One of the video game industry’s true eccentrics, Jeff Minter has been around since pretty much the dawn of the home computing age. Still producing psychedelic shooters for modern platforms, the vast majority of Minter’s games from the 80s and 90s, published under the Llamasoft banner, appear on this Evercade cartridge.

Though there are 27 games included, there’s a large number of games which appear twice; they’re different enough to warrant their inclusion, and as historical curios, but it’s hard not to escape the feeling of repetition.

The same can be said of the games themselves, most of which are based on simple, straightforward but repetitive arcade style gameplay loops.

It’s also the case that so much of Minter’s output is based on existing templates; his titles being obvious, albeit technically proficient, spins on games such as Defender, Robotron or even the Atari 2600 game, The Empire Strikes Back.

At the time of release Minter’s cheeky ripoffs distinguished themselves with their surreal, generally animal-based imagery and, quite often, superiority to the official ports of the games that inspired them. Today, however, they mostly feel pretty basic and the comparative technical achievement isn’t a selling point.

However, there are a few gems here still. Hover Bovver is a really fun, almost maze game-style experience of furious neighbours, mad dogs and mowing lawns. Despite the obvious Robotron 2084 homage, the 16-bit version of Llamatron 2112 is a brilliantly frantic experience with great power ups to boot. The Gridrunner titles provide almost Centipede-esque arcade action without falling back on random, surreal imagery. Finally, I enjoyed Lazer Zone and its sequel, Hell Gate, with its unique, two axis shoot ’em up gameplay.

I could pretty much take or leave the other games here though, but it’s good to at least have the chance to experience them. This is definitely a cartridge for Evercade owners who grew up with Minter’s games, rather than players who may be experiencing his older titles for the first time.

Many of them feel like incredibly dated tech demos at worst, and really don’t hold up today, unfortunately.

You can buy Llamasoft Collection from Amazon.

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