#oneaday Day 624: Revisionist gaming history

A few weeks back, someone started an argument with me about Final Fantasy VIII. They asserted that everyone had always hated Final Fantasy VIII, and that I was somehow wrong for remembering that my friends and I were super-hyped for it, enjoyed it immensely when it came out, and that reviews of the time were also very kind to it. Review scores aren't the be-all and end-all, of course, but they do act as a pretty good barometer of roughly how positive the critical reception for a given title was.

I bowed out of the conversation early on because it was pretty clear from the outset that the person attempting to start this argument was not going to listen to any viewpoint other than their own, even when it was coming from someone who lived through the experience of that game coming out, and they just wanted to hate on something that had, in recent years, become fashionable to bash.

Now, I'm not going to attempt to convince you one way or the other about Final Fantasy VIII at this point. It's one of those games that you either "get" or you don't, and I don't blame anyone who doesn't "get" it. But to extend "I don't get this" out to "everyone everywhere always hated this" is ridiculous. It's absolute revisionist history, and it's something that drives me absolutely bonkers about online discourse over video games these days.

It happens with more recent games, too. Take Mario Kart World, a game which does some really interesting things with the Mario Kart formula, and one which is designed with so much polish that I really can't take anyone who says it is a "bad" game seriously. And yet to some folks it is "the worst Mario Kart there has ever been" and, again, "everyone hated it". No, no they did not.

Or another example: I saw a post just this evening that implied that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was a bad game, primarily due to the fact that none of the original team who worked on the first ever The Legend of Zelda game (which is celebrating an anniversary milestone right now) worked on it. I take two issues with this: one, that everyone who worked on the original The Legend of Zelda is probably either an old man or dead at this point, and thus should be left to get on with their life in peace, and two, Echoes of Wisdom wasn't a bad game! Not even a little bit!

EDIT: The account in question has since clarified that they meant it was "sad" that Echoes of Wisdom was the first game without any of the original team that was involved, not that they thought it was a "sad" game due to it not being any good. I have left the preceding paragraph as-is to take ownership of my own misunderstanding — and to acknowledge that I wasn't alone in it, hence the account's clarification of what they said.

And don't even get me started on Final Fantasy XIII.

There is one thing that all these examples have in common, though, and that is the fact that all of them do something different to what is expected as "the norm" in their respective series. For Final Fantasy VIII and XIII, this should be no surprise to anyone who has ever paid attention to the series and its core philosophy of "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy" (as I wrote about nearly ten years ago right here), but, to this day, people are confused by the fact that Final Fantasy VIII and XIII are very unconventional in a lot of ways. (Interestingly, very few people seem to have a problem with Final Fantasy XII these days, despite, in many ways, it being a way more significant disruption from the series "usual format" than many other entries.)

For Mario Kart World and Echoes of Wisdom, those two games were always in a bit of a no-win situation. Do something the same as previous games and they would be regarded as pointless and unambitious. Do something a bit different, as they both did, and people complain that they're not like all the other games in the series! Seriously daft.

The most annoying thing about this constant revisionist history is that it makes it impossible to have sensible discussions about these games. Pretty much as soon as it became clear someone was spoiling for a fight over having the "correct" opinion about Final Fantasy VIII (and what "everybody" thought of it, apparently), the entire thread derailed and became impossible to have a reasonable discussion in. Anyone who attempted to highlight the things that they, in fact, liked about it was shouted down, and it just became pointless to even try. I've seen enough threads like that in my time to know that it really wasn't worth trying in the first place, which is why I bowed out of it early.

When it comes to Final Fantasy VIII, I'll just leave you with one little story from my past. In the period between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII coming out, our friendship group had a perpetually running joke with the local computer shop owner, in which literally every time we went in there (and we went in there a lot), we would ask him if he knew when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out, to which he would reply by mumbling something mostly incoherent about "stocks". This became such a notorious exchange among our friendship group that during our obsession with the Klik and Play games-making software, one of our number immortalised the discussion in his project Resident Evil EX, by incorporating a fully-voiced scene in which the protagonist, Agent Wesley Wilson, would walk into a computer store in the in-game mall, ask if the shopkeeper knew when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out, to which he would reply "asfhgblaskbkljblkl stocks".

That's how excited we were for Final Fantasy VIII to come out. And when it eventually did come out, I had people in my university room almost every night to come watch and see what would happen next.

So don't fuckin' tell me that "everyone always hated" something. Because, inevitably, it isn't true. In pretty much every instance like this, what the person saying that "everyone always hated" something means is "I didn't really like this" and "I'm unwilling to entertain the possibility that anyone else did".

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 618: Triple threat

Had a productive weekend of making some videos. There are three new ones on the way soon, and I've got another Wolfenstein one with its voiceover recorded that just needs assembling into some sort of shape.

For the upcoming videos, there's a couple of Master System games involved. The Sega Master System is a platform that I'm very fond of that doesn't get nearly enough love — and which I haven't spent nearly enough time fiddling with, either. So these two games will likely be the first of many in total. I'm looking forward to exploring the library further, because as a Japanese console that was particularly popular in Europe and failed to make any sort of impact whatsoever in America, it's a thoroughly interesting platform.

It's one of those situations where I'm not entirely sure why it never broke America, either. In technical terms, it's quite a bit better than the NES, but as numerous generations of console hardware dominated by Nintendo have shown, it's not always the most powerful system that wins the race. You've gotta have the games, you've gotta have the cultural penetration, and you've gotta have a lot of luck.

I guess one could argue that the NES has more "iconic" games — there are three Super Mario Bros. games alone on it — but the Master System has some solid versions of Sega arcade classics, and some truly excellent Sonic the Hedgehog games. While not as fancy-looking and sounding as their 16-bit counterparts, many argue that the Master System Sonic games are, in fact, the better entries in the series. I haven't quite made my mind up in that regard — I do love a 16-bit Sonic — but I do know from covering a huge heap of Sonic games a few years back on MoeGamer that the 8-bit Sonic games are very good indeed. (Just avoid the Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.)

Anyway, the Master System games I covered today come from two extremes of the "spectrum", if you want to call it that. There's one game that I imagine is pretty readily available for not much money (although interestingly CEX doesn't appear to have it listed) and another that is notoriously rare and expensive. After beating it in half an hour today, I'm glad I haven't spent £400 on it. It was fun for that half an hour, at least.

So yeah. Those videos, along with an Atari 8-bit port of a true classic, are on the way for the coming week. Watch out for them and please enjoy them when they're live! Or don't, if you don't want to, particularly after what I said yesterday. But it'd be nice if you did. My channel's over here, if you've never paid it a visit.

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#oneaday Day 611: The sad loss of the Olympic video game

I've always been extremely fond of Olympics-themed video games, ever since I played titles like Epyx's Summer Games and Activision's Decathlon on the Atari 8-bit. I haven't always kept up with all of the Olympic releases over the years, but I have added a few to my collection in more recent years. And I'm a bit sad, as the Winter Olympics are unfolding at the time of writing, that the official Olympic video game is no more. At least, on consoles and PC; I believe for the last Olympics, there was some horrible mobile game that looked like absolute microtransaction-riddled garbage. So that's the end of that, I guess.

I'm not sure exactly what it is I like so much about these multi-disciplinary sports games. They are, in essence, just a collection of minigames, and some don't get more adventurous than asking you to tap a button or waggle a joystick very fast. But I have always enjoyed them a lot — at least in part because they tend to simulate sports that you don't otherwise get much of an opportunity to engage with in the video game space.

One of my favourite Olympics video games was Sega's official Tokyo 2020 game — released just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the "real" Tokyo Olympics were postponed. This was a huge amount of arcade-style fun, made all the better by the fact that you could create custom characters. Yes, multiple; while you spent most of the game playing as your one "main" athlete, you could also create a team of other athletes who would show up in events that required multiple participants, such a rugby sevens, soccer, judo and suchlike.

What made this even more fun is that Sega decided to err on the side of "silly" to a certain extent, so these characters were somewhat cartoonish in their proportions, and you could unlock and dress them up in all sorts of thoroughly silly outfits as well as vaguely plausible athletic gear. If you wanted someone to enter the swimming competitions dressed like a spaceman, you absolutely could do that.

These games were always great fun with friends, too. While it's been a very long time since I had the opportunity to play one of these games with other people, I have very fond memories of enjoying them together when I was younger.

One of my favourite memories in this regard was the first time I went up to the Edinburgh Festival with the university theatre group. On my first night there, I felt like I might have made a bit of a mistake coming along, because my social anxiety was making it enormously difficult to involve myself with the other members socialising. I actually ended up sitting up late, in tears, over the whole situation.

Yes, I know I said this was a "favourite" memory; I'm getting to that.

Two of the theatre group members found me in the corridor being thoroughly sorry for myself and took pity on me. They sat with me, helped reassure me that people did like me and appreciated my presence, and then they played some International Track and Field on PlayStation with me. I chose to play as Germany, and attempted to enter my name as "HELMUT" because I thought that was funny, but there were only enough letters to put "HELMU". My nickname within Theatre Group remained "Helmu" for several years, until it was replaced with "Beast Man". That's probably a story for another day.

Anyway, I will always be extremely grateful to those two lovely people from Theatre Group — known colloquially to everyone as Stiffy and Des — for taking the time to bring me under their wings. That night, I actually stayed in their room instead of the one I'd been assigned, and it was enormously comforting. It was definitely a turning point, and means that International Track and Field, as relatively a minor part as it had played in proceedings, will always be rather special to me.

That got well off the point, didn't it? But still. I like Olympics games, be they summer or winter-themed, and I think what we have there is definitive proof that they can bring people together — just like, in theory, the real Olympics.

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#oneaday Day 597: The MiSTer as reference library

One of my favourite purchases in recent memory is the MiSTer Multisystem 2 from Heber, which is an all-in-one console designed around the open-source MiSTer framework. If you're unfamiliar, this is a specification for hardware-based emulation of classic computers and games consoles, using a technology called FPGA. The advantage of FPGA is that it produces much more accurate results than typical software emulation, and thus it is a good substitute for original hardware, particularly if you're going to go the whole hog and use analogue CRT displays.

I think the most valuable thing about the way I've set mine up is that it is now effectively an interactive reference library of video games from the Atari 2600 right up until the PS1, N64 and Saturn. I invested in a large amount of external storage early on precisely so I could load it up with absolutely everything I might ever want (and quite a lot of things I will probably never want) and thus never have to worry about tracking down ROMs and disc/disk images ever again. (Until I discover a New Favourite Console, of course. Which has been known to happen.)

This is a useful resource both for my own curiosity and for my day job. We're working on something thoroughly interesting in the latter regard right now — no, you won't get any hints here — and an important part of that is ensuring that the project is accurate to the original version. Having the MiSTer Multisystem 2 up and running right next to me in my study means that, at a moment's notice, I can flip it on, check something and capture video for my colleagues to compare to. This is a good thing.

Having a storage device full to bursting with ROMs and disc/disk images, of course, runs the risk of the dreaded "analysis paralysis". But at the same time, if someone says something like "oh, I used to really like Enduro Racer on the Master System", I can pull that up and check it out immediately, knowing that the experience I'm having is authentic to the original hardware, and all without having to swap around cables, power adapters and controllers.

I have a lot of original hardware, which I like owning. But pretty much all of it is now primarily on display on the shelves rather than being used directly — because with very few exceptions, the MiSTer Multisystem 2 works just as well as the "real thing", with little in the way of compromise. And some improvements in some cases; it's absolutely no contest between a modern 8bitdo controller and the dreadful original Sega Master System joypad.

The one thing that is a compromise is the tactile nature of using original computers. Different computers had their own different case designs and keyboards, and thus a distinctive feel to using them. I have the 8bitdo mechanical C64-style keyboard as a suitably "retro" input device for computers, and it's great — but it does mean I miss out on little things like the distinctive shape of the Atari ST's function keys or the unique keys on certain systems' keyboards. (And documentation on exactly what these unique keys are mapped to on a modern keyboard is remarkably lacking, it has to be said!)

You also, of course, miss the fun tactile aspect of working with physical media. There's still something undeniably lovely about putting a cartridge in a slot or loading up a disk and listening to the whirr-snark of a floppy drive, and it will be a sad day when no-one remembers doing that. But with original hardware — particularly floppy disks — becoming more unreliable and prices for second-hand copies of retro games going through the absolute roof, at this point attempting to collect games for old computers and consoles feels like a complete waste of money.

Meanwhile, I have not regretted a single pound I have spent on my MiSTer setup. And, with any luck, given the lack of moving mechanical parts in it, it will last for a good long while, too.

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#oneaday Day 587: Why are you doing that?

One thing I find quite interesting when looking at games from over the years is contemplating how, as time has gone on, we have become a lot more preoccupied with the "why" of what we are doing in a game than in the past. And, as part of these contemplations, I've come to realise that games which don't really give you much of a "why" beyond "this is what the game is" actually have their own very distinct appeal.

As a case in point, I've been playing some Nintendo 64 "collectathon" platformers recently. This is a type of game that very much fell out of favour at some point between the PlayStation/Saturn/Nintendo 64 era and the PlayStation 2/Xbox/Gamecube age. There are still some folks making games like that — most notably Nintendo — but they are by no means as common as they used to be. And a lot of it, I think, comes down to the apparent expectation that everything must have some sort of narrative context or justification.

Now, I'll hold my hands up here and say that, in the past, I have been guilty of thinking that pretty much every game would be better if it had some sort of narrative context. In the earliest days of this blog, back when the people behind WordPress gave a shit about their community rather than going all-in on AI or whatever shit they're up to at the minute, I even had a post featured for making this very argument specifically about racing games — blissfully unaware, as I was at that point, of Namco's PC Engine conversion of their arcade game Final Lap Twin and the fact they added a Pokémon-ass RPG to it. I do actually still think there's scope for racing games with stories, but I also don't think all racing games need stories — and those which do have stories had better have bloody good ones if they expect me to sit through them rather than skipping right to the racing.

Err, what was I saying? Oh, right. Games didn't always feel the need to justify the things you were doing in the game in terms of narrative. Collectathon platformers are, in many ways, the quintessential example of this: they have characters, a world and indeed a plot, but none of those get in the way of the core "point" of the game: solving puzzles and overcoming challenges to acquire shiny things that let you access more of the game. No-one ever gave a shit about why Mario was collecting Power Stars in Super Mario 64, they just knew that he had to collect Power Stars, and that was enough.

This is one of the things I found quite refreshing about Donkey Kong Bananza recently. That's a game that strikes a very good balance between having an unfolding story and just giving you a basic objective to complete before getting out of your way and letting you accomplish it. For the vast majority of your time in Donkey Kong Bananza, you are looking for Banandium Gems. It doesn't matter why. Donkey Kong wants them, and that means you want them. That's all that matters. That's all that needs to matter.

I'm not saying that games with plots have no place. Hell, you know me, I'll gladly bury my head in a 100+ hour RPG, particularly if it makes me cry at least once along the way. But sometimes it's nice to play a game that is less concerned with wanting to be taken seriously as a great work of art or a masterpiece of characterisation and worldbuilding, and more with being a fun toy that just feels good to fiddle with.

I could have probably phrased that better. But I'm leaving it like that now, deliberately. And I'm off to go and acquire some more shiny things.

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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 571: Some stuff I've written this year - MoeGamer edition (Part 2)

Continuing on from yesterday, let's continue recapping the stuff I posted over on MoeGamer this year, shall we? Yes, we shall.

Cyclopean: The Great Abyss – Ultima meets Lovecraft

Cyclopean: The Great Abyss – Ultima meets Lovecraft

In this piece, I explore a game that an independent developer sent me a copy of. Inspired heavily by both classic computer role-playing games such as the Ultima series and the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this is a lovely, atmospheric retro-style RPG that is easy to pick up and play, but tricky to master. The developer is currently working on a sequel.

Payment processors' control over the arts has to stop

Payment processors' control over the arts has to stop

A story broke this year that Visa and Mastercard are seemingly trying to prevent consenting adults from choosing what they spend their money on. Specifically, both companies have been making it very hard for anyone with the slightest connection to sexually explicit (or, in some cases, provocative) entertainment to make a living. It's crazy to think that I posted this back in July, and the situation is still ongoing, with seemingly no resolution in sight.

Old Skies: Wadjet Eye in top form

Old Skies: Wadjet Eye on top form

This is one of the best games I played this year, and the game that caused me to think that, once and for all, the point-and-click adventure sector is in an even better space today than it was back in its supposed LucasArts and Sierra-led "golden age" of the late '90s.

No Sleep for Kaname Date: A meeting of the minds

No Sleep for Kaname Date: a meeting of the minds

I adore the first two AI: The Somnium Files games, so I was excited that a third one was coming. I ended up not loving this one quite as much as the first two, but it's still pretty solid, and the new mechanical elements in the escape room sequences are a great addition to the overall formula. It just didn't come together quite as well as the prior two — perhaps because series creator Uchikoshi was a little more hands-off with this one.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore – more than just a mockery

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore – more than just a mockery

I was immediately intrigued by Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore and the fact it was paying homage to two notoriously not-very-good games. I was even more surprised that it was actually a very good game in its own right. Poking gentle fun at its source material while correcting all their annoyances, this was a real pleasure to play through.

Ara Fell: elves vs vampires

Ara Fell: elves vs vampires

I've had a double-pack of this game and its spiritual successor Rise of the Third Power on my shelf for ages, so I decided while we were away on holiday, I was finally going to play them. And I had a really lovely time! Ara Fell adopts an interesting quasi-open world approach and is an immensely rewarding, engaging experience.

Rise of the Third Power: like FFVI never left

Rise of the Third Power: like FFVI never left

Rise of the Third Power, spiritual successor (but not "sequel") to Ara Fell, is one of the best story-centric RPGs I've played for a long time. Brilliant characterisation, stirring music — all the more remarkable considering it was drawn from royalty-free libraries rather than specifically composed — and a wonderfully engaging story make this a highly memorable game that I highly, highly recommend.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code – what price justice?

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code – what price justice?

Although it gets a little bogged down in itself over the course of its complete runtime, this murder mystery adventure from the Danganronpa creator was nonetheless a compelling, entertaining thrill ride, set in a thoroughly fascinating setting and, in true Danganronpa tradition, presenting some immensely stylish, abstracted takes on the "mechanics" of investigation and deduction.

Lumines Arise, the art of sincerity and creating meaning without explicit narrative

Lumines Arise, the art of sincerity and creating meaning without explicit narrative

It's easy to assume that the only games with real "meaning" are those that tell an explicit story. But sit down with Lumines Arise, a new take on a classic puzzle game developed by the same folks who did the incredible Tetris Effect, and you will feel very differently. This is a game that is designed to make you feel things while you play. And it's enormously successful at doing that. A truly wonderful experience.

Zelda's organic adventures

Zelda's organic adventures

I started playing Tears of the Kingdom a little while back, and I am reminded of one of the things I liked so much about Breath of the Wild: the fact that the whole game is a series of little mini-adventures that you stumble across pretty much at random as you explore the world. This is a markedly distinct approach from the "hoover all the icons up off the minimap" structure that many other open-world games take, and it makes for a much more enjoyable game.

HORSES: much ado about nothing?

HORSES: much ado about nothing?

Notoriously banned from release on Steam, HORSES from Italian developer Santa Ragione is really not worth all the fuss there's been over it. It was an interesting experience, for sure, but you'll see more upsetting material on late-night TV.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein and my history with Nazi-blastin'

Return to Castle Wolfenstein and my history with Nazi-blastin'

As I've noted a few times recently, I love Wolfenstein 3-D and its follow-up Spear of Destiny, but I've never played any of the Wolfenstein games that followed. I am now in the process of correcting this, so I wrote this after beating Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War on original Xbox. I had fun, though the game shows its age in a few places — in both good and bad ways.

And that's your lot for now. Tomorrow I will review my Evercade blog posts for the year… and then it will be 2026! Hurrah. Possibly. Here's hoping the new year is better than the old one… but I'm not holding out much hope at the moment. At least I have plenty of things to distract me, apparently!

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#oneaday Day 569: Returned to Castle Wolfenstein

I have crossed something off my gaming To-Do list! Yes, I have beaten Return to Castle Wolfenstein, kicking off my exploration of The Bits of the Wolfenstein Series That Aren't Wolfenstein 3-D and Spear of Destiny. I wrote about my experiences over on MoeGamer if you'd care to check it out. I appreciate that doing one whole click is challenging and exhausting, so I will be very grateful if you successfully accomplish that.

Anyway, to summarise, I had a mostly good time with Return to Castle Wolfenstein. You can tell it's over 20 years old in numerous ways — both good and bad — but I had a mostly good time with it. I'm looking forward to investigating the rest of the series; I know the Machine Games stuff from more recent years is very well regarded for the most part, but I'm perhaps most intrigued by the Xbox 360 entry in the series, which doesn't seem to get talked about all that much. There may well be a reason for that — or it may just be that it sort of fell by the wayside a bit.

As you can see, I'm still enjoying my drawing tablet and Clip Studio Paint. Clip Studio Paint, I have discovered, has a strange quirk where it won't start unless you tell it to run in Windows 8 compatibility mode, but aside from that it seems to work great with my tablet, and it's a lot of fun to use. I've barely scratched the surface of it thus far, but I'm looking forward to experimenting with it a bit over the coming days, weeks, months, years. I can't promise an overly elaborate drawing every day, but there will be, at the very least, a stickman doodle drawn by hand rather than by mouse.

I have bought a copy of the new HeroQuest base set, First Light, and hopefully we're going to be putting that through its paces sometime soon. I'm interested to try this, as although it lacks some of the fancier features of the "big" base set (which is still available, and which I still might pick up a copy of) it has some notable new features, such as a double-sided board for variety in map layout, plus a unique series of 10 quests that are different from the standard ones included in the regular base set. For the unfamiliar, modern HeroQuest is a recreation of the MB Games version from the late '80s, but with all the Warhammer references removed, and with the Evil Wizard player being named "Zargon" instead of "Morcar". I believe this latter change is to bring the game in line worldwide, as the North American version of the late '80s version used "Zargon" as the Evil Wizard's name. He'll always be Morcar to me.

Modern HeroQuest has a whole bunch of expansions available, too, which is exciting. I'm going to resist splurging all my money on them immediately, but I'm hoping our prospective players will enjoy the game sufficiently to want to take on a reasonably lengthy campaign of quests — at the very least, the 10 from the base game, and hopefully onwards into an expansion or two. We shall see, though. As anyone who has attempted to run an ongoing game of something will know, these projects often start with good intentions but run out of steam unless someone steps up and keeps things running. I will likely be the one to do that in this instance, as I have been wanting people to play HeroQuest with regularly since… well, since the late '80s.

All right, that's about everything for today. It's been a nice quiet one at home for us today. We're out of food in the house and we've both been resisting going out in the cold to get something to eat, but we're going to have to do that eventually. In fact, I might go and do that now, because I'm getting a bit hungry and Andie is busily playing Final Fantasy XIV with her friends.

Food!

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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 560: The weapons-grade Game Boy

Earlier today, the company ModRetro announced that it would be producing a special edition version of its "Chromatic" FPGA-based Nintendo Game Boy clone.

ModRetro is a company that is already on the shitlist of a lot of people thanks to its founder, Palmer Luckey, also being the cofounder of Anduril Industries, a company that makes autonomous weaponry. Drones, in other words.

Up until now, a lot of people have sort of begrudgingly been able to separate the two — the Chromatic is supposedly a very good FPGA Game Boy, and the fact that the company has been releasing new Game Boy-compatible cartridges for it, showcasing a variety of modern indie developers' work on the platform, would initially appear to be quite laudable.

At the same time, the brand has had vociferous critics, keen to point out at every opportunity that Luckey is a dangerous bellend who profits from atrocities. Indeed, the man himself makes no attempt to hide this fact on a blog post on the ModRetro website.

The more… outspoken of these critics have, in the past, engaged in behaviour that I personally found a tad distasteful — by which I mean borderline harassment of people who had written about the Chromatic as simply being a very good FPGA Game Boy, without spending their entire article waxing poetic about how much of a warmongering shitbag Luckey is. On the one hand, I understood these criticisms, but the way in which they were expressed, on more than one occasion, was not, to my eyes, particularly acceptable or productive.

Today, though… I get it. Because the new special edition Chromatic that ModRetro announced is explicitly Anduril-branded, and advertises itself as being "finished by hand in America with Cerakote, the same ultra-durable ceramic-polymer formulation that protects Ghost — Anduril's flagship autonomous air vehicle". Later in the product page description, it spells things out even more explicitly by noting "the body of Chromatic is made from the same magnesium aluminium alloy as Anduril's attack drones".

This is… weird, right? Why would you explicitly sell an FPGA Game Boy that, in your own words, is made from the same materials as devices that cause death and suffering, if not to thumb your nose at the people who have previously criticised the brand for its association with an arms dealer? Granted, the thing looks classy and sounds like it can stand up to a lot more punishment than most other handheld gaming devices in the world — but if you're going to make a really durable handheld, why bring up "attack drones" and "autonomous air vehicles" at all, if not to specifically provoke certain people out there?

Not only that, but you can bet that there are certain types of people out there who are going to buy this thing specifically to spite people who have, in the past, spoken out against Luckey for one reason or another — even if it does mean paying over four hundred dollars for a Game Boy.

This whole thing leaves a particularly foul taste in the mouth. It's very clearly not about giving retro gaming enthusiasts the best possible experience, and all about whitewashing what "Anduril" means in the modern world. Let's not even get into how many modern companies doing terrible things (like Anduril) have adopted nomenclature from J. R. R. Tolkien without even the slightest trace of irony or understanding of what Tolkien was actually saying in his works.

It's going to be interesting to see who has the balls to actually call this out for being as odious as it is — and then standing their moral ground to back up their criticisms — and who treats it as just another silly little gaming story.

I certainly won't be touching anything ModRetro-branded any time soon.

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