically searching all those rooms to find the keys and treasures that you need!

I haven't quite managed to beat the game just yet, but I've been really enjoying the attempts. And I think I know it well enough to be able to offer some solid advice to newcomers now, too — so watch out for that around the time of Rare Collection 1's release!

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#oneaday Day 486: Investing in retro the right way

I've talked about this once or twice before, but it doesn't hurt to say it again. I firmly believe that we've reached a point in time where collecting retro games is impractical, undesirable and inconvenient.

Don't get me wrong; there will always be an appeal to having original hardware and original media, and I don't begrudge anyone their choice to build up a substantial retro collection. I also think it's a bit sad that we've reached the stage we're at now. But with the absurd, exploitative prices that are being charged for both systems and media today — coupled with the fact that there's no real guarantee either of those things will actually work when you get them — I am very much a convert to the school of thought that says you're better off spending the money you would have spent on one copy of Rule of Rose for the PlayStation 2 on ways to get a "modern retro" setup up and running.

There are many ways you can do this. The absolute simplest way is to buy retro rereleases, either on modern platforms that you happen to own, or with specialist devices such as mini consoles or, of course, the Evercade. There are many benefits to these modern rereleases, such as bugfixes of games that shipped in a dodgy state back in the day, modern convenience features such as save states, rewind functions and in-game reference material, plus the fact they're generally a whole lot cheaper than buying the original releases and still fun to collect. If you were to buy all the games on the recently released NEOGEO Arcade 1 cartridge for Evercade in their original format, you'd be talking four figures. The cart is twenty quid. Do, as Atari once said, the math.

The only downside to officially licensed rereleases is that those licenses are sometimes hard to come by — or even completely impossible. Don't expect to see too many rereleases of racing games with licensed cars or licensed soundtracks, for example. Don't expect to see movie licenses making a return, either. But you might be surprised what licensors are still willing to play ball with, as the Evercade library to date shows.

Another relatively straightforward way is to devote a PC or similar device (like a Raspberry Pi, Steam Deck or Chinese gaming handheld) to it and install a suitable suite of emulators and organisation tools.

For Windows PCs that you also want to do other things, I would recommend Launchbox (even if they took to using odious AI images in their promotional emails of late), as this is not only a good means of organising all the games you might want to play, it also automatically retrieves additional information like box art, descriptions and even PDF copies of manuals where possible. The paid version also has a "Big Box" mode where the interface is designed to be used with a controller on a TV.

For other devices that are going to be dedicated to retro gaming, I highly recommend Batocera, which is a Linux distribution, but don't run away scared. It's all preconfigured to work in a similar fashion to something like Launchbox, and is pretty straightforward to get games up and running in. It's also highly customisable, so you can make the whole thing look and feel how you want it to.

The relative "luxury option", particularly if you still have a CRT knocking around that you want to use for the authentic look and feel, is MiSTer. As I've alluded to in a few posts recently, the absolute easiest way to get started with this is with a prebuilt device like the Multisystem 2 (my device of choice) or the upcoming SuperStation One. Alternatively, you can built your own — that's nowhere near as scary as it sounds, and it allows you a tad more customisability, though with the pricing of the Multisystem 2 and SuperStation One it's actually cheaper to buy one of those prebuilt options in a lot of cases — though note you will still need to provide accessories and storage.

If you're lucky enough to still have working classic hardware around, the first thing I recommend you do is investing in a modern power supply for them. My Mega Drive was prone to rolling noise on the screen with its original power supply, but replacing it gave a completely stable, flicker-free picture.

Once you've done that, invest in an EverDrive. Cheaper flashcart options exist, but EverDrives are premium products that support pretty much everything you might want to play on a piece of classic hardware. Not only that, in the case of systems that had add-ons, they can simulate the presence of the add-on, too — for example, the Mega EverDrive Pro can run Mega CD games.

For classic home computers, flashcarts are also available, or there are also plenty of media emulators you can use to "trick" the computer into believing it's using a real floppy drive or tape deck. For the Atari 8-bit, for example, I enjoyed using the SDrive-MAX device, which allows you to load executable files, disk images and tape images from an SD card. Similar devices are available for most classic computer platforms.

I won't lie; it's easy to spend a few hundred quid on this stuff — possibly even over a thousand. But once you're done, you have a great setup for what is, after all, the important bit of being interested in retro games: actually playing the games. And the kit you have will play pretty much anything without you having to pay some rando on eBay a three-figure sum just to play one game.

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#oneaday Day 356: Bellyachin'

Well, I didn't finish Kathy Rain 2. I think I'm on the last "day" of it, though, so I should have it all wrapped up by the end of tomorrow evening, I reckon. I could have probably pushed through it tonight, but I hadn't written this, and I hadn't done stupid social media things that I do every day (the "#365games" tag on Bluesky) and I have had a stomachache all day, so I thought I should probably call it a night.

Of all the aches and pains it is possible for one to experience, few are worse than a lingering stomachache, because while something like an achey back or joints can be at least temporarily relieved by moving around a bit, a stomachache stubbornly sits there and demands your full attention, even when you have a lot of things to do. And I had a lot of things to do today, let me tell you.

It was the Evercade 5th Anniversary Showcase today, during which we revealed two more NEOGEO cartridges, two cartridges from Taito (surely a pleasant surprise for everyone who thought Taito stuff was forever confined to built-in games on specific pieces of hardware), and a single-game cartridge featuring the truly excellent Roguecraft DX, an enhanced and expanded version of a very good (and award-winning!) Amiga game that came out last year.

It was a good show all round, and I think most people were happy. There were the usual moaners and complainers, but I'm pretty much just tuning them out at this point, because 95% of them are moaning and complaining about things we haven't said, just working on doomsaying and assumptions. And when someone's being like that, it's frankly not worth getting involved.

I'm really excited about the stuff we've got coming up this year. It's a relief to have been able to let the cat out of the bag for some of it today, but there's even more coming later in the year that I think people are going to be even more excited and surprised by. Evercade has been going from strength to strength in terms of the quality licenses we've been able to agree each year, and this year in particular is a string of big names. I obviously can't tell you what the unrevealed ones are as yet, but if you're into your retro gaming, you'll be pleased to see them, I can tell you that.

I should probably stop typing before I say anything I shouldn't, and go and lie in bed groaning until this stomachache goes away. It is small consolation that Andie has also been suffering today, suggesting to me that something we both ate yesterday probably wasn't good, likely the burgers we had for dinner. That also, hopefully, means we'll both be feeling better tomorrow. But for now, I anticipate an uncomfortable night ahead, perhaps with a side of thunderous farting. Yes, I could definitely go for a thunderous fart or two right now.

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