Title: Interplay Collection 2
System: Evercade
Price: $19.99
Release Date: Early 2020

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Prelude

In this collection of six games, we take a look at stuff from Interplay and Titus! Why Titus? Interplay bought them. Sadly, no foxy adventures here, and surprisingly, the Titus games here aren’t Superman 64 tier like you may expect. Why am I doing Volume 2 before 1?

Because I wanna.

Presentation

NES/SNES this time around. Two systems done before plenty of times on Evercade, both emulated just as well as they usually are on the system. The only oddball with emulation I noted seems to have come from Clayfighter 2, which appears to be fiddling with the lighting on purpose to obscure copyright info. More on that when we get to the game, but otherwise all looks, sounds and plays as they should.

Gameplay

You know the drill with these cart reviews. A bunch of western developed oddballs today!

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The Adventures of Rad Gravity (NES)- After getting immediately assaulted by the most nonsensical title screen music you’ll ever hear, you’ll be thrust into a map select, and upon picking the only place you can start from, you’ll find this is seemingly an average jump and attack platformer… Only there’s a little bit of freedom here! Not a metroidvania by any means, but at least it tries to be more than a simple stage by stage action game, since you eventually unlock access to other planets and can tackle them a bit differently from one another.

Unfortunately, Rad Gravity just isn’t that fun. No matter how hard I try, even with a video guide and save states, the game hits me harder than a brick wall. It isn’t insanely difficult or anything, just very tedious with some rather dull, long levels that feel like a lot of empty space was thrown in for filler purposes. Add in some of the most obnoxious music ever on NES, and slightly iffy play control, and you have the worst game on the cart by far.

Still, ramming into it a bit more to beat the first two stages finally before I write up this review, I do see a glimmer of something interesting here, and with a ton of trial and error to understand the game, I feel you might have a decent time here. Still, the other platformers on the cart are just way better by far…

Claymates (SNES)- A cute looking platformer, with a tagline promising “Blaze Processing”. Not related to the company behind Evercade. Still, this is a fun little action game where you control a ball of clay, setting out on a globetrotting adventure with the ability to transform into different animals. From a speedy mouse, a nimble cat, and several other transformations, there’s a lot of fun to be had here!

And yeah, I found Claymates to be delightfully easy to get into. The controls are pretty simple, the levels are rather spacious, but not enough I got lost in, and there’s a good amount of level variety and plenty of collectibles to go after in these stages. It also helps that there are a few bonus games thrown your way every now and then to change up the pace, and the clay transformations are really darn fun to use. Yes, you can only take up to three hits max if you get fully powered up, and your base ball form is incredibly fragile, but get that mouse powerup and you’ll be able to zoom through a good chunk of some levels. When the only part of Claymates I find particularly frustrating is combat with enemies and bosses due to the wonky hitboxes, this really is a great platformer that ended up being the highlight of the cart for me.

Clayfighter 2: Judgment Clay (SNES)- The sequel to Clayfighter, which was on the first cart. This game adds in more characters, faster speeds, and more moves! At the end of the day though, it still manages to be a pretty middling Street Fighter II clone, but one that ended up being way more entertaining for me than the first game solely due to the increased speed. And cheats! You can make the speed even crazier and unlock lazily recolored characters to play as, and Clayfighter 2 ends up being a lot more chaotic and silly the first game.

Definitely turned out to be a surprise hit when I pulled it out on the VS, and the single player is a lot more tolerable than the original game, again due to the increased speed. Going back to the first clayfighter is painfully slow, while this one at least feels like the best it’ll ever get. Unfortunately for some very weird reason, all the copyright text screens are darkened by ridiculous levels, despite Interplay fully owning the game even back then.

Worst of all, this alteration also impacts the ending screens for each character since the credits are tied to copyright info, meaning that yep, beating the game will make the ending for the character nigh-impossible to see. I thought it was difficulty related at first but no, this version of Clayfighter 2 really does prevent you from seeing the endings due to the darkening. I don’t know why Blaze/Interplay did this, but it really puts a bit of a damper on an otherwise decent fighter. Still fun with friends at least!

Prehistorik Man (SNES)- It’s a platformer by Titus! But wait, don’t panic, this isn’t Superman 64! Despite my initial misgivings about this game due to that developer, I was absolutely stunned to find a very fun objective based platformer. Yes, not just clearing the end of the stage! And yes, unlike Aero, the objectives don’t suck! You play as a silly little caveman who can fun fast, club foes, and scream loud enough to defeat surrounding enemies. Lots of collectibles abound, and the game isn’t too crazy on the difficulty, although if you try playing it on the easiest setting, the game will lock you out of the final stages, so don’t do that.

Still, even on the normal level this was a pretty managable, fun little game! The feeling of just rushing through and grabbing a bunch of random goodies is very enjoyable, and the fact you aren’t forced to 100% the levels means you can take them at your own pace and just focus on the main objective. For a very late SNES game, I was pleasantly surprised by how fun Prehistorik Man was, and I kinda wish the other games in the series would come to Evercade as well (though with them being PC games, that seems unlikely.)

Earthworm Jim 2 (SNES)- The Sequel to a very classic 90s action game. Others grew up with this IP. I didn’t. The man who made this series is a horrendously bigoted human being. Luckily he doesn’t own it anymore so I don’t have much issue playing these games and seeing them for what they are. Unfortunately, a very strong intro stage quickly leads to a bunch of weird genre shifts and frustratingly cheap levels that really soured me quick on this game.

Yeah, the first Earthworm Jim had some genre shifts too, but at least some of those were fun! But even my Game & Watch Fire loving self can’t enjoy the stupid bouncing game, or the really tough later platforming stages, or stages that are too long and drawn out for their own good. A decent controlling game for those wanting to stick with it out of love for the IP, but that first game is pretty much all the Jim you need, and this sequel just isn’t that great.

The Brainies (SNES)- Oh god, a bane of my existence… Kinda. I joke about this game being a cursed meme upon humanity, but at the end of the day The Brainies is the most basic puzzle game you can think of. Put color ball people into color holes. Boom, that’s the game, do it over 100 times.

Yet, this very simple concept is rather fun to just kill time with, and these levels are incredibly tricky brainteasers. Lots of thinking to be done even in the early game, and those final levels will make you pull your hair out or resort to a guide. Yet the times I did triumph over very tough levels that made me stuck, I felt so, so satisfied with my thought process, and went “Go me!” So why do I joke about this game being a curse upon humanity? The presentation. Boy, it just manages to be so weird. Strange characters, the most baffling assortment of tunes to come out of a Super Nintendo, and a collision sound effect so hillarious I can’t help but think of a popcorn popper going haywire whenever I ram into another Brainie.

Seriously, I’m not ashamed to admit just fiddling with the D-pad to hear the game make popcorn sounds while I’m popping actual popcorn in the microwave. Popcornception! That little bit of silliness adds to the charm of the game I feel, and ultimately makes The Brainies a lot better than the generic concept it seemingly sets out as.

Conclusion

Of the two Interplay carts we got, this was the better one without a doubt. Rad Gravity’s iffiness and Earthworm Jim 2‘s poor design aside, a lot of the games here are what I call perfect pick up and play gems that I had a lot of fun discovering. Prehistorik Man is a really fun stage by stage platformer with short levels, while Claymates offers a more spacious, bulkier platformer of that nature. Then you have a decent little brain teaser with The Brainies, and a really fast paced fighter in Clayfighter 2, and you got yourself a pretty fun assortment of games to play with.

There’s a reason I opted to pick this one first to review besides laziness, and that’s mainly because I’m still having fun working my way through the platformers even now! All the games here are fun enough that you can pop the cart in, play a good chunk of a level, and then save and resume at a later time, making this a pretty common pick for my Super Pocket rotation. Definitely an underrated cart from the early days, and well worth a look if you didn’t pay attention beforehand, especially if you like platformers.

I give Interplay Collection 2 a 7 out of 10.