Title: Morphcat Games Collection 1
System: Evercade
Price: $19.99
Release Date: Early 2022
Prelude
Despite the 1 in the collection title, this is the lone collection of Morphcat Games, an Indie label specializing in NES homebrew, with this collection consisting of the entirety of their output as of the time of the set’s release.
Known for one multiplayer hit in particular, this collection includes a variety of short, fun NES titles!
Presentation
All games on the cart are NES based, and look and sound as they should. None of the games on this cart try to push the system to the limits (though one does push the limits of a self-imposed boundary), so there’s hardly anything to note about the emulation here besides that it works as it should. Just plug and play!
Gameplay
All NES games this time around, so this should be rather simple to break down and explain.
Micro Mages: This game is what put Morphcat on the map, mainly due to a video detailing the development and how they wanted to limit themselves to working with the smallest NES Cart size imaginable, to try and make a game in the vein of very early NES software.
Honestly? I think they did a great job at accomplishing that goal, since this game pushes that limit quite well. You have several worlds to clear, with the main goal being to guide you or up to three extra friends (yes, four player co-op in an early NES title!) up a tower, dealing with the chaos that ensues from trying to make it to the exit with a busy crowd. You have a simple jump and shoot control setup, and you can charge up a shot to give yourself a small boost of damage and even height if you manage to pull it off in midair.
The levels are simple, but pretty challenging and require patience and memorization ala older NES games. The game loops around to a harder quest once you clear the game loop, but otherwise is a pretty short game that’s enjoyable enough while playing solo, and a sheer blast of chaos while playing with a friend. Talk about taking a simple concept, rolling with it, and somehow managing to just nail the polish of it all while doing so. And to think, there’s even more Micro Mages on this cart!
Spacegulls: What if you took Mega Man and Joust, add in local co-op, and combine all that into a fun platforming experience? Well, that’s what Spacegulls came up with, and it does the task very darn well. You are a bird, who must reclaim their eggs by flapping about and jumping on enemies. Each part of the game is broken up into segments, where you must make it to the next one without losing all of your HP. The controls are snappy and very responsive, the game is quick to jump into, and the local co-op is chaotic in a fun way.
There really isn’t much else to Spacegulls and once you get the hang of things you can beat it in around a half hour or so, but this is still a darn fun take on some retro concepts, and while I don’t think Spacegulls is that replayable when playing it solo, this has been a fun one to pull out with my friends every now and then.
Bobl: This is the big gem of the cart, in my honest opinion. Made for a game jam, this is a bubble-themed metroidvania! Traverse the small world, collect upgrades for your bubble, and make your way to the exit pipe. Incredibly short, even on your first time around, but has a bit more replay value than you might expect thanks to extra options!
You have Zen Mode, where you can’t die upon coming into contact with most walls, leading to a very casual experience where the only challenge comes from trying to find the right path, along with a Duck randomizer. See, there are eight ducks hidden throughout the game, and collecting all of them is the method to obtaining 100% completion. They aren’t too tricky to find, but this randomizer mode really shuffles them around with tons of different seeds to play around with. Considering you can combine Zen and randomizer, these extra bonuses help take a short, fun metroidvania into one that ends up a lot more replayable than you might expect!
Still, this is a game jam game, and it will be short no matter how you approach it, but Bobl was by far the game on the cart which kept my interest the most, and was the game I’d always come back to whenever I got an urge to revisit the games here. Short and sweet, but really well made!
As labelled on the box, there are two “bonus” games here, mainly because they’re rather different from the other three and neither are a full unique game. Super Bat Puncher Demo is well, a Demo for what would have been a pretty fun platformer where you go around and punch your way around the stage. You can have a friend join in to goof around with you, and the proof of concept here is very enjoyable, but it doesn’t last all that long and it seems like this game isn’t gonna be made into a full title anytime soon, so what we get in this demo is all that Super Bat Puncher will ever be.
Otherwise Micro Mages Second Quest is well, a Lost Levels style sequel/remix to the original Micro Mages. More of the same great game with tons of new stages, but much harder ones, thus leading to a more chaotic experience in Multiplayer. Go nuts and keep the fun going!
Conclusion
Ultimately, you may have a bunch of very short games here, but unlike Sydney Hunter I found all five on Morphcat to be pretty darn impressive for NES homebrew games. From the sheer fun of exploring around in Bobl, the goofy Joust/Mega man mix in SpaceGulls, to the delightful multiplayer madness of Micro Mages, all three of the main games here have something to make them worth playing through more than once.
From Bobl’s optional collectibles and difficulty tweaks, or the multiplayer of the other two games, this is quite a fun time, and I still go back to Bobl every now and then for this cart, and have it on standby if I ever have friends over that would be worth showing Micro Mages to. The Second Quest ain’t a bad extra either, and Bat Puncher is an interesting look at what could have been.
This might just be one of the most underrated Evercade carts on the system, but honestly I don’t know why, since I had quite a lot of fun with these games, and had equal fun going back into these five titles for this review. Give it a spin if you have a buddy around, especially if you have the chance for a four player Micro Mages session. You certainly won’t be regretting that night of fun if you’re able to pull it off!
I give Morphcat Collection 1 an 7 out of 10.