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MERCS (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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Is it MERCS not Mercs? Everywhere seems to say it in all-caps, but why? It’s not an acronym. In this TED Talk I’ll be explor…

Not really. I don’t care. What I do care about, however, is that this, a three-player game, is one of the Capcom games built into the strictly single player Evercade EXP. Seems an odd choice to me, but then I suppose it’s another title to show off the EXP’s tate (or TATE? Answers in the comments, please) mode. Which it does, and it’s just as well because oh my is everything tiny when round the “normal” way.

MERCS/Mercs is the sort-of sequel to the similar Commando game, only it’s a lot easier (you have a health bar instead of insta-death, and when you die you just carry on rather than go back to a checkpoint) and, from what I remember from the much-played Spectrum Commando, it’s a lot shorter too. Very, very short in fact.

It was mindless fun though, and the flamethrower weapon is just glorious.

Lightning Swords (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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Oh would you look at that. My Limited Edition Evercade EXP finally arrived! And with it, a bgt pile of games – some built-in, and two Arcade cartridges. So, what will I play? Why, Lightning Swords, a game I’ve never heard of, of course!

Imagine if Revenge of Shinobi was Rolling Thunder, and you’re most of the way towards what Lightning Swords is. A sideways scrolling swordy-slashy game with hundreds of identical foes and a few bosses. You can pick up powerups which appear to do nothing, and you can do special attacks by holding down the slash button for a bit. It’s not bad, but you can see how it’s designed to chew through all your 10ps.

Bafflingly, to jump you press up. Why? This isn’t an 8-bit computer game with a one-button Quickshot II – it’s an arcade game with as many buttons as you want! They could easily have made the Evercade version respond to a second button for jump, even if that were as well as up, but no. Feels unnecessarily fiddly.

But anyway. Done. It’s not the best game in the world but it was fine.

Note: screenshot isn’t mine, it’s from the Evercade site. Would be nice if you could screenshot on an Evercade!

Reel Steal (Playdate): COMPLETED!

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I may have been neglecting my Playdate of late. Mainly because it’s hard to see the screen when it isn’t sunny. However, Panic released a big update this week with a new on-device store and a couple more free games, so I had a look. And then ended up completing this.

It’s a fishing game (hence “Reel”) where you ride a hook down into a building, winching up and down with the crank, whilst avoiding magnets, lasers and drones. You collect money bags on the way, and then the main item of the level to nick (hence “Steal”) is at the bottom, which you hook and then winch back in again.

Not sure I’d sit on the pointy bit.

Actually doing this isn’t very hard. It doesn’t seem you can die or fail, as being lasered or whatever just bumps you off the hook but you can get picked back up again. The trickiness is doing it fast enough for a medal, without falling off the hook for another medal, and getting all the money for the third medal. I didn’t do all that, but I did steal all the target items and complete the story.

Nice, quirky, silly. Kind of like most Playdate games, I’ve found.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Another Nintendo Online Service game. I have played this before, but maybe only once? I didn’t remember any of it apart from the bunny ears and the deformed Wario sprites.

It was so, so easy though! I didn’t die at all! Every boss was easy. Every level a cinch. I ended up with more lives than it’s possible to ever use.

But, it was enjoyable. A bit jerky, but very impressive when you consider this was a Game Boy game and so the same hardware as the good but obviously reduced-to-fit original Super Mario Land. Big, clear graphics, nice tunes and plenty of level variety.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Even though I owned this for the duration of my time with a 3DS as my primary form of handheld video gaming entertainment (it was free because I was a 3DS Ambassador), I never actually played it on there. I also have the original, for the GBA, which I did complete at the time (EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO!?) and very much enjoyed it, so no idea why I never played it again. Until now!

It’s another one of the GBA games that has appeared on the recently-released Nintendo Online Game Boy Advance service on the Switch, and so I thought I’d go through it. Mainly to see why so many people complain about it being rubbish. Spoiler: I couldn’t see why so many people complain about it being rubbish.

OK, so perhaps it’s very easy. Not one of the bosses was difficult, none of the dungeons had very tricky puzzles, I never died, and it wasn’t hard to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing at any point. But is that a bad thing? Is it just because I’ve played a lot of Zelda games in my time (and probably subconsciously remember some of it since last time I played Minish Cap)? Does it stop it being happy and fun? No, no it does not.

I forgot to check how long it took to complete, but I’m going to guess at about 15 hours or so. It didn’t feel that long, as I constantly felt like I was making progress and so zoomed through it. It looks incredible too, even blown up to however many inches my laughably oversized TV is compared to the tiny Game Boy Advance SP (or possibly even Micro) I played it on originally.