Evercade maker Blaze Entertainment loves celebrating the weird retro developers from its home isles of Britain, and nothing has ever been weirder than Llamasoft. The studio of Tempest 2000 creator Jeff Minter, its library is all about action and psychedelia and perhaps none about preventing potential seizures. There’s truly not a lot like these games, so perhaps it’s a good time to try them on Evercade?
Llamasoft games are wild. This collection covers most of the games from the 1980s and a few extras in 1991 and 1992, with multiple versions of the same game included when possible. The connecting threads? Intense score-chasing arcade gameplay, for sure. Flashing lights, which we bet are fun for those who can handle them for more than a short period. And of course a llama, or occasionally a camel or sheep or what have you.
Our favorite is probably Llamatron: 2112, a Robotron-like that puts all the usual quirks in a more digestible package. It also still controls well? Which is a rarity for anything designed for a computer of that era but mapped to a gamepad. On the other end, we’d put Ancipital. Despite also being a contained sort of game, it feels impossible to truly understand sober.
The Llamasoft Collection comes at something of a banner time for Llamasoft, as it’s also the subject of a Digital Eclipse compilation. 2024’s Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story covers a lot of the same ground, and even has documentary materials. So what are this release’s exclusives? Unfortunately… none. The 27 included games make it one of the most jam-packed Evercade cartridges, but it’s hard to beat Digital Eclipse. There are exclusive stickers, we guess?
The latest batch of cartridges also includes two NeoGeo collections featuring games from Saudi-owned SNK, and compilations from Rare and Activision that currently reside under the Microsoft umbrella. NeoGeo Arcade 2 and 3 each add six MVS titles to the library. Activision Collection 1 covers the company’s Atari 2600 era, headlined by Pitfall and River Raid.
Rare Collection 1 is similar in that it’s a UK developer, it’s full of offbeat old games and it comes in the wake of a higher-budget compilation. It does feature one game that didn’t make it into 2015’s Rare Replay: the Game Boy Color adventure Conker’s Pocket Tales.
Released before the character’s foul-mouthed makeover, Pocket Tales is a traditional, Zelda-like game that’s most easily described as “what if Rare made Link’s Awakening.” The rendered character models are very much like the team’s approach to Donkey Kong Land and perhaps don’t benefit from the extra resolution and clarity of modern displays. There’s a bit too much collection and meandering. But it’s still great to have it preserved like this, and if you can get used to the visuals and push through the early tutorial segments, it’s a legitimately solid time.
Evercade’s The Llamasoft Collection is out now for $29.99. For more on the platform and its library, check out our Evercade archive.