IIt’s a strange feeling to have childhood memories constantly shot out of a game cartridge the size of a matchbox. That’s certainly been my experience with C64 Collection 3, the latest in a series of vintage game compilations put together by Blaze Entertainment for their Evercade retro console. Each of these little carts contains a dozen or so classic titles from various arcade manufacturers and home computers, all emulated to a fairly high standard. This is a must-see for me and probably many other C64 veterans as well. There are several reasons for this.
For one, it includes Paradroid, which I think is one of the best home computer games ever made. This is Hewson’s top-down, multi-directional sci-fi blaster with beautiful style and terrifying difficulty, one of the earliest examples of the now ubiquitous hacking mini-games.
Playing in 2024, nearly 40 years after its original release, I’m amazed at how well the game has held up in terms of visuals and gameplay when viewed on my LED TV via an Evercade VS console. It looks vivid. Exploring this game’s vast spaceship again on a big TV in your living room, rather than just a dodgy PC emulator, was a far more emotional experience than you’d expect from a very old game about shooting robots.
There are also two more true classics here. The cave exploration puzzle game Boulder Dash and the multiplayer sports sim Summer Games II. Like Paradroid, these hold up well to 21st-century scrutiny, but the latter is nothing like the visual delight I remember from my school days. It’s nice to be able to go to the pause menu and change the aspect ratio or add the traditional CRT effect scanlines. And, I won’t lie, the built-in save feature is nice too.
Elsewhere, the selection of compilations is a bit more vague, but that’s a nice thing about Evercade’s compilations. Even fans like me can find something new to discover. There are a lot of titles by Hewson (one of the great British developers of the time) that I’ve never played before. Among them is Netherworld, another multi-directional scrolling game. Golden Ax style side-scroller Deliverance: Stormlord II. And Cybernoid II combines Contra and R-Type with a great SID chip soundtrack.
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