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As the Evercade release cadence continues on at a steady pace, the connective tissue tying together their tentpole cartridges is its indie support. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s something special about owning these games physically, and also in ways that don’t entirely break the bank. Mega Cat Studios Collection 3, the latest in that effort, includes ten games, spanning platforms and genres.
Our favorite of the bunch might be Plyuk. It’s a traversal puzzle game in the vein of BoxBoy!, built around the idea of spawning clones. You can’t jump, and you can’t take actions. All you can do is spawn a clone below you. Sound simple? It is, in its way. But you also have to figure out the order of things, properly manage your limit of clones in a level and avoid blocking your way with your own clones. (I do wish restarting the level was mapped to Select instead of Start, though. I know there’s no reason to pause this game, but it’s still muscle memory and I accidentally restarted a few times.)
Rocket Panda definitely draws the eye in the collection, a colorful mascot game that even has its own theme song with lyrics. So how does it play? It’s a refreshingly accessible game that uses one button and the D-pad, as you rocket around the level, rescue caged badgers and avoid enemies and obstacles. The music is… shall we say, unapologetically Genesis? Otherwise, there’s not a lot to dislike! Heck, there’s even a version of Asteroids added as a mini-game for whatever reason.
Flap Happy is a “black box”-style NES arcade platformer, using Joust-esque flapping controls to land on a two-square platform. Once you do, a new platform appears, and when you’ve completed a set, you then have to navigate to the exit. The walls and moving hazards make this genuinely difficult, and even on Easy, you’ll have to land somewhere with literally no headroom from time to time. (It goes all the way up to Hardest, which is truly no joke.)
Similar in appeal but different in execution is fellow Mega Cat Studios release Machine Cave. It uses flight physics rather than flapping, and an interconnected world rather than single-screen challenges. Still, it’s an NES game for fans of weird and temperamental movement. Its small scale gives you lots of vision of your surroundings, making it actually somewhat forgiving in its way.
Genesis platform puzzler Gravibots uses gravity swaps and collectible tools to guide enemies into their deaths. It’s a bit Lemmings, a bit ChuChu Rocket! and a lot Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and the mix works well. The aesthetic matches cleanly, and the pace to get back into the action after a failure makes it much easier to keep playing. GunTneR is an 8-bit scrolling shooter from the days before there were so many enemies on the screen that I couldn’t keep up. It brings in some more modern influences, but also mixes in flourishes that are decidedly of the early and mid-’80s.
Also included in Mega Cat Studios Collection 3 are Link’s Awakening-inspired Game Boy title Kudzu, ghost minotaur NES platformer The Meating, Game Boy Color RPG Gumball in Trick-or-Treat Land and SNES tag game Super Fanger.
The Evercade library also expanded with these three recent releases:
Taito Arcade 3
We love Taito’s robust presence on the Evercade. This new cart includes Cameltry, a fun ball-and-maze game that hasn’t been fully replicated elsewhere, and the excellent Puzzle Bobble that we’re always happy to carry around with us. This batch is all over the place in Taito’s arcade history, so there’s early stuff like Qix and Lunar Rescue alongside ‘90s releases. We know they do this to get everybody buying every cartridge (and maybe spread out licensing costs), but it’d still be nice for each batch to have its own era and vibe.
The Turrican Collection
The Turrican games are known for white-knuckle action and pushing technical limits, building a reputation among enthusiasts for both that has to some degree failed to spread more widely. It’s a good fit for the Evercade platform, though you do bypass a bit of the impressive hardware optimization aspect. This collection augments the original releases with “Director’s Cut” and score attack builds, leaning further into its existing fans with more ways to keep pushing and playing. It’s delightfully thorough!
Activision Collection 2
It’s hard to generate too much excitement for yet another re-release of Activision’s Atari 2600 games, but there are some nice inclusions here for fans of the era. Like Pitfall II: Lost Caverns? Or the bizarre Plaque Attack? And there are also some titles from the console’s later era that people may have missed when they released. Still, some of these 15 games are perplexing inclusions. Like why would anyone boot up Checkers at this point?
The latest Evercade cartridges are available now. For more on the platform and its releases, check out our Evercade archive.
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