A Quick Dive into Piko Collection 2

The first Piko collection for Evercade packed in the most diverse range of games on the platform, with Humans, SwitchBlade, Top Racer and Radical Rex just some of the highlights. 

The just-announced second collection has more of a sporty feel to it, making good use of Piko's wide range of source material, with some very familiar names if you were around for 90s gaming. It also marks the Evercade's first steps in 32-bit gaming territory with Football Madness from the PlayStation and Racing Fever from the 3DS, and perhaps some Amiga action too. 

Brutal Sports Football leads the way and comes to us from the Amiga and Jaguar, via maybe an unreleased SNES or Mega Drive port, guess we'll find out soon. It pits vikings vs lizards and goats vs rhinos in no-rules American Football melees with plenty of graphic cartoon violence. 

Eliminator Boat Duel takes the Micro Machines format and sticks it on the water in this NES game with a neat trick of various perspectives during the race, from above, behind and side-on, with tiny cut scenes to add to the atmosphere. 

Is Football Madness the first PlayStation game on the Evercade? It looks  a bit low-rent, but Football Madness is an international five-a-side 2003 release from Naps Team, with a textured pitch and players that instantly makes it look more slick than 16-bit efforts. It features tricks and power bars to vary a player's approach, even if the action - and flat ball - seem rather ropey. 

Full Throttle All American Racing is a SNES motorbike racing game from Gremlin Graphics, it looks like Super Hang On meets Road Rash with combat and competitive racing across those striped tracks littered with obstacles. 

Hoops Shut Up and Jam/Hoops Shut Up and Jam 2. American players will know this as Barkley Shut Up and Jam in honour of Charles Barkley who added his voice to the game. Not sure if his callouts remain in this mid-90s street sports Mega Drive releases, with the sequel adding slightly sharper graphics, in which case - why bother with the original? 

Power Football, No Madden or NFL license, no problem? Power Football used to have Mike Ditka's name attached, but that's long since gone. So, it throws the up-down type of American Football game with all the action and none the licensing costs. 

Racing Fever took some effort to identify, turns out it was a Game Boy Advance title from NAPS with plenty of high-speed tracks and a smattering of opponents to beat.  

Soccer Kid, a British-developed platformer by Krisalis, was already revived once for a belated Atari Jaguar release, but I'm assuming this is the SNES port of an Amiga original. The footballing hero goes globe trotting to find the missing pieces of the world cup in a bright and breezy platformer. 

Summer Challenge and Winter Challenge 

A variety of olympic events without the license, pretty sure I had these on my Atari ST and they were great for pass-the-joystick gaming parties as players tried to beat the event time, throw things further or rack up more points through tricks in the winter sports. 

Top Racer 2

Top Racer (or Top Gear) in Piko Collection 1 is a bugged release, hopefully TR2 will make amends and the SNES game comes with car damage, upgrades and opponents of various skills or speeds to improve the challenge across 64 world tracks. 

World Trophy Soccer

More 16-bit football, this time taking the pitch side approach to presentation. Depending on the version it has real teams but made-up player names and some basic tactics to add variety. 

Despite the variety, I do have to say a lot of the reviews for these games seem middle-to-low at best. But there's definitely plenty of quality with Soccer Kid, Brutal Sports, Summer/Winter Challenge, and I hope some of the others deliver the goods. Now to find out where the hell Racing Fever is from.