Title: Windjammers, Karnov & Friends
System: Evercade
Price: $29.99
Release Date: June 2025
Prelude
This collection might immediately weird you out just from the name. Windjammers, Karnov, and Friends. No “Collection” at the end, not even a number, yet these are all clearly games from Data East, so what’s going on? Did Karnov pull off a coup and take over a collection just because?
Well, no, the full story is complicated so I’ll try to simplify it. When Data East collapsed back in the 2000s, most of their games went to G-MODE, a mobile game company that made ports of a bunch of Data East games for flip phones. That company currently owns most of the Data East catalogue and is who most companies license stuff from. If you’re wondering why certain Data East games get reissued a bajillion times, they are the reason why, and are pretty casual with their licensing. (albeit it appears they have clamped down on some things and done weird exclusivity stuff in recent years, such as bad remakes)
For most of the remaining stuff, a team of some ex Data East people at a company called Paon DP bought up the rights to those games. The games in this collection are all from Paon, and you might recognize that name as the company who did the DK King of Swing GBA game, the Donkey Kong Barrel Blast game for Wii, and DK Jungle Climber on DS. They also own another Data East IP called Glory of Heracles, which got a DS entry after their acquisition of the IP. RPG franchise Metal Max got sold to some other company I do not currently remember.
So this Arcade collection is essentially the Paon Collection, only there isn’t really a second one that’s viable, because the only remaining Arcade game Paon owns to my knowledge is Skull Fang. The most we can get out of Paon in the future would be if the excellent home port of Atomic Runner got brought on a cart, the NES Karnov got put on it, MD Vapor Trail, and if they pulled off the miracle of localizing one of the Glory of Heracles SFC/GB games. (Side note to Blaze; please translate Glory of Heracles III or IV for Evercade, I’ll pay double the cart price for that)
Thus, this weird oddball of cartridge naming. Paon is very, very picky with their licensing, so for Blaze to nab these at all was quite a feat. Only question now is, are these games worth the luxury of being hyper obscure, with three out of the five games here getting their first major reissues in the West (outside of a Saturn port reissue for Rohga and a modern Windjammers one) via this collection?
Presentation
We have a bunch more Arcade games this time around, but with a brand new addition to the Evercade lineup of systems they emulate! Windjammers is here in Neo Geo MVS form, which is SNK’s arcade hardware. It also will likely be the only Neo Geo game I cover as part of these reviews for a while, since as a queer ally I am not touching the Neo Geo carts until I can get them later down the line in used form, since there’s good reason I do not want to give major financial contributions to the current ownership of SNK if I can help it. (sorry if you found out this way)
Anyhow, Windjammers looks and sound great, as it should, but it does have a weird difference when compared to the other four games; there aren’t any DIP switch settings. Now, Neo Geo games didn’t have DIP switch options, but did let you adjust a bunch of features in the MVS version via the system bios, which I’m sure Blaze could maybe at some point let you adjust; such as the difficulty level between 1-8 (you’re stuck at level 4 here), and various other settings depending on the game.
Some Neo Geo games even let you crank up the life count to absurd numbers like 99, or fiddle with the time limit in such crazy ways that you can make fighting game rounds end in mere seconds. I could understand if Blaze didn’t want us to fiddle with those extra details, but I’m bummed you can’t at the very least adjust the difficulty from 1-8, and to my knowledge that goes across all Neogeo games currently playable in the Evercade ecosystem. Hopefully that’s something they tweak in the future, but as of now, you’re stuck at the normal difficulty level for Windjammers with no way of changing anything.
For the other four games, they all look and sound as they should, except Karnov has some pretty annoying bugs with the Save State system. If you save state during a normal level, that’s fine, but state during a black screen like a level transition or high score board, and the game will freeze upon loading it. With how absurdly difficult Karnov is, you can see why this would become incredibly obnoxious, so make sure to create backup states in case you screw up while trying to beat it. (if you dare take up that challenge)
Gameplay
Been a good while since we reviewed an Arcade cartridge, but I have been enjoying this one in particular extensively the past few months. Let’s go over these obscurities together!
Karnov– One of Data East’s mascots, a silly looking big man that can shoot fire at enemies. This game tasks you with finding pieces of a map while defeating enemies in your way, and it’s a fairly standard platformer at first glance. You move, you jump, and you attack, but you also have a third button to make use of for the sake of assorted items you pick up along the way. These can range from helpful things like ladders or a strengthened shot, to other various pickups that might come in handy or just completely fail to make much practical sense.
At the end of the stage, you fight a boss, get a map piece to rinse and repeat until the game is over. Unfortunately, Karnov is hard, extremely hard. I’m not talking about the typical Arcade nature of needing quarters and making games super tough because of that, but rather the cruel, unrelenting checkpoints and nightmarish enemy placements the further into the game you reach.
You might get set back a bit before the boss and think reaching them again is no big deal, only for enemies to swarm you and be pretty darn spongy to take out, making it infuriating to defeat them in time. You can’t just run away from them either, since enemies in Karnov are very persistent and won’t hesitate to follow you all the way to a boss if they manage to do so. Not to mention the bosses eventually get super spongy themselves with weird attack patterns, and you have all the recipes for a very, very cruel game. Add in the baffling save state bug I mentioned earlier that could end your entire run if you do one at the wrong time, and this one is by far the weakest of the five, mostly due to the extremely cruelty of it all. Memorization won’t do that much to save you if the enemies will take a gazillion hits to go away.
Atomic Runner Chelnov– Another Data East mascot, this guy has already shown up in other DE games on Evercade as a cameo, and thankfully unlike Karnov, his game is a lot more fun. Here you’re just running automatically, firing your weapon at either an angle or straight ahead, as you try to take out obstacles and enemies in your way while jumping around as needed to make it to the end stage boss. Fairly easy to control, and you can even walk backwards to shoot the left side of the screen to stop enemies from behind, too.
As you run throughout the levels, you’ll see candles that drop weapons or powerups as you destroy them, either ranging from strength, size or range upgrades to your current weapon, or new weapons such as a whip, rings of fire, or spiked balls. The whip is very useful, but I honestly found the base weapon to be pretty darn strong with upgrades, and the core loop of the game is immensely fun, especially for scorechasing.
Dying will send Chelnov back to a checkpoint, but these checkpoints were a lot more fair than the ones Karnov would give you, and I found the game as a whole to be a very enjoyable trial and error experience this way, at least until the final two stages. Then it gets a little crazy with the bosses being pretty cheap, but still a lot easier to manage than in Karnov. It helps that you can just keep continuing or use save states to get past these tough spots if needbe, and I found memorizing more of the game led to a great scorechasing experience all around. While not as balanced as the Genesis version, the Arcade Chelnov is still a pretty great time, and I’m just glad it’s finally back out again.
Vapor Trail– Data East’s shooting trilogy comes to Evercade, kicking off with this debut entry. New York and other parts of the world have been cut off thanks to a terror group in 1999, and it’s up to one of three ships to fly out and take on the enemy forces! A mostly typical vertical shooter, with you having a main shot as you’d expect, but your secondary button is used for an evasive dodge instead of a bomb.
There are three different ships to choose from at the start of the game, and they all have their own different attributes with strength and speed, with the Valkyrie being my ship of choice. There are various different weapons too, although they don’t drop nearly as often as I’d like, maybe once a stage if I’m lucky, so you’ll be mostly relying on that dodge roll to try and stay alive, while collecting powerups for your current weapon.
Otherwise, this is a pretty fun shooter. Not as great as the Toaplan ones, but the OST is filled with excellent rock tunes, and this still manages to be a fun shmup for working to memorize. It even has local co-op too, making this a good romp with a friend if you’re willing to just credit feed. Still, not bad for a starting point, and my favorite of the Data East shooters available on Evercade.
Rohga: Armored Force– This sequel to Vapor Trail is not a typical shooter like Skull Fang is. Rather this action game takes place in the year 2001, near New Zealand and tasks you with using a mech to stop the reappearance of the terrorist organization and countering them. You can choose from either four mech presets, or make your own out of each individual piece, leading to some nice variety with building your robot. Once you have one assembled, it’s off to the stages.
Rohga is a side view action game, mostly being linked to Vapor Trail via the plot, but there are a few returning elements here, such the different weapons doing what they did in Vapor Trail. You also have several newer options for dealing with enemies, whether that be using a melee weapon up close, one of several different special weapons depending on the head part, and miniature assistants that cling to your mech’s body to fire tiny shots at the enemy.
The game is a lot more enjoyable than Vapor Trail, and keeps the action fun and frantic, especially with how you can pull yourselves out of tricky situations; see, upon your mech losing all of its health, you eject outta the mech and continue the fight on foot, becoming like another of those miniature assistants, with your main weapon as your only offensive technique. One more hit and it’s game over, but if you manage to collect enough energy or powerups without getting hit, your mecha will be rebuilt to continue to fight. You can even try to defeat bosses in this smaller form, if you’re so daring, and it can work, albeit at a much higher difficulty.
Unfortunately, while Rohga is still a great action game and fun followup to Vapor Trail, this western Arcade version is a bit weaker compared to its Japanese counterpart, Kuuga 2001. See, in that version you had diverging paths after the second stage, offering both an easier level and harder level, therefore offering some choices for replay value on subsequent playthroughs, and even different endings depending on what stages you took. Here in Rohga, you play every stage in sequence with no path splitting and just one ending, making the entire game a pretty long ordeal to complete in comparison to a Kuuga 2001 run.
The core gameplay is still incredibly fun, but finishing Rohga does get tedious after a while. Oh well, at least the co-op is still around, and that manages to be just as enjoyable as it was in Vapor Trail. The final game Skull Fang might be absent on this cart, but compared to these two, you honestly aren’t missing much, with Skull Fang being a weaker followup to Vapor Trail with weaker stage design.
Windjammers– The first Neo Geo game on Evercade is Windjammers, a game that got a crazy cult following in the years since, so much so that a pretty good sequel came out on all modern platforms that I covered a while ago, and I even covered the console port of this original game back in the day. Still, this marks the first time the original MVS version has been brought out again without any sort of weird UI tweaks, so the Evercade experience is just like a typical Arcade one.
In this flying power disc game, you take control of one of several characters from all around the world as they compete in a championship to see who will win. Each character has their own different attributes, including different special moves they can pull off whenever they counter immediately after catching the disc, or by standing underneath a lobbed one and charging up power. Thus, you have a crazy fun mix of fighting game like characters with frisbee action. In super simple terms, think Pong but to the ultra hyper next level, and you have Windjammers.
And yeah, Windjammers is intense in all the right ways. In local VS, this game is an absolute blast to play, and learning how to time your blocks and counter shots correctly can lead to a lot of chaotic back and forths with some pretty heated moments. There’s a good reason this game got a modern sequel that still has a semi-active playerbase, and it’s because the core VS gameplay is fast, snappy and fun. I even went to a local arcade tournament once, and this very game was one of the randomized machines they had on the floor, which made for quite a memorable competitive experience.
What about the single player gauntlet, though? Well, Windjammers falls into the usual Neogeo difficulty perils here, and without any MVS BIOS settings, you’re stuck at the middle of the road, level 4 difficulty with no way of making it easier or tougher. That doesn’t mean the VS CPU mode is a cakewalk though, since after around two matches you will quickly run into brutal brick walls of CPUs, seemingly able to counter every throw you make and every shot you do, even if you try advanced techniques like a half circle curve throw or perfectly timed blocks to force the disc to lob above you. It quickly becomes unfair and as a result this game is not one I’d advise playing for scorechasing purposes, even with some amusing minigames meant to help with that thrown in every few stages.
That being said, I do still find the brutal difficulty of the VS CPU mode rather charming in a way. These foes may be vicious, but not impossible, and if you manage to get really, really good at being able to take them out without much pushback, you can use those skills against a friend to completely blow their minds. Or you could just save state after every round and load it over and over again until you finally get lucky enough to beat the harder CPUs, and wonder just what on earth Level 8 difficulty would feel like. Even with the unfair solo difficulty, Windjammers is still so much fun I can’t really complain all that much, and this makes for being one of the absolute best Local VS games on the entire Evercade ecosystem.
Conclusion
Of all the cartridges revealed in 2025, I think this one might be my current favorite of the bunch. Really if it wasn’t for Karnov suffering from that stupid bug along with the extreme difficulty, I’d be inclined to make a big recommendation for every Evercade owner to get this cart, but with the higher MSRP and only five games, this one is a little bit of a tougher sell.
Are you able to do Local multiplayer in your home? If so Windjammers makes this cart a no-brainer worth buying, and the two Kuuga entries on here are fun co-op games worth spending some friend time on. Are you more into scorechasing? Well, Chelnov and Vapor Trail are excellent for that, but not really the other games. Do you prefer to beat Arcade games even if they take forever? Well, Karnov aside, at least these all are reasonable to complete (even if Windjammers might take a lot of states to get past those CPU foes) and fun to memorize.
Ultimately, I just really am happy Paon is able to join Evercade, and while this will probably be their only appearance on the platform, I’d still love to see their home console efforts show up on the system as well. More people really do need to experience the Heracles games, and if you think Chelnov rules in the Arcades, just wait until you play the Genesis port.
I give Windjammers, Karnov & Friends an 8 out of 10.