Heroes Collection 3 was the third in the series of games made by various developers that are modern games for retro platforms. Like Indie Heroes Collection 2, most of the games available in this collection had previously been available for owners of Evercade VS as well as Evercade EXP to download one a month as Blaze’s Game of the Month promotion.
There is a mix of platformers and puzzle games, and this includes games that were designed with game Boy, NES and Mega Drive in mind. Donut Dodo is another example of a native game for the console, so it’s created for the Evercade rather than being emulation. I’m sure this has some advantages beyond just being cool for the developers to make, but a drawback is that the game doesn’t allow save states.
So, the games this time include Thunder Paw, Big2Small, Donut Dodo, Bubble Seahorse Adventure and Doodle World.
Let’s take a look at each one in a bit more detail. Some of these I’ll have reviewed on the channel individually when they were in the Game of the Month programme, so check out all the reviews there for even more individual game depth.
Doodle World Redrawn
This is a fun little follow up to the first original game which self describes itself as a harder to beat follow up to the original in the same way that the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2 was a harder game than the original.
Like Super Mario Bros, this is a platformer where you cannot go backwards on a stage after you have moved on.
You have a new Double Jump move which means that levels can be designed around the move. This means you’ll often have to play around with when to jump as you can pull off the double jump at any point in the jump animation cycle.
The thing I don’t like most about this game is the hit detection. There are some enemies that you can jump on the head of to kill and others that are pointy and so you should avoid landing on. But even when I’m certain I’m landing on my intended target’s head I sometimes get killed. It’s like you can land on an enemy 99% at the angle for it to be on the top of their head, but if there’s even 1% where it thinks you’ve touched the side you lose a life instantly. This means that mostly I’ll be inclined to play this game at a slower pace and avoid landing on heads altogether.
Also I’m not as keen on some enemies walking off the edge of ledges whilst others just walk back and forth. It means you can’t really tell what an enemy’s attack pattern is and have to take each one on a case by case basis.
And sometimes things which feel like obstacles aren’t. In an early level you see pointy stalactites and having learned that point things kill you, I tried to avoid them. Then I learned that it’s just scenery and was ok to jump in front of.
Skate Cat
Another platformer which is short and sweet for you to get your teeth into. This one is ok, but not my favourite on the collection. Graphics are quite bland and lack a little personality considering the box art of Skate Cat looks cool. Although I got used to them, the controls are a bit slidey. Some jumps feel they need to be spot on to make even from the first level. The first level is a bit too empty and lacking things to do, but the later levels which are themed on being in trees, a factory…maybe and eventually in space are better.
You get a special attack move which is good and there’s a nice Back to the Future reference when you eventually get a hoverboard. It’s just a shame there’s only one level where you get to hover.
Bone Marrow
A grid based puzzle game where you match up swords and shields and then attack rats, snakes and demons? Sign me up! It certainly sounds more interesting than Puzzle Bobble anyway.
In practice, levels take forever and you can end up doing a bunch of the gameplay without looking. I’m not even joking. I was playing this one late at night and felt my eyes were drifting off and I still won.
The way the games work is you slide all the objects on the game board up, down, left and right so that matching objects combine together. Every so often an enemy character is added to the board and by continuing to slide things you can end up giving the enemy objects to get stronger. You just slide up next to them and continue to slide in their direction and this will be an attack, but it’ll go both ways.
There’s a day and night cycle which I kinda didn’t pay tons of attention to but seems to kick in every time the board fills up and you can only pick up items or fight at certain times of day.
I feel like this is a game which I may get more into the more I play it, but it all felt a bit random and tedious at times. Maybe when you’re an expert you can win stages in a minute, but it was taking ages per stage as you end up helping the enemy pick up items to fight you back, so not sure if this would mean stages could potentially last forever.
It’s good, but not the best thing ever.
Alien Cat 2 Enhanced Edition
Is a top down puzzle game where you have to collect keys and avoid traps until you can open an exit portal. The first few levels are incredibly easy and then the next few start to introduce you to the real challenge. Controlling two cats at once!!!
A bit like the cherry power up in Super Mario 3D World you can get to control two versions of your character at once and you have to work out how to complete objectives with one whilst the other doesn’t get killed.
The graphics on this are simple, but effective. I like the animation of your cat exploding.
Donut Dodo
Donut Dodo is far and away my favourite game in this collection and a strong contender for my favourite game to play on Evercade. I still have my Game of the Month download of the game on my EXP which I featured in a previous video.
In the game you run around and have to collect all the donuts dotted around a level. Then once they’re all collected you can go for the big donut which is guarded by the Donut Dodo. The game takes a bunch of attempts before you’ll learn the way enemies move about and how best to dodge them.
The game only has five main levels and one bonus level that plays differently from the rest. It’s like Donkey Kong in that once you’ve gone through the game you just start over again, but it’ll only play through twice to see the true ending of the game and have it declared that a winner is you.
For me this game is worth getting the collection for on its own and everything else thereafter is bonus. Fortunately, some of the others are also really fun.
Chibi Monster Br4wl
Ok, so this isn’t a game for just one player. It says it can be a one player game, but is clearly designed only with multiplayer in mind. Now imagine if someone made Super Smash Bros for the NES, but only had one day to make it. That kinda sums up what Chibi Monster Br4wl is all about.
I’m sure this is fun for up to four players, playing together on the Evercade VS, but genuinely I’m not sure how many players ever talk about playing four player Evercade games together. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you do. But hey, at least this is a game that justifies anyone buying extra pads.
You play as incredibly small on screen monsters and have to collect cherries and apples to score points. You can also knock your opponents into hazards and there are CPU controlled zombies and environmental hazards like spikes and lasers that you can fall into. You have to be careful to dodge those because if you get hit, you lose points that you already earned!
I found I was done with the single player experience and the four stages that seem to be all that’s on offer here, in about five minutes. Then I set up a four player game and did worse than the characters with no one controlling them. Respawning just bumped me off the stage when I attacked the stationary players and I died more than they did.
There may be something I’m missing about this one, but considering the Evercade has three versions of a handheld console that don’t allow multiplayer and only the VS that does, I imagine most people will never bother with this. It might for fun for a few minutes of multiplayer action, but I don’t think Blze should include games on Evercade carts that are only fun in multiplayer and don’t offer a single player experience. I know this technically does, but it feels like you’re just testing the controls rather than playing a game.
Little Tales of Alexandria
Hmmm this one is intriguing. When you first play it seems super like Pokémon on the original Game Boy. The characters, apartments and even the text boxes for dialogue all seem like a lost Pokémon adventure.
The good thing about this game is that you’re in a world where you can speak to everyone and interact with everything. But you can’t pick anything up and the only objective seems to be to reach the roof of the apartment block.
The bad news is the entire game can be beaten in less than 90 seconds. I’m not even joking. After I realised that you need not speak to anyone or go from room to room to get to the roof, I put it to the test and finished the whole game from resetting the game and starting a new game from the menu until going past the end credits in under 90 seconds.
Some may say this isn’t the point with this game, and that to enjoy it you should speak to the characters and enjoy the story elements but there aren’t really any. The random bits of dialogue don’t add up to anything. So they can be skipped. 90 second game here. Fine for five minutes if you want to see everything, but truthfully it was annoying how walking up to everything activated you reading info on it without having to press the action button. The room with all the TVs in was actually a pain to leave as you can easily keep walking into more TVs and trigger reading more.
For what this is it’s an interesting experience, but it’s barely a game.
Chew Chew Mimic
This game is from the same guys that gave us Flea and Tapeworm Disco Puzzle on the first two Indie Heroes Collections. It has the same recognisable graphical flair as those games.
It’s weird that there are multiple games on this cartridge where you have to guide clone characters through levels, although this one you plot the route rather than control both at the same time directly like you do in Alien Cat 2 enhanced.
The game reminds me of some of the puzzles you’d have to do in Full Void on the Evercade, and also on Bill’s Tomato Game with a dash of Lemmings in there. You have certain arrows, blocks and springs which you can position on the playing field and then once you’ve placed them where they need to be, you start your little knight off in motion. You can’t directly control where he goes but if you’ve put all the arrows and blocks in the optimal position he’ll guide himself to the stage exit.
It’s a little bit like those automatic levels people have created on Super Mario Maker. You plot out all of the positions of the blocks and then set your dude off into action.
There are also coins on levels that you have to try to collect and this adds extra challenge compared to just reaching the exit. The game isn’t super long, and has some inventive new ideas introduced along the way to keep things interesting.
Orebody Binders Tale
For anyone who wants to scratch that Mega Man itch, this is a game for you. I think this is a game that is either already part of a series, or is intended to be, because just going by the write up, it sounds there is or will be animation, more games and comics. That’s cool, but I only mention it because it has a lot of intro cut scenes which I ended up skipping. I know that’s bad, as I should have tried to get into the lore more, and maybe I’ll go back, but I just wanted to get on with the gameplay. Mega Man doesn’t need to be quite that deep.
You play as a robot who kinda looks like Mega Man, and this is a NES style action platformer where you shoot things, go through stages themed on the usual selection of deserts, ice stages, and such like and periodically get upgrades to your abilities and weapons.
You can beat the game in an hour or two if you take it slow, but it’s not always easy. I’ll admit I used a few save states when some of the enemy attacks were relentless.
I like the boss battles against giant worms and Darth Vader meets psychomantis dude with his floaty light sabre. And the weird dog boss who looks like a bull had gone through the matter transporter from the movie The Fly.
It’s good to get the dash moves, both ground and air, and this is fun to play. The final boss isn’t as challenging as I’d have expected and you’ll be treated to a lengthy end sequence which by the time you get there you’ll have earned and probably invested enough in to read more of it than I did the beginning.
Magic and Legend Time Knights
This is a fun and very easy to beat platformer. Can probably be beaten in ten minutes which is a shame, as what there is here is ok.
The idea is you play across about five levels where you have to kill all the aliens who are invading earth through time and then find the level exit.
Along the way there are bonus stages where you’re suddenly an octopus or a dragon and such like and just have to get through it. Not sure there’s any actual reason to do these though.
The game was originally made as a Game Boy Color game and the graphics are very simple. Strangely there is an odd mix of art styles in the cut scenes. The Mom artwork is literally a photograph which I assume is the mum of the person of people that made the game. Then from scene to scene the kids artwork is a mix of looking American style or Japanese. Just odd.
I’m not sure I like that if you miss an alien and get to the exit point that it just sends you back to the start of the level. I think there’s should have been a counter to show how many aliens are left in the stage so you know if you should exit or not. If it wasn’t for this I guess the game would have been beaten in maybe seven minutes. I also felt that if you bumped into an enemy for some reason they are given invincibility frames and you can’t shoot them straight away.
You have two characters to play as and in each level you get a different sprite to match the time period which is cool. There London in the swinging 60s, ninja times, medieval and modern day.
Thunder Paw
Ah Thunder Paw. It’s been a few months since I played it as the game of the month, and I was hit with a sense of nostalgia coming back to it. I like Thunder Paw, but I was also struck with all the things I don’t like about Thunder Paw.
It’s a game where there’s a nuclear explosion and you play as a dog who goes around shooting bench pigs and bears with lasers, and taking out cats in eye patches for simple..reasons.
Even coming back to the first stage I was struck by all of the bad design choices that prevent this from being a really good game and instead settling for being an ok if somewhat frustrating one. The game is easy enough, but even the first level will see you running around the whole stage in a loop a bunch of times. And this isn’t even on a fetch quest, but more likely than not you’re going to miss collecting something in a leap of faith and find you’re right back at the bottom again. Add to this that there are gems you collect for no obvious reason. Then for some reason your bullets only go a short distance in front of you which means you have to get very near to the baddies who can shoot further than you. Also, and this is the most annoying thing. When you shoot your weapon you’ll jut backwards with recoil and this can often make you fall of ledges. You’ll spend much of your time tapping fire and then tapping forward to keep roughly on the spot. Needlessly frustrating.
But that said, if you can forgive this aspects, it’s actually quite fun. Again, about an hour of play time to this one., which by a couple of the games on this cart makes it a meatier experience.
Big2Small
Another game I already reviewed on the channel last year. Big2Small is another puzzle game where you have to guide your characters to an end point. This one lets you move one at a time, so it’s not quite as conveyer belt mode as Chew Chew Mimic, but doesn’t give you quite the same control as Alien Cat 2.
In the game you have a mouse called Melanie, a goat called Gisele and an elephant called Elle to the foods they would like to eat. Melainie eats cheese, the goat has an apple, and of course, as explained in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, an elephant works for peanuts.
You press an action button to toggle between which of the animals you are controlling, and then you can use the dpad to move that animal. When you push a direction, such as left or up, the animal will go across the screen in that direction as far as they can until something blocks them from continuing in that direction. The objective is to work out the correct route across the level for each animal to get them to end up on their food.
I really liked the strategy required in playing the game. Often you will have to position one animal in a certain spot to block the path of animal to that they end up in the best place to reach their food. You’ll usually have to work out the order in which the animals can reach their destination as well. For example, you may find that the mouse can go straight onto their cheese, but if they can do so without the use of the other animals blocking it’s way to get there, it usually means that the mouse will be the last one that needs to get to their food and you’ll have to use them to reroute the others.
The animals do have some unique features to their gameplay. For example, the mouse can fit through narrow gaps, and Gisele the goat can jump over water and munch of bushes to clear a path. This really adds to the strategy. Any level that has bushes on, I know the first thing I have to do is get the goat to go and clean up them all to open the full level up for the others.
The graphics are very simple, but nice for the Game Boy Color if nothing memorable. Having played the version for the Evercade on the Evercade VS home console, I was aware that the often light graphics felt a bit glarey on the big TV, but I’m sure this would be fine if played on the Evercade EXP or Game Boy Color.
The sounds of the game are also simple and effective. They are typical Game Boy stuff, so may get tiresome after a while, but inoffensive enough.
I do like this game a lot, but some levels do start to become frustrating if you can’t figure out the solution. Of course, this is a necessary evil as the game would be over in a flash if some of the levels weren’t hard to keep you stumped for continued attempts. Each level has a par number in which you score better or unlock bonus levels if you can beat the level in a limited number of moves. This is the only indicator of how many moves each level should take, and sometimes I have gone hundreds of moves beyond this to beat a stage.
The trouble with a game like this is if you do get stuck on a stage, you pretty much have no choice but to keep attempting it until it’s done as there isn’t anything else to do. Of course, this is the same logic if you reach a boss you can’t defeat in Resident Evil or whatever, but because the levels are in theory very short it can feel like you’ve hit a brick wall if you’re not making progress. The satisfaction of finally beating a tough level is limited if you find that the next level is also tough as nails.
Finally, we have Bubble Seahorse Adventure.
This is a game I only reviewed a couple of months ago, and it’s another short and inoffensive platformer. You play as a seahorse, and you shoot bubbles at enemies across fourteen levels.
The game is challenging only in that the enemies can one hit kill you all the time which is a pain. Your bubble attack isn’t very effective, but if you can pick up what looks like an Elvis wig you’ll be able to one hit kill most enemies. When you have it on you kinda look like Zoidberg from Futurama when he’s in attack or mating mode.
Having this wig is super important to the strategy of the game as you will need to transform some enemies into bubbles to use them to reach higher platforms. It’s a bit of a pain when you don’t have this or miss landing onto the bubble as you may have to restart the section to have another shot at it as in these areas the needed enemies should respawn but don’t.
The final boss will be the only real challenge in the game, and as I detailed in my separate review of it, it’s not defeated the way I initially expected. There’s a couple of sections to the game which play more on rails in nature to spice things up, but again this is only a game you’ll play through once or twice and can be done in a single sitting.
So, there we have it, my in depth review of the Evercade’s Indie Heroes Collection 3. My favourite game on here is Donut Dodo by some margin, although Alien Cat 2, Big2Small, Doodle World, Binder’s Tale and Chew Chew Mimic are pretty decent too. Time Knights, Bone Marrow, Bubble Seahorse Adventures and Thunder Paw are also not bad, and Skate Cat is also worth a look. The Little Tales of Alexandria is too short to recommend and Chibi Monster Br4wl is only worth a look if you have four players.
I noticed some slow down in a couple of games and Donut Dodo took a weird amount of time to load between levels, but maybe I just need to update the cart. I’ve not done that yet, but if it fixes things when I do, I’ll make a note of it in the comments.
What would you rate this game?
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