The third Piko Collection cartridge is now available on Evercade and having had my paws on it for a few days I’ve had enough time to dig into the 10 games that are on the cartridge to give my views on whether this is one worth picking up, or whether this is one you may want to skip.
The games featured on the cart are 40 Winks, Legend of Wukong, Metal Mech Man and Machine, Motor City Patrol, Punch King, Radikal Bikers, Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston, Super Bubble Pop, Sword of Sodan and Zero Tolerance.
One thing I should note at this stage is that there doesn’t appear to be any bonus games if you plug this into the Evercade VS with either PIKO Collection 1 or PIKO Collection 2. Maybe there will prove to be if there is system update that unlocks something, but as I was fortunate to get sent a copy early I don’t know if they’ll provide any system update when the cart launches in a few days time.
I suspect that if there are any bonus games to be unlocked it will happen at a later date if and when there is a PIKO Collection 4, and that the bonus games will work with carts in pairs rather than in threes.
It’s also worth noting that PIKO Collection 3 is just ten games where as the first one has twenty games, and the second one has thirteen. Together they even give a bonus game on Evercade VS. Less games per cart has been the trend on the Evercade Collections, but in case you’re worried that this third collection is them scraping the barrel I can reassure that it isn’t.
Starting things off with 40 Winks, as that is the game which I believe most people were hyped for on this cart, the game is loads of fun. I believe I’m correct in saying that this is the first 3D platformer to make it onto the Evercade, and it comes in the form of a game that was originally released on the PlayStation One back in the day.
As the Evercade is all about that nostalgia fix, it’s very easy to enjoy this game for a dose of the Banjo-Kazooie/Spyro/Mario 64 feels even if this game doesn’t match those games in quality. The game even has weird gobbledy language like in Banjo.
In the game you play as one of two kids – Ruff or Tumble and you must save the Winks from the evil Hoodwinks. Mostly you’ll run about as these kids in their nightgowns, but will at times get new costumes for them to wear that give you new abilities. This is a shame as on the first levels you get a jester, cave man, ninja and superhero costumes which instantly made the whole game feel a lot more fun to run around. You had stronger attacks, higher jumps and such like and it makes you wonder why they didn’t have this as the baseline.
The platforming feels good, and its so 90s, but I say that as a good thing. Its fun to run around themed levels like haunted houses or water based worlds and collect dozens of objects just for the sake of it.
It took me a little while to get used to a platformer where you use the shoulder buttons to change the camera as over the last couple of decades its always been with a right control stick. You run around with a candle which you can hit enemies with and you can also butt stomp things as well.
The game wasn’t the greatest example of it’s genre back in the day, but certainly stands out on the Evercade.
Next up is the Legend of Wukong which is a traditional RPG. Originally for the Sega Mega Drive, but only released in China I believe, the game received an English translation a few years ago and found it’s way to the West.
For full disclosure I’m only a few hours into this one, as the nature of RPGs being huge in size and often grindy means I’d need to play this one solidly for the next week to get through it. Fortunately I can once again make good use of the Evercade’s save state feature and did so to make sure I could win the gambling minigame over and over to quickly had a huge amount of in game cash to buy all the best weapons and armour straight away. Some may say this is cheating…and I’d agree with them. But in this modern day and age where you can get Evercade carts with sometimes up to twenty games on at once I simply don’t have time for all the RPGs.
The combat in the game does feel like one of the old SNES Final Fantasy games where it’s turn based as you go against random encounter after random encounter. I’ve not played a ton of RPGs like this in recent years as I normally wouldn’t think I have the time for it, but mainly so I could dig into it for this review I quickly found I was getting engrossed with the combat and levelling up my party.
The plot of this game is fun as it is about time travel and seeking a lost time machine. The translation is also actually really funny at times, and I have wonder if this is a true translation of what the game was originally or if whoever worked on the game in recent years decided to make things a bit more quirky.
Punch King is a boxing game which just by its graphics and year of release I take was a Game Boy Advance game. Yeah this one is OK, but didn’t massively captivate me. The graphics are kinda bulky and whilst better on the handheld Evercades, it was somewhat unsightly on the big screen.
Gameplay wise it’s all about looking out for the opportunity and getting the right timing to land punches. The animation of when you hit an uppercut is satisfying, but overall the game plays OK, but isn’t that memorable. I often felt that I’d press buttons and not get the action on screen for what I pressed. This quickly becomes a bit frustrating and you end up mashing buttons, but this doesn’t help at all in this game.
Super Bubble Pop is a surprisingly good match three puzzle game. As said in the info about the game, it was originally intended as a hair product tie in, but didn’t relate to the product at all. The game is a bit weird in that to show off some kind of 3D visuals as you change the position you’re going to shoot a bubble in the entire playing field rotates back and forth a bit. There’s no real reason for it to do this, but to try to make the graphics seem a bit more fancy, and if anything it can make knowing where you are shooting the bubble slightly harder.
One thing that I noticed after a while of playing this game is that it may be possible to do a perfect run of the game in just a few minutes. I say this because if you shoot the first few bubbles in the optimum places you will empty the playing field within seconds every time and end the level.
Hopefully one day we’ll get Taito released a cart for Evercade and get an actual Puzzle Bobble/Bust A Move game, but for now this is a decent alternative.
Stanley The Search for Dr Livingston is a NES era style action adventure game which most reminded me of Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link. It mostly takes the form of a side scrolling adventure game where you can go to towns and talk to people, but mostly do platforming and combat punching snakes, tigers and umm…people who aren’t depicted in a very PC way for modern tastes.
You also collect some items which make your quest easier like a grapple hook and rope and you find these key items on certain levels, but you don’t have to play every level. You move across a map in a grid fashion and so there are some you can skip, but may miss a key or useful item doing so.
One of the hidden gems on the cart that I enjoyed more than I was expecting.
Speaking of hidden gems, sword of Sodan is not one of them. Even Blaze are saying that the game is bad on their Facebook posts about it. They’re going with the angle of it being for game preservation that it’s worthy of inclusion, but truth is the collection is cheap enough that I’ll forgive this stinker.
As a side scrolling beat em up, this looks decent if you were to see it in still images. The animation of the main characters isn’t even very fleshed out and they don’t do a full walk cycle. Instead, they just sidestep. The enemies come at you from both sides and are fairly relentless. In the end I checked a longplay to see how far I had got through the game and saw that I had only reached the halfway point of a game that takes half an hour to complete, but I decided I’d seen enough. For what I did play it was a save state party just to get that far. Making a game hard isn’t always bad if it stays fun. This is hard and not fun.
Radikal Bikers is quite fun. I’m not the biggest fan of the isometric style racers but this Pizza delivery focussed game is actually quite engaging with easy to learn controls and just one more go gameplay. Sometimes cars on the road can be a bit annoying when you bump into the back of them, but unlike so many racers this doesn’t completely slow you down and you can clip into or kick off of other cars and still keep a decent pace. Learning the routes to pick up the bonus items and extra time is part of the fun. It’s nothing mind blowing, but it’s also not bad at all.
Motor City Patrol isn’t the top down original style Grand Theft Auto style game you hope it may be. That said, it isn’t totally not that either and I’m sure if you believed hard enough you could convince yourself it was in that realm. Unlike Grand Theft Auto this game puts you on the right side of the law.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really enjoy this game. I found it confusing where you have to go a lot of the time and didn’t find I was completing that many objectives. There is fortunately a map you can refer to, but this only was so useful when you have to refer to it so often.
It is fun to put on the siren and chase cars down the road and take shots at enemies. That is until you realise that you shot at innocent cars and then get told you are a crazy officer and get sacked. It tells you you are lucky to get sacked and not prosecuted for shooting an innocent citizen…um I’m pretty sure they should get in more trouble than just sacked.
Metal Mech is better than Motor City, but was another I wasn’t enamoured with. It’s cool at first as you go around in a mech robot that looks like ED-209 from Robocop. Also this means you’re pretty much invincible. But here is where the problems really kick in. The mech suit is really slow.
Also aiming and shooting is a bit weird. You can find that you can aim and shoot and move all at the same time, but when you do this you keep walking forwards for as long as you have the shoot button held down. Alternatively sometimes you can just stand still and shoot, but I kept getting the wrong version of this happen compared to what I’d like.
Then here comes the twist. There are times when you have to get out of ED-209 and run around on foot. This instantly makes you super vulnerable, but at least you can move about and jump and shoot fast than ED can.
The game is a bit of a slog to get through as it’s not always clear what to do or where to go. Knowing when you should be on foot or the mech suit isn’t really clear, so this was another where I’d lean to save states whenever I got out of the invincible ED and just shoot random things until I found a key.
With only six stages the game can be blasted through in an hour or so, and you get an alternative to ED on the last level which is something that changes up the gameplay a bit. I didn’t hate this game by a long stretch, but I didn’t love it either.
Lastly, we’re going to end on a high note. Zero Tolerance brings some first-person shooter action to the Evercade. I’m guessing most Evercade owners are people who may have played a lot of these games, back in the day, but for any younglings I’ll warn you all not to expect Call of Duty. This is the oldest of old school style FPS games. It’s in the same style as Doom, Wolfenstein and Hexen, but not as good.
That isn’t to say it’s bad. I loved this game when I had it on the Mega Drive back in the day and a wave of nostalgia will probably hit anyone who played this or the other of the very early FPS games.
The view of the game is incredibly limited. You can maybe see where you are going on only about a third of the screen. The rest of it is filled with you weapons, a map and your character info. Literally their ID fills almost a quarter of the screen. The reason for this is that the Mega Drive couldn’t handle showing the 3D levels in full screen and so you just see a smaller view. The draw distance is also very limited.
The good news is the onscreen map is super useful and makes navigating where you are and even lining up shots to enemies a lot easier. It’s almost a two-screen experience on a single screen and having the map visible like this shows how this game could have done well on the Wii U.
There are a bunch of levels to get through and at first, you’ll be shooting bad dudes and later on you’ll be shooting alien bugs. Fortunately, you get quite a lot of ammo and variety of guns. If you can you should save your best weapons and ammo so you can feel overpowered as each level goes on.
So, what is the verdict? Should you get the PIKO Collection 3 cart? I’d give it a big yes. It brings 3D platformers and first person shooters to the Evercade which is a cool step into the mid-90s after all the 2D games that are on the system. Early 3D games may not hold up as well graphically as old 2D games often do, but there is definitely a place for them.
The best games here are Zero Tolerance, 40 Winks, and Legend of Wukong. Super Bubble Pop, Stanley and Radikal Bikers are all also games that a bunch of fun times can be had with. Metal Mech, Motor City Patrol and Sword of Sodan are much weaker, but on a cart that is still only around £17 that is still only £1.70 a game.
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