I needed, absolutely needed something quick and fun to write after our last review that dragged me down for weeks slogging through to get it done. Luckily after a terrible remake got the review it needed, I’m finally able to cover things I actually enjoy again. Being how this is an opinion piece, obligatory Ko-Fi plug if you like my writing and want to support it, but it is by no means necessary. (Though we do have a goal where I will buy more Super Pockets to review if we hit it!)
With me aiming to review every Evercade cart ever, considering how I like the platform, they’re all compilations, (and we like that here at SFG) and they’re nearly all retro games, I figured I’d do a quickie piece inspired by recent discussion in the Evercade Discord server, where after six years of the Evercade being a thing, fans have been naming their favorite carts of each of the six years.
So why not make my answers into a SFG article? I plan on doing one cart per year, for a total of seven carts overall. These are just my favorite carts that came out each year, and me giving some rambles on why I felt that is. So let’s get started!
2020: Piko Interactive Collection 1- This one should not have been considered a good cart at all. Before I picked up an Evercade, the company Piko Interactive lived in infamy in my mind, for being the source behind the disappointing Retro Bit Generations sucking as hard as it did and making me realize I asked for that for Christmas instead of a NES classic because I wanted to play obscurities. I saw Kung Fu NES and plenty of Data East games advertised for that thing, and instead got a bunch of rando games from this Piko company, ranging from abysmal to even worse than you can possibly imagine! You thought you’d get one of the NES’s best action games? Nah, have a poorly emulated version of its sequel instead, and have the only Data East game be friggin Ring King. (One day I will share my tale of this cursed thing)
So yeah, Piko quickly became known as “that company who seems to buy anything and everything and vomit it toward anyone asking for filler games for their lineups” for me. If I saw their logo on something, I’d genuinely run for the hills, assuming it meant the product itself was absolutely trash. In fact, I’ll even confess how that + Evercade having some rocky reviews at launch was a big reason I didn’t buy the console in 2020 and treated it like another garbage plug and play with cheapo games. How can the company who had a bunch of high quality games like Alfred Chicken, Apocalypse II, Mr Bloopy and Gadget Twins as the major attractions on the Retro Bit Generations, ever curate their own collection for this Evercade thing?
To my surprise, upon buying the Evercade in 2021 and hearing community recommendations, the constant cart of praise for 2020 was Piko 1. No way, no way in hell, I thought, having been burned by their logo before on another thing with obscurities I had hopes for. But then I looked up Piko 1, saw one of my few childhood NES games in 8 Eyes in the set, and placed the order, just expecting to play that and maybe Top Gear as well for a bit.
Little did I know that yes, this genuinely is one of the best Evercade carts to date, where even the weaker games here are miles better than the vomit they put on the Retro-Bit Generations. Move over Mr Bloopy, Switchblade is miles better than you could ever hope to be, and exposed me to a pretty fun computer game port. There’s a few quirky RPGs on this thing, with Dragon View being a downright incredible SNES hidden gem. Nightshade is an amusing adventure game on NES, and Tinhead became an underrated Mascot platforming favorite of mine.
Really the only games I’d group in the same level of abysmal as the Generations lineup would be Dorke and Ymp as well as Exploding Fist, but nearly everything else here ranges from average to a must play, and offers a nice variety of game genres. By and large, the Piko sets on Evercade would keep this fun trend of obscurities going, with the only set I argue is akin to their RBG output being Piko Arcade 1. It’s a shame we haven’t gotten any Piko sets in a while, for this one converted me from deep fear at seeing that old Piko logo, to genuine curiosity to what obscurities they dug up. Such is the power of solid curation! This might be legacy now, but I might actually recommend considering saving your money to pick this up anyhow, as long as it’s not above triple digits.
2021: Mega Cat Studios Collection 2- This was quite an interesting year; it was the year I went from being hyper deep in the Limprint collecting sphere, to snapping out of it and wanting to spend the cash on something more reasonable, to still feed that collecting high I was stuck on. I wanted an Evercade to play Magical Drop at work, and ended up in a quest to review every darn cart for the thing and really enjoying the ecosystem along the way. When I joined during August 2021, Mega Cat Studios 2 had just come out, and I passed on it for a good while due to the rough word of mouth it had at launch; too many puzzlers, and one of the games was released in demo form at the last minute, making the set seem weaker than the beloved by the community Collection 1.
Hindsight is 20/20, since I argue that in an era with Super Pockets, the Roniu’s Tale full game getting patched and being available on the cart proper, and general improvements to the Evercade ecosystem overall like button mapping, Mega Cat 2 is a pretty stellar set of brainteasers and puzzlers, and I can’t get enough of them. When I did eventually pick this one up it was the set that introduced me to the dem of a developer known as Retro Souls, who would make most of my favorite games published under the Mega Cat label.
They have a great assortment of gems here on this volume that are perfect for quick plays with a Super Pocket, along with a few other games worth your time. Arkagis Revolution might not seem like much being the only real action game here, but remap the rotate buttons to the shoulders and it feels like pure bliss, and quickly became a hidden gem! Roniu’s Tale is also not just one the best puzzler on the cart bar none, but is even able to stand toe to toe with retail NES puzzlers like Fire n Ice and is quite the incredible experience, well worth the wait for that full release. I liked the Arcade carts that released here a decent bit too, but they definitely felt rougher compared to what we’d later get in the purple cart line, making Mega Cat 2 my personal 2021 favorite.
2022: Alwa’s Awakening/Cathedral- This is a double pack here, but a pretty darn important one. It has a full NES demake of a fun metroidvania I covered years and years ago, and a native build of a decent little Metroidvania I also covered years ago. On Steam, they were just more metroidvanias in a platform drowning in them, but on Evercade they stand as some of the best of its kind, especially with Alwa’s Awakening’s NES version being miles better than the original game. Yes, really.
You have by far one of the best homebrew titles to ever come out on NES, being a metroidvania that utterly crushes the competition officially licensed games in the genre offered, with new QOL tweaks and even a far improved endgame experience that makes this one of my favorite metroidvanias of all time, and easily the best indie currently on Evercade. This game alone could have been a solo cart and it would have still been worth it, but then you have Cathedral. Sure, it’s much harder and more annoying than Alwa’s, but here on Evercade it shines by being the first natively programmed game to run on the hardware, and it does offer good tests of your reflexes, while being a gargantuan game. 100%ing this one will take quite a while, to say the least.
This is the cart where I feel Evercade became not just yet another tiny cute thing with collections of games, but a true ecosystem that can provide the best of both old and new and not just be limited to old console ports of games or simpler indie games from the Indie Heroes label. Many dual packs have tried to live up to the magnificence of this one, and all have failed.
2023: Duke Nukem Collection 1- This one came pretty darn close though, if you consider the remaster of 1/2 a single game instead of two. Duke Nukem was a franchise that hadn’t really been in the news in a while, and was often the butt of jokes. Badly aged humor in most of the modern spinoffs, and the beaten horse that was Duke Nukem Forever made this IP one that seemed like it could never do anything remotely of value ever again.
Oh hey, those old PC games that aren’t even readily available on computers now got a full HD, 16:9 remaster exclusively to Evercade. And Duke 3D has the aggressively OK PS1 port along for the ride. Yeah, that PS1 port is what prevents this set from topping Alwa’s in my book, but this is still an incredible value and great set of Duke’s early adventures, with Duke 1 and 2 being in the best shape they’ve ever been in, with so many toggles and features you can tell this was made by super fans.
I spent plenty of hours on Duke 1 trying to finish it, and then went back to try and 100% the levels, with me only barely getting into Duke 2, and I’ve played the games on this cart for nearly a dozen hours! That’s quite impressive, and with this being my first experience with Duke 3D as a whole, I was surprised by how OK it was, at least to start out. That exclusive chapter is incredibly rough and makes the game feel like it’s gonna die at any second now, but you still have a Duke 3D here, and thankfully not the Genesis one. It’s clear the 1/2 remasters are the star of the show here, and they’re still one of the best things Blaze has ever produced, and the reveal is still my absolute favorite in terms of the shock and awe of it all. I don’t know if they’ll ever blow the community’s mind in the same way ever again, and this is one of the must-haves for the system for good reason.
2024: Toaplan Arcade 3- You’d think after dragging myself through the sludge of bad audio Bitwave ports for these games, and having Batsgun reviewed on this site so many times it became a running gag to poke fun of it, I’d detest the sight of Toaplan 3 and feel these games were milked to death by this point. Thankfully, Batsugun being the highlight here means it’s always an easy recommendation, and other outstanding gems like Vimana and Outzone make this one of the best Arcade cartridges in the Evercade library bar none.
This currently being the only system you can play Ghox on is also neat, since it’s one of my favorite non-shooters from Toaplan. Sure, Truxton II has a hard difficulty curve, and Fixeight is rather mediocre compared to Outzone, but when essentially every game here ranges from outstanding to pretty fun, this one is the best of the Toaplan carts bar none, and a great way to help end 2024.
2025: Windjammers, Karnov and Friends- Paon is a cool company that owns very little. They don’t license their catalog out to many people, and when they do it usually is a sign of strong trust for their partner. Look at how many places will spit out Burgertime, but not Chelnov or Karnov, and you’ll see why the Paon games are pretty desirable for reissues, especially their three shmups.
So here comes Paon on Evercade with the only games they can put out on the hardware, all of which are pretty great games. Unfortunately Skull Fang didn’t make the cut, and Karnov has some save state issues that are obnoxious, but Chelnov, Wolf Fang, and Vapor Trail are all outstanding titles well worth discovering, since it has been years since any of them have been reissued in any way, shape or form. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the first ever reissue of Vapor Trail anywhere in the world, and Chelnov only had a Project EGG reissue before this point. Wolf Fang’s gotten around a lot in the year since, but overall this is a great set of obscurities that nails what Evercade does best with highlighting such games.
We also can’t forget about Windjammers, which is a multiplayer classic for good reason. Sure, the MVS single player mode is pretty damn brutal and will test your patience, but flip it on AES and you’ll have a much better time dueling with the CPU, and both versions are well worth playing against a local opponent. Windjammers alone might just make this one of the best multiplayer carts for Evercade, but Co-Op in the Kuuga games is also a pretty fun bonus. I wish there could be a second Paon cart, but unless Evercade wants to translate four Glory of Heracles games there’s really nothing for them to pull from. Still, these are the kind of carts that won me over to Evercade in the first place.
2026: The Turrican Collection- I’m fairly confident even with me knowing less than half the 2026 lineup due to the year only just entering its second half that The Turrican Collection is gonna be my favorite of the year. I like Neo Geo games a decent bit, but unless they’re named Magical Drop III and not owned by one of the worst humans on earth, I don’t really get excited for them. Activision games all being 2600 makes me feel like I’m in a time portal unable to decipher beep boop games being the stuff with their name on it instead of shovelware kids games, Crash & Spyro, Mechwarrior, and Call of Duty. Rare is cool and all, but I only grew up with Conker’s Pocket Tales, and that was on a cart last year, and is likewise owned by a company partaking in stuff I’m not exactly thrilled with, so Banjo is just another rando cartoon game to me. Doom would be great, except again, IP owners aiding a Genocide means BDS applies and thus I can’t get too excited.
I don’t see any of the hyper obscure or Japanese centric stuff I like having a shot of coming out, nor any indies of Alwa tier to surprise me this year, but thankfully Turrican is of such phenomenal quality that I don’t think it really matters all that much if the rest of 2026 is weak on the Evercade front for me. It’s one of the best Amiga games period for good reason, and while the major console compilations of this series was split into three sets because some Factor 5 dude thought it was a genius plan that wouldn’t confuse people at all, here on Evercade you simply have a version of a game from the entire series on one set, no questions asked.
It’s not every day Evercade gets a cart that’s essentially a complete chronology of a franchise, but here we are, and it’s a damn fine mix too. Amiga, SNES, Genesis, they’re all here along with those bonus versions from the Anthology sets, making this by far the place to play Turrican in my book. When the only games you can call missing are alternate versions owned by the original, MIA series creator, I think The Turrican Collection is a wonderful value and shows what Evercade shines best at; easy to jump into, no fuss ways of experiencing classics. Will I be wrong and something come out of nowhere to surprise me and topple Turrican? Perhaps, I don’t know, but either way, I’m more than happy with one of the best carts on the entire Evercade ecosystem having launched so early in the year.
And there you have it! Seven carts and me rambling about each of them. I’m not gonna rank them or anything, since I have to review some of these still and want to keep you in suspense for which ones I think are better over others, although some of them might be pretty easy to guess based on how much I gushed about some of these. Evercade still might have some bumps in the road now and then, but I remain genuinely impressed by how they manage their curation and release schedule without much issue, and I always enjoy checking out any new collections eventually, even if I might take 6 months to a year later for some of em depending on circumstances.
Here’s to four more years for the big decade! I’d love to see Evercade reach that far, and perhaps even start to do radical new things like translating Japanese games, or more Duke 1/2 style remasters…