#oneaday Day 771: Anachronistic wonderment

A trait I have somehow been able to hold onto over the years — and which I have no intent of letting go of — is the ability to be impressed by things which, today, are not actually "impressive" as such, but which would have been impressive back when they were current. To give just one example, my mind is still blown by the parallax scrolling in the backdrop of Sonic the Hedgehog's Green Hill Zone.

To give another example — and the one that prompted me to write this today — I am currently playing Quintet's Illusion of Time (aka Illusion of Gaia to North Americans) and I have been thoroughly impressed by its visual design overall, but one of my favourite things is the fact that its parallax backdrops, when it uses them (it's a top-down game) accurately reflect the things that you're supposed to be "above". To put it another way, when you're high above something, the things you can see down below are accurate to what you would see if you were actually down there.

Looking back over my Soul Blazer video, I'm pretty sure Soul Blazer did this in a few places as well, but Illusion of Time seems to do it fairly consistently. And I'm impressed! They didn't have to go to that much effort, but they did!

The reason this impresses me is that a lot of games like this would have used a fairly generic parallax backdrop, and no-one would have minded too much. The illusion of depth would be there — which is what parallax is used for — and the fact that it wasn't "accurate" wouldn't have mattered, because it has no real impact on the actual gameplay.

For example, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past uses a very simple tiled parallax backdrop to show that there is something beneath you rather than it being a bottomless pit. You can use this information to recognise which pits it is safe to jump down — to get to otherwise inaccessible areas, for example — and which it is not. While an accurate reflection of the floor beneath's map might be helpful in this situation, Zelda has enough other features to allow you to calculate the place where you will end up without having to be able to see down the hole. And, indeed, with the limited area you can see through Zelda's holes (pardon me), it's probably more practical to just look at the map and recognise "this is a hole I can jump down" rather than try to figure out exactly where you'll land from the tiny bit of parallax background you can see through said hole.

In Illusion of Time, however, these parallax backgrounds are purely there to look cool. In one sequence where you're exploring a mine, for example, you initially see ropeways with hanging platforms "in front of" the screen, suggesting they're above where you currently are. Later in the stage, you get up to the level of the ropeways and ride one across a large gap. Since, so far as the game is concerned, you are in a different "room" while you're doing this, there probably didn't "need" to be a parallax background at all, but not only did Quintet include one, it was a full, accurate map of the floor beneath.

That, to me, is impressive! It is not impressive by today's standards, because today you would just build your entire level in 3D and be able to see through holes and chasms to the floor beneath naturally. I am impressed with this in Illusion of Gaia, however, because I know that it wouldn't have been that simple to do. Well, it might have been relatively simple — all it really needs to be is an image of the floor below's map used as the parallax background — but it's a level of effort I recognise as being outside of the norm for the time, and thus I appreciate it.

This is where having an understanding and an appreciation of a wide range of things within your hobby is helpful. Someone who had only ever played modern games would think nothing of this little feature. But having grown up with all these different "generations" of gaming hardware, developing a vague (if non-technical) understanding of their capabilities (and lack thereof) along the way, I can recognise when something is an impressive achievement for its original time of release.

I hope I never let go of this trait. It adds so much depth of enjoyment to my appreciation of older games — and I encourage you to try and develop it, too.

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 754: Late '90s promise

As I absorb the news that Sony is giving up on physical releases of games — something I have had a good rant about at much more length over on MoeGamer, so please go read that — I can't help but think back to the time PlayStation hit the scene, and the incredible amount of promise that video games showed back then. This coincides with a period of time I often describe as the happiest of my life, and the video games were a big part of that, for a variety of reasons.

Photo by Simon Trappe on Pexels.com

I remember my first encounter with PlayStation vividly. My brother had come home to visit, and, as he often did, he had brought some gaming hardware with him. On previous visits — and prior to me getting my own SNES — he had brought both a Super Famicom and Mega Drive back with him on various occasions, but this new PlayStation thing was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen.

We loaded up Ridge Racer and you could play Galaxian while it was loading. Supposedly you could unlock some stuff if you could win the Galaxian game before the game finished loading, but I didn't manage that right away. (I mastered it some time later.) Then, once Ridge Racer was loaded, it was another example of something we'd previously described the SNES as being: "like having an arcade machine hooked up to your TV".

This feeling didn't go away with Tekken, which my brother had a prerelease copy of. He also had Raiden Project, which, while less obviously "impressive" than both Ridge Racer and Tekken, I found myself enjoying a lot, and still consider one of my favourite PlayStation titles to this day.

Eventually, my brother left behind this Japanese-model PlayStation at my parents' house for me to have — he had got his own British model. I was thrilled, particularly once I learned the "pen-lid trick" — a means of circumventing the console's region and copy protection by propping the disc tray open and carefully timing the swapping of discs. It was a good way to wear out your laser before long, but until I got my own UK PlayStation, it was my main means of experiencing PAL releases.

My friends got PlayStations around a similar time, and we all really enjoyed them, each cultivating our own little collection of games.

Then came Final Fantasy VII. I first heard about this from my brother, and one thing made me want to pick it up immediately: he told me that it was the first game that had made him and various other people he knew cry. This might seem like a strange reason to be excited for a game, but having been enjoying point-and-click adventures on PC for a few years at this point, I was immensely excited by the possibilities that interactive storytelling offered, and I was curious exactly what this game actually was.

I started to play it and was initially confused. Why did the screen go all swirly and then I couldn't move, but I had to select things from a menu instead? Why did the characters look different when they were walking around to when they were in battle? Why were numbers popping out of things?

I'd encountered the RPG genre in a very early form back on the Atari 8-bit, but had always found those games to be difficult to understand as a child. Some years later, I got into HeroQuest and Advanced Heroquest, and started to understand how numbers and turn-based combat worked together. And with Final Fantasy VII, I quickly learned how the computerised take on an RPG worked — and that I liked it a lot.

My friends loved it, too. We all swapped stories of our custom-named parties at school, arguing over who had given their characters the "best" names and who had recoloured the text window the most attractively garish combination of shades. We all agreed it was an incredible experience, and played it multiple times in succession — often in immediate succession. I estimate over the course of one particular summer, each of us must have played through the entirety of that game somewhere between six and ten times.

My parents went away for a few weeks and left me in charge of the house. I hosted an ill-advised party that I got into a lot of trouble for — I have to laugh in retrospect — but the best thing about that summer was having my friends over pretty much every day, and we would just play Final Fantasy VII together while eating Pot Noodles and getting steadily quite drunk. On one particularly memorable occasion, we challenged one another to play from the beginning and stay up as long as possible; we played through the night and into the next morning, hitting each other with sofa cushions to wake each other up if we looked like we were nodding off. It was a truly wonderful experience, and absolutely a treasured memory.

It all feels so far away now. I would love to have a summer like that which I just described again, but it feels like a far-off dream at this point.

Still, I mean I am still in touch with some of those friends, so perhaps, just perhaps, we could make something like that happen once again sometime. Maybe.

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#oneaday Day 685: Very tired

I've been absolutely exhausted all day. I feel like I got a decent night's sleep, particularly after the tiring day I had at work followed by the long drive home, but also feel like I could have done with approximately 12 hours more sleep. I actually managed to get a fair amount done today, but right now I just feel like I could shut my eyes and fall asleep right here on the sofa.

With that in mind, I'm probably going to have an early night tonight. I'd like to get back into Pragmata, which I'm enjoying a lot, but I'm also not sure my brain is up to playing anything too complex this evening. Perhaps this would be a good evening to do a bit of retro gaming, with an emphasis on something that isn't too challenging or complex to deal with.

I actually have the next two Evercade cartridges that haven't been released yet, which I'm kind of dying to talk about but can't because although I have them in my hands, we haven't even announced them yet. That will be happening soon, however, and when it does I will have plenty to enthuse about, believe me. They're not the biggest releases of the year, by any means, but they are some of my favourites.

No; I'm thinking this evening might be a good opportunity to settle down with something comfortably familiar, but which I perhaps haven't played for a while. I'm hoping in the process of typing this, something will come to mind that feels like it might be fun to spend my evening playing. Maybe Starwing? I haven't played that for a while. Last time I tried it, the MiSTer SNES core was having issues with the SuperFX chip, but I believe that's been resolved at this point, so that might be a good shout. I do love a bit of Starwing, and it is actually quite a long time since I've played it.

I'm going to get back into doing some videos soon, for those who have been wondering why it's been all quiet on that front for a while. I just haven't really felt an urge to do that for a little while, and forcing yourself to do something you're not really feeling is a sure-fire way to get yourself feeling burnt out. I won't have time to do any this coming weekend, as we're taking a trip to The Cave, but I have a few days off for my birthday at the start of next week, so I might take a day or two to record a few things over that period. Exactly what, I have no idea just yet; I have a few things in mind that I might like to explore, but haven't decided firmly on when or how to tackle them. This upcoming bit of free time might be the ideal opportunity to jump into them.

Anyway, I think I might have made a decision on what to do with my evening — although at the rate I'm going, I may well be asleep before I've got anywhere. If that's the way it goes, though, that's the way it goes!

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#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…

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#oneaday Day 608: Channel update

I posted an update on my YouTube channel yesterday. You can watch it right here! I also play some Galaxian on Atari 8-bit in an attempt to participate in the current "High Score Club" challenge over on AtariAge.

I thought I'd talk about the things I mention in the video for today's post, because… well, because I want to.

The main takeaway from the update is that I'm giving up on doing longer playthroughs of stuff on video. For the most part, anyway. I'm not ruling out the possibility of doing another full playthrough of something reasonably short like an adventure game, as those are fun videos to make. But long RPGs as a playthrough series are out of the window.

There are a few reasons for this, chief among which is it makes playing one single game take for-fucking-ever. If you're only playing a game when you're recording videos for it, that inevitably means you're not playing it all that regularly (I have a life outside YouTube videos!) and thus it takes ages to get anywhere. If you combine that with a game that involves a fair amount of going back and forth grinding for experience, money or whatever, that doesn't make for particularly fun video-making, and it almost certainly doesn't make for particularly fun watching, either.

The other reason is that although I don't really care about viewing figures in general, the number of people who were showing up for episodes of The Granstream Saga in particular was utterly woeful. And, I mean, I get it; if you get an hour and a half long video in your feed that's part 7 of a series, are you going to click on it if you're not already invested? Probably not, even if the video has a link to the full series playlist in its description — because you still have to actually click on the video in the first place to know that.

So what I'm going to do is that, in future, for long games that I want to cover on the channel somehow, I'm going to make sure that I record some footage of the game while I'm playing it, then write a proper script for a "review-style" video of the game to be posted at some point afterwards. This will probably also be combined with a written version of the piece for MoeGamer, because I know that some people prefer to read and some people prefer to watch, so it just makes sense to do the same thing in both places — and that's what I've been doing with a number of recent pieces.

This means that for the "Let's Play"-style videos, which I want to keep on doing, because I think they're a good means of exploring retro games in particular, I will focus on doing one-offs. I'm not going to fret over doing "series" or sticking to one platform specifically, because there are many, many, many retro titles that I would love to talk about (in many cases while I'm trying them for the first time) and I just think it will be best for my own sanity to keep things breezy. This isn't a job, after all, it's a hobby. Were I relying more seriously on income from YouTube, I'd be 1) fucked and 2) making a lot more effort to bait the algorithm, post consistently and all that other gubbins. But I'm not, so I don't.

Regular readers will know that I've been wrestling internally over what exactly to do with the YouTube channel for a long time. I enjoyed the period back in about 2018-2020 or so when I was doing up to five videos a week and specific series such as Atari A To Z, Atari A to Z Flashback and suchlike, but it's also pleasing when the scripted videos perform well — and they tend to do a lot better than the Let's Play-style stuff in general.

But, as I say, I think the Let's Play-style format is a good means of showcasing and explaining retro games. My "vision", if you want to be pretentious about it, is that of me sitting down with you, the viewer, to "go on the computer" and explore a game together. I have very, very fond memories of having friends over after school to "go on the computer" and play games together; in many cases, these were single-player games, and we'd take turns, or my friend would watch and ask questions, and what I at least attempt to recapture the feeling of with my Let's Play-style videos is that sort of thing.

So that's the plan. Go back to/keep doing one-shot Let's Play-style videos of Stuff I Just Find Interesting, then scripted review-style videos of stuff that benefits from being explored in a bit more depth, or which is too long to practically sit down and commentate over the entire duration of.

It was important for me to make this video, if only to "give myself permission" to admit that some things weren't working, and I didn't need to ride them out to the bitter end just for the sake of pride or whatever. I already feel like I've lifted an entirely self-inflicted weight off my shoulders by doing so, and hopefully this will mean some renewed enthusiasm for Doing YouTube in the coming weeks.

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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 534: An evening of arcade

In gaming today, it's tempting to always want to be making progress on your "big game" of the moment: a lengthy epic that goes on into the tens or even hundreds of hours in length. But one thing I find it helpful to remind myself of on a regular basis is that short-form games very much have their place and their appeal, too. And it's in this area that retro gaming in particular tends to excel.

In recent weeks, I've been having a lot of fun getting to know the NEOGEO games we've released on Evercade this year. Most notably, I've been spending some time with the ever-delightful Metal Slug, which I hadn't spent a ton of time with prior to the Evercade release, and I've even been dipping my toes into the notoriously obtuse fighting game genre a little with Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which first impressions would seem to indicate is one of the more accessible SNK/NEOGEO fighting games in existence.

These games are immediately rewarding and fun. You probably won't be able to beat them on your first go — although in most cases, you can credit-feed — but there's a definite appeal element in the form of gradual mastery. With each attempt from the beginning of Metal Slug, I get to know the game a bit better, I learn more about how to play it effectively, and, assuming I'm paying attention to what I'm doing, I get a little bit further. At this point, I can occasionally make it up to the start of Mission 3 without losing a life; with each new attempt, that "occasionally" becomes "more frequently", and that's a really satisfying, rewarding feeling.

My concern is what I feel like is an increasing number of people getting to a point where they're writing off these short-form experiences as having no real inherent value. Perhaps it's because these games aren't telling a deep, thought-provoking or emotionally engaging story. Perhaps it's simply because they're short. Perhaps it's down to assumptions that short-form or arcade games are inherently "lesser" than 100+ hour epics on computers and consoles today.

I don't know. But I know that I definitely derive value from them, and I continue to feel proud that I'm involved in helping to preserve these games and educate new generations in their appeal elements thanks to my day job.

One day I still want to write a book. Or, at this point, probably several books, given the sheer number of games that are on Evercade by now. I should probably just stop thinking about doing that and actually do it, no?

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