When the Evercade was first announced, I thought it’d be a really cool way to get legal access to classic retro games, without all of the faff that’s usually associated with getting emulation up and running.

Plug and play collections of retro games in a lovingly designed physical format, so you can actually display your collection too? I couldn’t sign up for that quickly enough!

So when ‘new retro’ games started appearing as part of the range – with dual cartridges such as Xeno Crisis/Tanglewood, or the Mega Cat and Indie Heroes collections – it was even more exciting.

Add that to the way that even the more familiar names – Namco, Atari and so on – had more obscure titles added into their collections, and it quickly became apparent that we’d be enjoying much more than just nostalgic trips into game worlds we’d already visited.

In many ways, it’s these less familiar experiences that I’ve enjoyed the most on my Evercade; discovering hidden gems or true oddities that I never would have uncovered otherwise.

With this latest arcade collection – which is another thing; I don’t think anyone expected that we’d get a range of Evercade cartridges dedicated to bringing original arcade games to the console either – we’re certainly taking a trip into what will be very unfamiliar territory for most players.

However, it’s not always a particularly successful endeavour, unfortunately – the Piko Interactive Arcade 1 is certainly filled with truly obscure games, but in several cases, it’s painfully obvious why they may have been such obscurities in the first place.

Take the example of the two fighting games included here: Dragon Master and Master’s Fury. In a vacuum, they’re reasonably competent, if fairly generic, fighters with a few nice graphical flourishes between them.

However, us gamers don’t exist in a vacuum, do we? So it’s incredibly clear right from the off that these are both shamelessly derivative of Capcom’s ground-breaking Street Fighter II – only they don’t do anything, perhaps background graphic touches aside, better than the game that ‘inspired’ them.

What makes this even worse is that, if you’re playing on an Evercade EXP – or even Blaze’s lower cost, Evercade-compatible Capcom Super Pocket console – you will already have Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting built in to the console. You don’t even have to change the cartridge to play that instead of either of these poor substitutions for Street Fighter II; it’s always just a few button presses away.

Those aside, however, there are some decent games here – though they’re often hidden under some pretty ugly, 90s-style pre-rendered visuals that have aged horribly next to the timeless pixel art of the era.

Beat ’em up The Legend of Silkroad has this, with ugly pre-rendered sprites and background visuals – yet it’s actually not too bad a game once you get past how it looks.

Burglar X is possibly one of the ugliest games I’ve ever seen from this standpoint; yet it’s a weirdly compelling maze game that feels entirely unique. It would certainly have felt like a weirdly anachronistic game back on release in 1997, combining then-modern visuals with a somewhat dated gameplay style – but it works nicely nonetheless. It does look absolutely dreadful if you’re playing it on the big screen via your Evercade VS, however – so be warned!

Lastly – at least with games afflicted with horrible visuals – there’s Ultimate Tennis, which has an awful digitised look and yet plays really nicely, with some neat touches that make it feel incredibly vibrant. It’s very easy to pick up and play – and it’s also genuinely addictive too.

Steel Force feels like a genuine rip off of Alien Breed; it’s shocking how much it borrows, visually and conceptually, from Team 17’s game. Yet it has a lightning fast relentlessness – and it’s impossible not to have fun with it.

Fancy World: Earth of Crisis has a genuinely weird name, some very inconsistent visual elements and awful music – yet it’s a fun single screen platformer in the vein of something like Snow Bros or Rod Land (both of which appear on other Evercade arcade collections!).

Magic Purple has the feel of a single screen platformer, yet its levels do stretch out beyond a single screen! Not a bad game either, thankfully.

Lastly, there’s Diver Boy – which again, feels like it’s going to be a single screen platformer, yet is built around clever and unique diving mechanics. It even features shmup style sections against bosses too!

So Piko Interactive Arcade 1 is almost the very definition of a mixed bag. Several games included riff on other, better games that are all available on the Evercade anyway – but a few are pretty unique and, once you get past their unappealing visuals, are actually pretty enjoyable experiences.

However, if you’re interested in checking out some true arcade oddities and, ahem, ‘homages’ – this may just be the cartridge for you.

You can purchase the Piko Arcade 1 cartridge from Amazon here.