When the humble Evercade launched in 2020 alongside some tired-looking Atari and Namco collections, offering not much we hadn’t seen before, I never expected that just three years later it would host a suite of Duke Nukem games – making the system the best way currently possible to legally sample the beefy brute’s past exploits. While I wouldn’t say the sky is the limit for the plucky Evercade, it has certainly managed to exceed expectations, silencing the naysayers.
Blaze Interactive’s deal with license holders Gearbox has resulted in six games being pulled from the archives, spread across two cartridges costing £17.99 each. Collection 1 features remasters of Duke’s original PC side-scrolling action platformers, along with the PSone version of Duke Nukem 3D. Collection 2, which is what we’re diving into here, has two more PSone games – Land of the Babes and Time to Kill – along with the GBA’s Duke Nukem Advance. Curiously, it was only by licensing out the Duke to other publishers that 3D Realms was able to work on Duke Nukem Forever for so long. So, if you were wondering why there were many console spin-offs, now you know.
The GBA wasn’t powerful enough to host a full-on conversion of Duke Nukem 3D, so instead owners of Nintendo’s hard-to-see handheld were presented with Duke Nukem Advance in 2002. This is actually a standalone title, with a unique sci-fi plot and the addition of typical grey skinned aliens as adversaries. It plays not unlike DOOM, with small inside locations connected by teleporters et al, and a focus on finding keycards. Presumably to help GBA owners see what they were doing, it sports a bright colour palette, with locations that are predominately white. While the setting is new, it retains the look and feel of a 3D Duke Nukem adventure, with weapons having a similar punch and a familiar catalogue of speech samples and sound effects.
Best of all, it runs well. Many 3D GBA games had a bunch of performance and technical shortcomings, with developers guilty of trying to push the system too hard, but this runs smoothy and can even handle several enemies on screen at once. Developer Torus didn’t gain the praise they deserved for this technical marvel at the time, so it’s pleasing to see it gain a second chance to shine.
Then there’s 1998’s Time to Kill, a time travelling adventure that mimics Tomb Raider heavily, right down to Duke having a near identical set of acrobatic moves, grabbing ledges, and back flipping off walls. Swimming also plays a large part. It appears to have had a lot of time put into it (the PSone was in its prime in 1998) and on the Evercade’s small screen, it still looks pretty good – texture warping aside. It takes a while to master the controls, and the auto-aiming doesn’t always lock-on, yet it still proves to be quite an accomplished title with secrets to find and large levels to explore. Quite a meaty experience, all told, which is something the Evercade is in short supply of. Chalk this one up as a reasonable alternative to Tomb Raider; one with the capacity to surprise.
In 2000, a follow-up was released. Unfortunately, Land of the Babes is a downgrade over Time to Kill. It’s as if developer n-Space was told to make this sequel on the cheap, cobbling together leftovers from the first game. The enemy assortment includes giant rat men, of all things, and the focus on Duke’s obsession with “hot babes” seems crass nowadays – although this is the least of the game’s problems. Swapping between weapons is finicky, and the presentation is poorer than Time to Kill overall. A Dukematch two player mode features, but sadly, due to only owning the original Evercade I wasn’t able to try this. If memory serves, Land of the Babes was released as a cut-price game (quite possibly £19.99) and there are lots of telling signs of a small budget.
And that’s your lot for this collection. The ability to save anywhere makes all three games much easier than they were before, and there’s the usual choice of screen size options. Land of the Babes has some cheats to unlock, which may help squeeze some fun out of it, but I can imagine most people sticking with Duke Advance and Time to Kill.
The fact that there are just two games here to shout about feels a little odd – Evercade carts usually have double that amount to lavish praise on, or even more. Fans who have long clambered for more 32-bit games on the system will likely be reasonably satisfied by what’s on offer here, and for any Duke Nukem fan who missed out on the PSone games the first-time round, they can now finally fill those gaps in their gaming resume.
Evercade Duke Nukem Collection 2 is out now.