With all of the games on the Thalamus Collection 1 cartridge being titled that initially appeared on the Commodore 64 computer, it perhaps won’t surprise you that I had the same reaction to most of its games as I did for most of the titles included on the Evercade’s various C64 collections.

That is to say that I found them ugly, poorly designed and often downright frustrating in terms of their design.

Thalamus is a beloved and fondly remembered British publisher, so if you grew up playing their games, reading that might feel like sacrilege to you.

And hey, if you have nostalgia for these particular experiences, that’s great; I’m certainly not trying to argue with the way you may feel about these games at all; indeed, if you had a Commodore 64 back in the day, you almost certainly played and enjoyed several of these games, which did stand up quite proudly against other contemporary releases.

After all, pretty much every game on this collection is technically proficient in relation to the capabilities of the original hardware, with (generally) smooth scrolling and excellent soundtracks.

Yet even the most lauded games, such as platformer Creatures and shoot ’em up Armalyte, are filled with niggling little design elements that just don’t feel fun to deal with in this day and age.

Are there any good titles among the 11 included? The aforementioned Creatures can be fun at times, but with fiddlingly precise  positioning needed to make most jumps and even the lowliest enemies taking a ridiculous amount of shots to destroy, it just rapidly becomes a game that gets in its own way and sucks the enjoyment out of itself quite quickly.

That said, you can barely get started in sequel, Creatures II: Torture Trouble (also in this collection) before it becomes maddeningly frustrating.

Nobby the Aardvark looks the part and seems like it’s going to be a fun mascot platformer style game, but like most games here it really suffers from some terrible gameplay elements that make it extremely frustrating to play. Noticing a pattern yet?

Summer Camp and Winter Camp are among the most colourful and cartoony looking games here, but both frustrate with obtuse objectives and control schemes. The learning curve might be worth overcoming with both of them, but I was so turned off by the rest of the collection that I haven’t bothered.

Snare is an interesting scrolling maze game/shoot ’em up where the screen rotates 90 degrees around your ship when you turn, and it has some lovely parallax effects. Armalyte: Competition Edition, though critically lauded, just didn’t do it for me either.

Shoot ’em up, Hunter’s Moon Remastered, is pretty fun, as are run and gun title Hawkeye and the almost Defender-esque Retrograde. I didn’t know what to make of Heatseeker, a true oddity in which you control a leg and manipulate a ball. It’s even weirder than that sounds.

So look, as much as I’ve whinged about Thalamus Collection 1, it’s not all bad, but I’m not convinced that any game on here is truly worth your time, given how many amazing experiences can be had on the Evercade without having to overcome so many obtuse design elements or awkward control schemes. If you enjoyed these titles back in the day, this cartridge is for you. If not, steer clear.

You can buy Thalamus Collection 1 from Amazon.

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