Title: Bitmap Brothers Collection 1
System: Evercade
Price: $19.99
Release Date: Early 2022
Prelude
The second Evercade review is… A random company I never heard of before picking up my Evercade in 2021! But apparently these guys were big in Europe, and a game I happened to stumble on the eShop at one point, GODS HD, ended up being based off one of their computer games. However, legal issues prevented Gods from being on this set, so you won’t see me talk about it here, nor do I know how the original plays compared to HD (which was to put it lightly, very awful)
We do have good timing with this review though; in just a month, we get the next volume of Bitmap Bros action, focusing more on their Amiga efforts. See, this first cart was during the era when Blaze was unable to license Computer platforms for their releases, so they had to go with home ports for whatever games they could get. And when you consider that Bitmap didn’t have many games on home consoles at the time, and most of them were the same IP…
Presentation
We have come across our first games in the Master System, Genesis, SNES and Playstation in this review series, and the games on Bitmap 1 show the usual stuff these platforms have to offer for Evercade. Master System is particularly interesting as there are only three games from this system on the entire Evercade console, Speedball being one of them, a built in game being the second, and Sydney Hunter being the third.
From how the SMS emulation works across all three of those games, it manages to be pretty accurate and defaults to FM sound when available with no option to change to PSG. Speedball is PSG only, so you won’t be hearing FM here, and the audio sounds just as it should, while looking crisp.
The Genesis emulation is based off the Blastem emulator, which is very well done here and accurate to how these two Genesis games should look and sound. Unfortunately, they both sound absolutely terrible in their original form, but that isn’t the fault of the emulator, just the usual western developed Genesis audio shenanigans.
SNES is here for The Chaos Engine, and it looks rather sharp and sounds just as it should, even with this seeming to use the PAL rom due to the aspect ratio/not having the edited US name present. It ran and controlled just as well as it should and I didn’t notice the PAL nature of the rom bugging me in the slightest, but I don’t have familiarity with the US version to be an expert on that. Still, considering how optimized other PAL games are on Evercade, this feels to be the same.
Finally, we have PS1, a system that’s rather impressive to see running on Evercade. Outside of a long initial loading time on EXP/VS due to system checks, the game looks absolutely outstanding with no horrid blur filter in the slightest. Yes, that does mean you see chunky polygons in all their glory, but I for one am absolutely a fan of that vs smearing 3D games to hell and back like a lot of retro reissues like to do with those titles. Save states even work well with these games, and rather quick once you’re in the action, and I found the snappiness of that feature to instantly make me prefer playing PS1 games here on Evercade over the PSP/Vita experience. Just a shame we don’t have too many on the platform yet.
Gameplay
In this set we have…. Uh, a bunch of the same game. But with enough differences to still label the games one by one. So I hope you like Speedball! Speaking of which…
SPEEDBALL (SMS)- Here’s Speedball! In this one you just pick a team and jump into Soccer/Hockey/Football like action, aiming to score points over the other team before time runs out.
…And that’s it, that’s the entire game. I went into these three games first with a local friend, and had fun with all of them in that manner, but as a solo experience Speedball is frustrating to get through without lots of practice. The AI is pretty mean, the controls take a bit to get used to, and knowing when you can jump or dash into an opponent is unclear. Still, with a buddy, this is a solid sports game and I eventually had fun with the AI once I got the hang of things, but not enough to actually win any games. That being said, the sequel would add a lot more, and speaking of…
SPEEDBALL 2: Brutal Deluxe (Genesis)- The music in this game is horrific. Luckily, you just get one track for the intro cutscene and silence for the rest of the game. With that outta the way, you have more Speedball, pretty much the same as before and with a lot of new modes, and a lot of customization. If you try to play against the AI without customization, you will lose.
Honestly, I hated this one more than the first Speedball at first, because the game itself doesn’t make it fully clear which stats do what or how to raise the ones you want in particular, or what the importance of each position on the field is. Luckily, the manual to this Evercade release was actually really useful in helping me figure that out, and once I did, this game was a lot more fun solo compared to the first. There are a lot more modes to pick from, including one where you train your Speedball team from being the worst in the league to being the best of the best, and I found that to be more engaging than the solo campaign of SMS Speedball.
Of course I also played this with my friend, and it was just as fun as the first game in that aspect. A bit weird with no BGM during the game, but considering the bad intro theme, I much prefer the silence in that aspect.
Speedball 2100 (PS1)- Take what I said about Speedball 2 just above, and convert that into a 3D game with a lot of QOL and polish, and you got Speedball 2100. And honestly, this is the best Speedball of the bunch, in my book. Not only does it have crispy 3D polygons and is more fun to play thanks to the extra buttons for your actions, but it just feels so much better to play and even explains itself a lot better in-game, and the AI is a lot easier on you starting out, too, making this the one I had the most fun playing the solo mode in.
I was kinda surprised by just how similar it was to Speedball 2 though, since the plot is pretty identical and the main team you control is still Brutal Deluxe, (though you are free to rename it here) but this just feels so much more refined and better in every possible way for me, and was also the one my friend and I had the most fun playing around with in local Multiplayer. The identical nature to Speedball 2 is so notable here that I honestly struggle to come up with why the Genesis Speedball 2 is even here, but I guess that might just be due to how not everyone will be a fan of the 3D visuals. Rest assured, this is a far better Speedball 2 remake than whatever the hell ended up on Steam.
The Chaos Engine (SNES)- A Co-Op top down action shooter game… Where you have a partner with you no matter what! This interesting gem was another Amiga game, with this port being the EU SNES version. And honestly, based off this version alone, I had a blast with the game… Provided I wasn’t playing it on a Super Pocket for reasons I mentioned in that review.
In this game you take control of a character from one of several classes. All of which have their own attributes, special weapon and firing style, and once you and a partner are selected, it’s off on a journey throughout time to free beacons and find the exit! Really just comes down to being a fun top-down shooter, but while playing solo I didn’t notice much about the AI partner at all.
It did what it could to fight enemies approaching it and teamed up to take out bulkier things when needed, but compared to a real friend as the partner, it wasn’t even a close comparison. Sadly, this was the one game of the five I didn’t have a friend over to play, and I really, really regret that on my end, because this is a wonderful co-op game! I just wish I had the time to experience it properly.
Xenon 2: Megablast (Genesis)- Oh god where to even begin; right off the bat, your ears get massacred by the terrible, western-made music, even moreso than Speedball 2’s brief intro theme did. But unlike Speedball 2, you have the actual game itself being just as bad as the music. Thankfully, you can turn off the BGM during the stages, and I did so ASAP.
Xenon 2 is a shooter. It also is a decent scorechaser if you want to see your name on a in-game leaderboard. But do not be fooled, as to actually try and play this as a video game is just miserable. It’s a vertical shooter that’s slow, clunky, and boring, and with lots of stupid moments that just come out of nowhere, such as scrolling into an enemy or hazard you had no way of knowing would be there unless you already played the stage, and even having to back up the screen at points to progress around silly obstacle.
If you do manage to beat the first stage, you can spend your money on upgrades to make your ship not suck, but even these don’t do much to save the horrid level design and painfully slow gameplay. I didn’t mind playing this to beat my score and see if I could do better than the last time, but when it came to actually sitting down to want to beat this? God no. No. Xenon 2 is just not worth it at all, and I don’t even think the port’s to blame here; this is just a painfully slow shooter that compared to many others on Evercade, and just pure misery.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Bitmap Bros 1 shows that the pre-computer days of Evercade were really rough. When you don’t have C64/Amiga/MSX to pull from, you don’t have many good games to pick from some publishers, and Bitmap 1 is literal barrel-scrapping with the low amount of games and weak ports of the included titles. 3 of the darn 5 games are Speedball for crying out loud!
And I really loved playing the Speedballs with a friend, with 2100 being the crown jewel of the bunch, (it also helps that 2100 was made for consoles in mind) but talk about redundancy. The Chaos Engine was another hidden gem that was great fun, and made even better with a friend, but also manages to be pretty damn good in solo play, too. Shame it doesn’t work all that well on the Super Pockets for now. But then you end on Xenon 2, and only those with more patience than I, a Dungeon RPG fan, would be able to tolerate that mess of a game.
So in the end you have two games that are excellent with a friend and by yourself, 2 more games that are the same as that one great game, but worse when playing solo, and then one abhorrent shooter that I wish was banished to the game copyright hell holding some actually good shooters back. What I wouldn’t give to trade Xenon 2 to pull Guardian Legend out of copyright hell, as one example.
Really, this is a rough cart. You have to be a huge Speedball fan, or someone who loves Chaos Engine to get anything outta this one. And even as one who considers himself a Speedball fan now due to 2100 being so dang fun… The collection is still rough! Thankfully, Collection 2 seems to be looking far better, and I’ll be checking that one out at some point in the future, too. For now though, you can safely stick with that one and skip this.
I give The Bitmap Bros Collection 1 a 5 out of 10.