Let’s get one thing out of the way before we proceed with the review of Team17 Collection 1: not all of the 10 games featured here are any good. In fact, there’s a few games here that I thought were downright awful; both Full Contact and Body Blows are technically sound, but definitely lacking in terms of their gameplay. They’re both fondly remembered, and reviewed well back in the 90s, but I have no nostalgia for them and struggle to see the appeal.

Everything else is decent-to-great here though, with a surprise favourite title of mine being Arcade Pool; a solid and addictive game which is easy to pick up and play, though it does have ridiculously cheating CPU opponents that make it feel a bit unfair at times.

Obviously the Alien Breed games here are renowned as classics, and hold up pretty well, though as with most other titles on the cartridge the difficulty level is ramped up pretty high (as Grandpa Simpson would say, “… which was the style at the time”).

The hits definitely outweigh the misses, and along with Qwak, a very Amiga-style platformer (thinking that same Grandpa Simpson quote again), ATR (a top down racer), acclaimed shoot ’em up Project -X: Special Edition and another accessible sports title in the form of Kingpin: Arcade Sports Series Bowling, there’s a lot of variety too.

The fighting games and difficulty levels aside, most titles here have aged a lot more gracefully than the titles on the C64 cartridges too, which isn’t surprising given their age.

This seems like the first cartridge in the Evercade home computer range (characterised by the blue cases) to feel essential, so it’s one I’d highly recommend. No one I knew had an Amiga, and I didn’t have one, so I’ve approached many of these games with fresh eyes, and have been pleasantly surprised by several of them.

You can buy the Team17 Collection 1 cartridge from Amazon here.