Last Retro Game You Finished And Your Thoughts

My reviews are largely too scathing to be fair. Sorry it didn't work out for you Jim. I was forced by my Player 2 away from the HD graphics: sounds like the right decision!

Did you not like Sam & Max Save the World? I thought it was rather splendid.

I wonder what the Oliver Twins could conceivably do with a Dizzy reinvention. I’m not suggesting that they go all Bomberman: Act Zero on it, but how do you bring such an archaic yet well-established game style into the modern day…?

Conveniently enough, I’d picked out some Halloween-ey games to make time to play in October, and one of them is Maniac Mansion. That’s an even older point and click adventure game than Secret of Monkey Island – and it’s the plain old NES version too. The write-ups of Secret of Monkey Island don’t fill me with much hope for Maniac Mansion…

Here’s my thoughts on the Atari Lynx Collection 1 that came out for the Evercade late last year.



To begin, Awesome Golf might be the most hyperbolic game title I’ve ever heard. It’s merely Just About Passable Golf, with a weird swing meter that aims your shot for you.

The development team made a proper dog’s dinner of Basketbrawl, with it not being a particularly good Basketball game and not being an even halfway-decent brawler either. The idea behind it is fine, but it’s just no good to play.

Crystal Mines II: Buried Treasure is just like a weaponised Boulder Dash. This is very good, a proper highlight of this collection.

I wouldn’t usually bother playing a science-fiction themed first person shooter like Cybervirus, neither of those things are my cup of tea at all. And yet this is decently impressive on a humble Lynx hardware, although it was made in 2002 by someone who likely had the benefit of all sorts of development tricks that they wouldn’t have had when the Lynx was new. Regardless, it’s fairly good fun for a bit.

Dracula: The Undead was a rare foray for me into the Point-and-Click Adventure genre, and you know what? Maybe playing a thirty year old Atari Lynx ROM wasn’t the best way for me to try to get into this type of game.

In an overcrowded market of monkey platformers, Gordo 106 doesn’t really do anything distinctive other than look amazing by Lynx standards. Yet while it’s a bit fiddly, it’s also a playable enough game and it’s got a decent level of challenge.

I didn’t understand how to play Ishido: The Way of the Stones, and the instruction manual didn’t help me out. It’s all about matching coloured tiles on a 2D grid, or something. Is this basically what Mahjong is?

One of the few games I’d heard of before I got this collection was Jimmy Connor’s Tennis. Saying that I was looking forward to trying it would be a massive overstatement, but I think it was the first thing I tried. Like many of these Atari Lynx games, Jimmy Connor’s Tennis would have been undoubtedly been impressive on a technical level back in the day. However, it’s gameplay is just too vanilla to really grab anybody’s attention now.

Loopz has had a long journey to get here, as it was developed in the early ‘90s, unreleased until 2004 and now trotted out again in 2020 as an officially-licensed Atari Lynx game. Demonstrating that looks aren’t everything, the gameplay is quite good. It’s kind of like if Pipe Mania was mashed up with Tetris.

Regarding Malibu Beach Volleyball…just read what I typed for Jimmy Connor’s Tennis, except stick Jimmy in a swimsuit.

MegaPak Vol. 1 is absolutely dire. There’s six little minigames in here, including a scruffy rip-off of Fire on the Game & Watch, and a tool that acts like an particularly broken Etch-a-Sketch. This must have been included here for a laugh.

First impressions would make you believe that Power Factor is one of the best things on the Atari Lynx. It might very well be, as it strikes me as a reasonably accomplished adventure/platformer with some really impressive graphics. I didn’t get far into it though, as the size of your sprite makes it hard to see the big levels and it’s hard to avoid taking damage. I wanted to like it, but in the end I just got scunnered with it.

Remnant: Plantar Wars is a first-person spaceship-shooter from the year 2000. Playing exactly like you’d think it would, it’s good, clean arcade fun but not terribly interesting in any unique way.

Scrapyard Dog has you rescuing your kidnapped dog in one of the most needlessly challenging platformers I’ve ever played. I used the save states every thirty seconds while I was playing this, just trying to tough it out while rarely having much fun.

As you’d assume, Super Asteroids & Missile Command is just a two-in-one collection with souped-up versions of the old arcade classics. I’ve always liked Asteroids; I’ve never liked Missile Command.

Super Squeek might be my favourite game on here. It’s a moreish puzzler where you walk over tiles to change their colour. There’s bonus Green Star rooms in Super Mario 3D World that do this exact thing, but I like how Super Squeek plays it. Good stuff.

Remember that one minigame in Among Us where you’d have to trace along a top-down path to the exit? Xump: The Final Run is that, but stretched over a full game. No thanks.

That’s seventeen games there, providing you not only a good mixture of styles but also with a decent chunk of the 71 games that were officially released for the Atari Lynx. It’s quite an obscure system that’s not appeared in any other guises too - I’d definitely have never played any of these games if Evercade hadn’t licensed this cartridge anyway. Without having the hassle of finding a working Atari Lynx and shelling out for it, this was a good way of sampling what it was all about. 6/10.

The Lynx collection is one of the EC games that I was interested in as like you say the Lynx is an obscure system which I've only owned once and elsewhere said my favourite game on it was Blue Lightning as basically all I had for it.

Learning about more games on the system, even for a historical standpoint, is neat.

Interesting reviews there - you were brave enough to tough out some of those! I never ever considered wanting an Atari Lynx at the time, but I guess everything works out at a bit more reasonable price-wise! Crystal Mines II is automatically good because it's a cave with rocks and diamonds in it, and Skweek was also praised as a classic in them early days. I worry about any compilation that adds sports games on it though - very few are different enough to compensate for the fact that they're less technologically accurate.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I wonder what the Oliver Twins could conceivably do with a Dizzy reinvention. I’m not suggesting that they go all Bomberman: Act Zero on it, but how do you bring such an archaic yet well-established game style into the modern day…?

Conveniently enough, I’d picked out some Halloween-ey games to make time to play in October, and one of them is Maniac Mansion. That’s an even older point and click adventure game than Secret of Monkey Island – and it’s the plain old NES version too. The write-ups of Secret of Monkey Island don’t fill me with much hope for Maniac Mansion…

I think you're almost better off with the original Monkey Island; Maniac Mansion's got a lot of personality, but does, unlike all of LucasArts' later efforts, have failstates. If you're playing it in a place you can save spam, you'll be OK.

Slight digression re. Dizzy: I've really wanted to write a series of articles with a working title of "someone should revamp this game, I don't mean like remaster the original, I mean it's got good ideas in it, but doesn't hold up at all" of which the Dizzy series as a whole would be one entry. But I think it'd be too egocentric for Gintendo. If I was really brave I'd start a YouTube thing... but I'm not, and no-one wants to hear me talk about Return to Zork for 30 minutes.

Blue Lightning is on the Atari Lynx Collection 2 and it’s an impressive game for the technology. I’m not planning on writing up about that cartridge just now but I’d confidently say that it’s one of the Evercade’s best ones. I think those two Lynx compilations have ended up being two of the standout things about the Evercade. There’s loads of overlap between the many Interplay, Data East, Jaleco, PIKO Interactive and indie games offered on Evercade, Piepacker, Antstream and Nintendo Switch Online. Not the Lynx though.

I’d watch and/or read articles on the topic of “someone should revamp this game, I don’t mean remaster the original, I mean it’s got good ideas in it, but it just doesn’t hold up well”, I don’t think that would be egocentric at all. I'm sure there's a few other forumites who would perhaps want to give that idea a bash themselves...

Well that's good! If I had my wits about me today, I'd attempt to start up a topic at least.
Re Dizzy: I legit don't know how to drag it into the 21st Century.

Here’s my thoughts on Interplay Collection 2, another Evercade compilation that came out last year.



The Adventures of Rad Gravity is the sole 8-bit game here, and it’s a 2D platformer that I tried hard to like. However, all it’s gravity-related inventiveness and unique design is just trampled all over by its overly harsh difficulty and sloppy controls. It’s disappointing, as because of those two things I ended up giving Rad Gravity a lot less time that it probably deserves.

Although it’s a 16-bit puzzler on the SNES, my exact same points apply for The Brainies as applied for The Adventures of Rad Gravity. There’s lots of nice trickery with the visuals, but the puzzles and perspective bended my brain well before I reached the halfway point. Super Fruitfall is the same type of labyrinth tile-sliding puzzler, but it’s a lot more appealing.

Clayfighter 2: Judgement Clay is a slapstick 2D fighter that lacks the depth, creativity and nuance to be compared to Street Fighter II or Killer Instinct…on the Game Boy. This series started averagely and only got worse from there.

As I understand it, Claymates was supposed to be the start of a new franchise that would spin-off into all sorts of games that used a common clay-style aesthetic. I’m guessing Clayfighter 63 1/3 stopped that once and for all, but at least we’ve still got this. One of the first Evercade games I played over a year ago, Claymates is a really playable and accomplished platformer that makes good sense of the plasticene gimmick. Controlling a blob and transforming into differently-shaped animals with unique abilities is a pretty cool idea, and it’s as a platformer it’s interesting enough to be worth your attention.

Like Claymates, you’ve already got Prehistorik Man on the Switch’s SNES Online app. And like Claymates again, I felt Prehistorik Man was an odd choice for that service. Simply put, it’s too flawed to stand up to scrutiny when put beside Super Mario World and Kirby Super Star. Still, it’s good fun to play, and an easy game to like and enjoy despite its slippery movement and precision platforming. It’s rich sounds and high production values also help elevate it above any other Titus Interactive game that I can think of.

I played through Earthworm Jim 2 on the SNES earlier this year, saying in my 7/10 review that it’s “conceptually inventive enough to be worth experiencing for yourself”. It’s a deeply uneven and erratic game though, and if you ever play it then don’t settle yourself down for a straightforward 2D run ’n gun platformer. While I definitely give it a thumbs up, I hope that the Amico’s upcoming Earthworm Jim game takes more inspiration from the 1994 original than this 1995 sequel.

Four platformers, a fighter and a puzzler is not a good way to mix six games, but I got good mileage out of this collection. It helps that there’s three genuinely good platformers here too, which is grand if you’re into that type of game like me. It’s ultimately yet another 6/10 though; as with all these Evercade collections, there’s just a bit too much that underwhelms nowadays.

Here’s my thoughts on Jaleco Collection 1 which came out on Evercade back in April.



Totally Rad just smacks of early ‘90s Generation X attitude. From the name alone, you’d maybe assume that you’re getting a mascot platformer like Sonic The Hedgehog, but it’s really more like a slowed-down Mega Man 2. There’s nothing spectacular about it and it’s all very basic, but overall Totally Rad is a reasonably okay run ‘n gunner that fits in fine on a multi-game collection like this.

Super Goal! 2 might have been pretty good if the camera perspective didn’t make the travel of the ball so confusing to watch, and if scoring goals wasn’t as hard as stealing the Queen’s crown off her head while she’s taking a dump.

I finished Super E.D.F. Earth Defence Force back when it was re-released on SNES Online. Nothing about it sets the world on fire, and you’d really need SNES Online’s rewind button to keep trying the hard bits over and over again so to have a realistic hope of seeing the end of it. That said, I’ve got a soft spot for it. It’s an all right example of a 16 bit side-scrolling shmup.

I think City Connection is ripe for a remake: I like the idea of a racer/platformer where you leak paint onto the road to escape police chase. This NES version is pretty choppy, but it’s okay in small doses.

Operation Logic Bomb’s Wikipedia page describes it as a cross between Super Smash TV and Contra III: The Alien Wars. That’s very apt…if you remove 95% of those games’ intensity. That’s not actually a bad thing, it just means that you’re getting a slower and more cautious top-down alien shooter. It’s perhaps a little underdeveloped (it introduces it’s coolest weapons but has very few ideas for them before ending too suddenly), but on the whole I liked it. Reintroducing these sort of (actually decent!) ‘sleeper’ games are what the Evercade should be about.

Astyanax comes across as a low-budget Castlevania rip-off, with its mythological setting and stiff controls. That undersells it though, as it’s quite a proficient and decently solid action/adventure game by NES standards. The Evercade’s unrestricted save states improve it loads too.

I can lump Rival Turf! and Brawl Brothers together. Neither game would turn your head, they’re the most basic and derivative brawlers that I’ve played in a long time. Brawl Brothers is the slightly better of the two, and it’s also on SNES Online. I think either would make a passable co-op game, but you’d have to be pretty desperate.

What with me not being an American living in 1989, I’ve never been impressed with Bases Loaded. It’s as sluggish and apathetic a baseball game as I’ve ever played.

The Ignition Factor is a 16-bit top-down firefighting simulator that demands efficiency and strategy. I failed the opening missions I played several times before I worked out the best routes for entry, where to locate the civilians I had to rescue and even the equipment I should take for the firefighting job. It’s undoubtedly a very well-thought-out game that shows the development team worked hard to make, but it’s perhaps a bit too unorthodox and trial-and-error to be the sort of pick-up-and-play retro fare that’s mostly enjoyed today.

Without having a specific claim to fame, Jaleco had a decent history up until the early 2000s. Their legacy is from producing some really good arcade games, with the odd quality home and handheld port in between. It’s a shame that this collection is a poor representation of that legacy though. These four NES and six SNES games are mostly a bit ordinary, with the better games balanced out by an equal number of stinkers. Ultimately though, the best games on Jaleco Collection 1 – I mean Operation Logic Bomb, City Connection, Super E.D.F. and The Ignition Factor – are four of the weaker games on Nintendo Switch Online. 5/10.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Totally Rad just smacks of early ‘90s Generation X attitude. From the name alone, you’d maybe assume that you’re getting a mascot platformer like Sonic The Hedgehog, but it’s really more like a slowed-down Mega Man 2. There’s nothing spectacular about it and it’s all very basic, but overall Totally Rad is a reasonably okay run ‘n gunner that fits in fine on a multi-game collection like this.  

Is that the one where you can be the bird guy and just fly over the entire game? If not, Total! magazine has some explaining to do...

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I think City Connection is ripe for a remake: I like the idea of a racer/platformer where you leak paint onto the road to escape police chase. This NES version is pretty choppy, but it’s okay in small doses.  

I did actually finish this in the end! I agree it's a novel idea. On the NES though, the game looks like there's an error with the contacts in the cartridge, the way everything slides about / flickers. Really bizarre.

That'll be right, there's a bird power-up in Totally Rad that lets you flap around all you want. The level design doesn't always let you just fly over the whole game, but it's no concern, it was a fairly straightforward and unchallenging playthough.

I see that you're on the NES Online app fairly often. It's inevitable that Totally Rad will wind up on it someday, as the company that now owns Jaleco's back catalogue is readily licensing their games to anybody, anywhere.

Uh-oh: Piko Interactive Collection 2.



Full-Throttle All American Racing had a charisma bypass at some point during its development. It’s essentially Road Rash with some occasional jetski courses, but 1,000,000% more bland. I’d imagine copies of this were in every Beatties, Woolworths and John Menzies bargain bin up and down the country. I’m sure they would still be in those bargain bins if those shops were still around too.

It would have been nice to discover Eliminator Boat Duel here if Piko Interactive hadn’t already licensed it to appear on NES Online last year. It’s a likeable motorboat racer that brings in elements of Micro Machines, Super Off-Road and several other of the day’s best top-down racers.

Top Racer 2 (aka Top Gear 2 on the SNES) is a really solid arcade racer that doesn’t stand out for any one individual thing. Instead, it just does all the core essentials quite well, like it’s visuals, it’s sense of speed, it’s scaling and it’s challenge. You’d have to be really committed to seeing it through as it looks like it’s a huge game, but I’ll probably chip away at it over time. Top Racer 2 is undisputed quality on a collection that badly lacks it.

There’s a 2005 Game Boy Advance game included here too, called Racing Fever. No, I’d never heard of it before either. Anyway, it’s like the developer set the minimum expectation for themselves, and only aspired to make a top-down racing game that functions at the most basic level. My save file says I completed it in twenty three minutes.

The Mega Drive versions of Accolade’s two Charles Barkley basketball games - Hoops: Shut Up & Jam and Hoops: Shut Up & Jam 2 - are both included here for some reason. The first one is utterly redundant when put next to its sequel, comfortably becoming the most pointless game yet on the Evercade. The second one is a tolerable homage to NBA Jam, although it all feels a bit loose and very low-rent. Stealing, blocking and 3-point shooting is always too easy for both you and your opponent. I wouldn’t choose to play either again to be honest.

From out of nowhere, Football Madness has earned a place in my personal Worst Games Of All Time List. It’s a truly abysmal PlayStation football game that can’t even follow the rules of its own sport, or the rules of competent games design. There’s no excuse for including this here. From PlayStation to Evercade, it just makes everybody involved in its development, publishing and licensing look like a prize wanker.

It's illogical to me how so many 8-bit and 16-bit game developers were unable to make a good football game. Honestly, how hard could it be? World Trophy Soccer learned nothing from the hundreds of previous failed attempts, and plays no better than the rest of the rubbish that cluttered the rest of the gaming landscape until Sensible Soccer and Kick Off! arrived. It’s lethargic speed, inaccurate passing and cheating AI make World Trophy Soccer a really unsatisfactory football game. Worse than Chris Iwelumo’s miss against Norway.

As an Amiga-to-SNES port of a 2D Euro-platformer, Soccer Kid brings some much-needed variety to this collection. Dribbling the ball and volleying it at enemies seems like a novel idea, but the lousy level design and annoying controls spoil it a lot. Go! Go! Beckham on the Game Boy Advance is the only football platformer you ever need to play.

I don’t understand American Football, and so I don’t understand Power Football. Apart from a couple of cute graphical tricks that would have looked smart on a Mega Drive in 1991, there’s nothing I played here that makes me think that anybody would have ever enjoyed it.

Beastball is a bit better than Power Football though. Playing more like Rugby than American Football, there’s an emphasis on on-and-off-the-ball violence and you control teams of wizards and berserkers with their own powers. I don’t think Beastball is bad, although EA’s Mutant League Football is a more memorable and better made game that uses this same idea.

There’s two Olympic compilations here too, called Summer Challenge and Winter Challenge. Both are borderline unplayable, with stiff and unexplained controls and retina-harming animation. At their worst they’re amazingly poor quality, sinking to the depths of Football Madness.

Who’d want a compilation of thirteen very old sports and racing games where only two of them are good? What was the thinking behind this collection? And why did I buy it? 3/10.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Go! Go! Beckham on the Game Boy Advance is the only football platformer you ever need to play.  

You've saved me a world of grief there because I was wracking my brain trying to remember what that brief snippet of Soccer Kid in the trailer reminded me of, and you've saved the day there.

I liked the cartoony "Eat dirt!" that the racer yells out in Top Racer 2.

Have you played the Indie Heroes Collection 1 yet, Cappa? As in the most recent Retro Gamer, they gave it 82%.

JayMoyles wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Go! Go! Beckham on the Game Boy Advance is the only football platformer you ever need to play.  

You've saved me a world of grief there because I was wracking my brain trying to remember what that brief snippet of Soccer Kid in the trailer reminded me of, and you've saved the day there.

At least something good has come from the re-release of Soccer Kid. Soccer Kid makes even Marko's Magic Football look like Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

masofdas wrote:

Have you played the Indie Heroes Collection 1 yet, Cappa? As in the most recent Retro Gamer, they gave it 82%.

Aye, I've got that cartridge but I've not played everything on it yet. In terms of it's variety and value, my early impressions are that it might very well be worthy of that 82% from Retro Gamer.

I've enjoyed these write-ups, especially with the little videos accompanying them.

Racing Fever looks like Over Top from the Neo Geo but the very idea of a racing game where you can't see what's ahead of you still baffles me.

gjones wrote:

Racing Fever looks like Over Top from the Neo Geo but the very idea of a racing game where you can't see what's ahead of you still baffles me.

Does that even go for stuff like Micro Machines? What a shame, I really like those types of racing games! There’s loads of great top-down and isometric racers that are so skillfully designed and so well to control that it doesn’t really matter that you can’t see what’s ahead of you. Racing Fever isn’t one of them though, it’s too boring and unambitious to be worth this second chance it’s been given.

As a side-note to this Evercade write-up, there was a daft Twitter thread doing the rounds a couple of months ago, highlighting how shoddy a job Piko Interactive did with the Shut Up & Jam rebrand:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

gjones wrote:

Racing Fever looks like Over Top from the Neo Geo but the very idea of a racing game where you can't see what's ahead of you still baffles me.

Does that even go for stuff like Micro Machines? What a shame, I really like those types of racing games! There are loads of great top-down and isometric racers that are so skillfully designed and so well to control that it doesn’t really matter that you can’t see what’s ahead of you. Racing Fever isn’t one of them though, it’s too boring and unambitious to be worth this second chance it’s been given.

I did enjoy Micro Machines back on the Mega Drive, but that felt more like a stop-start battle rather than a traditional race. The whole point was to force your opponent off the screen. I'm a big fan of how these games look and feel, particularly Over Top, but unless the levels are memorised I'd probably only play them in multiplayer with a Micro Machines mentality. Saying that they are probably designed to be memorised like a 2D shooter is, so I may just be playing them incorrectly!

GTA2 is another one that I thought was beautiful at the time, really liked how smooth it was, but driving fast always ended up with crashing into something off-screen. I'd like to see that top-down style GTA but a bit more zoomed out and at a slight angle. Although it's probably not as fun as I envision it.

The Evercade’s new Codemasters cart has Super Skidmarks on it, and that’s basically just like Micro Machines if it were a traditional (isometic) race. Could be worth booting up on your emulator if you’re not familiar with it.

Does Grant Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars take your fancy? It’s got that top-down angled style that you’re after (although it might be a little more zoomed in, I can’t really remember).

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Super Skidmarks

They actually called a game the equivalent of poo trails?

Man, Super Skidmarks was great fun! Wasn't that the one with cows on wheels?

I beat Wario Land II last weekend. Never played it before and the alternate paths system was a very pleasant surprise upon completion.

Rum wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Super Skidmarks

They actually called a game the equivalent of poo trails?

All four of those Game Boy Wario platformers are well worth your time. I'd maybe even say that the second one is the worst one, but that's only by default of the the three others being such high quality.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

As a side-note to this Evercade write-up, there was a daft Twitter thread doing the rounds a couple of months ago, highlighting how shoddy a job Piko Interactive did with the Shut Up & Jam rebrand:

https://twitter.com/gosokkyu/status/1417744174875516928?lang=en

I just went on Facebook, and I can't believe how many people are really called Joe Hoops. I hope one of them sues

My last Evercade write-up for the time being, here’s my thoughts on the Worms Collection 1 that came out during the summer.


The gimps at Evercade never made a video for this collection, so have the original TV advert for Worms Armageddon instead.

I’ve not played the original Worms in over twenty years. I’ve had no reason to either, because it’s been totally surpassed by its many and regular sequels. Even with that in mind, this is a functional but overall lousy Mega Drive port. An initial sense of ‘is that it?’ immediately smacked me when I first started playing, but further research highlights how stripped back and limited it is. There’s no ‘proper’ single player here, and the sheer volume of weapons, sound effects, level themes and animations that were left out make this version a poor effort altogether. I get that the original Worms had to be here, but if I couldn’t be a home computer port then at least afford us the PlayStation version.

Using your Worms bazookas, shotguns and grenades to clear coloured blocks at the top of the screen, Worms Blast plays like an overthought Bust-A-Move. Case in point: it took me twenty-five minutes to complete the tutorial. It’s audiovisually unimpressive as a Game Boy Advance port, it seems to lack any multiplayer functionality and it’s not an especially compelling puzzler. Still, at least it’s something different, and at least it was a new retro game for me to try.

It’s left to Worms Armageddon to do the heavy lifting for this collection. As both a single player and multiplayer game I’ve always really liked Worms Armageddon. Twenty-two years since I first played it, I still regard it as the peak of the series. Cross-comparing it to the original Worms, it’s clear that Armageddon is the much more tactical, atmospheric and explosive game. Thing is though, that on the Evercade handheld there’s no equivalent for the PSone’s R1 and R2 buttons. A quick swatch at Worms Armageddon’s PSone instruction manual shows that these buttons were used to swap between Worms, and rotate the direction of various weapons. They’re pretty important controls to be missing here, and you can really feel their absence during gameplay. Plainly, it’s absolutely rubbish that these functions weren’t mapped to other button inputs. It’s even worse that they were just left out altogether, leaving you to carry on as if they were never in the game in the first place. It’s the lacklustre quality assurance that makes this an imperfect way of playing Worms Armageddon. You’re getting an incomplete and spoiled game here…but at the same time it’s undoubted quality just about manages to squeak through.

There’s scope for a second Worms Collection on Evercade, with the likes of Worms World Party, Worms Pinball and even the PSP’s Worms Open Warfare potentially being better fits for the hardware in a technical and ergonomic sense. I’m not sure if they’d be any clamour for that though, as I think it’s popular opinion that Armageddon is the best one. The supplementary Mega Drive and Game Boy Advance games are curiosities at best, and fill out what’s pretty much a one game compilation. It’s just a shame that the Evercade handheld isn’t up to the task of emulating that one game properly. 5/10.

I had the original Worms on PS1 and followed up with picking up Worms Armageddon after enjoying the original with some mates back as a wee sprog. Armageddon really is a fantastic sequel and I genuinely don't think the original game ever saw a look again from us after we had Armageddon to tuck into. I don't remember the single player content in that game - what did it have to offer?

And also, that's a real shame that it's missing functionality with the controls there. That's a pretty integral feature to be missing!