The Bitmap Brothers Collection 1 for the Evercade is a great addition to the Evercade library, as the Bitmap Brothers made some truly great games back in the day. There’s no question that the Evercade platform is stronger for having this collection in it’s library, but some may feel slightly disappointed with the offering here.
Whether you feel this is a really great collection comes down to how much you enjoy one of the Speedball games. You see there are 5 games in this collection, which does rank it as almost the smallest collection available for the Evercade. Certainly there are others that have 6, and a couple that have only 2 or 3 games included. The reason the 5 games here feel light is that 3 of them are Speedball games.
We have Speedball, Speedball 2 and Speedball 2100, and then we have Xenon 2, and The Chaos Engine. Having multiple games form the same franchise isn’t always bad, and in fact isn’t usually bad. A Mario or Sonic collection would all be platformers, and there have been many of these types of collections over the years. The issue comes in that whilst Mario or Sonic games are adventures where the levels and bosses and power ups change each game, the Speedball games are all based on the same fictional futuristic sport.
In Speedball you play as a team of between 5-10 players (depending on which game you play) and you run around passing the ball where there are walls to bounce the ball off of, and portals so the ball can zap through and appear on the other side of the arena. It feels like a sport that would exist alongside the Running Man in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Speedball 1 is fun enough, but as a Master system game, it’s vastly outdated by Speedball which is also included here, which is a Mega Drive/Super Nintendo era game. The sequel is essentially the same experience, but with much better graphics, more players and power ups and faster and smoother gameplay. The games are too similar to really appreciate the differences to go back to the older game.
Then you have Speedball 2100, which is a PlayStation1 game. The graphics are now 3D, and the gameplay is further tweaked. In this case, some may say that a Mega Drive game which does 2D really well holds up better than an early 3D game from the PS1 era does today. Either way, Speedball 2100 is still very much the same experience as the previous 2 games, and whichever you pick as your favourite it may feel redundant to go back to the other two games.
So how much you like this collection may hinge on how much you like the Speedball games. Whilst I enjoyed the first two back in the day, I didn’t see having three here are all must haves. For me it would be like having Fifa 25, Fifa 96 and Fifa 97 all on one collection. They’re all similar that why would you choose to play the older and inferior one when it just offers a worse version of the same experience?
Moving on from Speedball, you also have Xenon 2, and this is a fun vertical space shooter. The graphics are detailed and they do a lot to create the atmosphere of a dangerous space adventure. The monsters are often big and tentacle covered. You can even get upgrades in between stages.
I’m not sure I’d played Xenon 2 back in the day, but still felt the nostalgia for this era of vertical shoot em ups that don’t often get new releases outside of indie games these days. I found this game a nice challenge, although I quickly found that I was dipping into the Evercade’s feature to be able to use save states on the games as these types of games form back in the day would punish you by sending you back to the start of the game when you died.
It’s curious that we get Xenon 2, but not the first game, especially considering that we got 3 Speedball games. From my understanding it may be down to what platforms these games originally appeared on, and whether they can be successfully emulated on the Evercade hardware. This being the case, it’s easier to forgive the choices in the Collection, but still lament that we only get Xenon 2, and that we don’t get both Chaos Engine games for the same reason.
The best game on the collection is The Chaos Engine. I have fond memories of playing this game on the Amiga back in the day and it’s great to see this game released on a modern system. A few years ago it did arrive on PC in it’s original form, and whilst this is again the same game as we remember it, the ability of being able to use save states again is a blessing to be able to learn and master the later stages without having to always go back to stage 1.
The Chaos Engine is a top-down action adventure where you shoot tons of hulking great monsters, pick up money to upgrade your character and weapons and solve puzzles. There are six characters to choose form and you pick a tag team of two of them to take you through a steam punk inspired world.
The soundtrack for this game is great with memorable voice samples and great music. The gameplay is fast, and you can also choose to sneak around and pick off enemies take your time if you don’t want to go through the stages all guns blazing.
I’m glad to say that the Chaos Engine is as much fun as I remembered it to be back in the day, and whilst I would have been happy to get this cart just for this game, this collection is still a little lacking for me.
The Bitmap Brothers made a bunch of other well respected and highly reviewed games including Gods, Cadaver, and Z, as well as Xenon 1 and Chaos Engine 2. These could later make up a Bitmap Brothers Collection 2, but time will tell if these game’s original platforms will be emulated on the Evercade in the future.
Conclusion
This is a tricky one to rate, as all the games are good and some are great, but this doesn’t change that within the context of all the other Evercade collections that have been released this one feels like it needed more, or had some obvious things missing more than most. It’s also true that all Evercade collections are very cheap compared to most boxed video games that are released in shops, so it’s still great value for money even if it’s not as jam packed as some others.
Still, a decision has to be made on a score, and even though I’d recommend you get the cart just for the Chaos Engine alone, the overrepresentation of Speedball and comparatively under representation of both the Xenon and Chaos Engine series means I’ll give this a very solid 3/5. Great games, but not the perfect collection.
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