Review Neo Geo Arcade 1 (Evercade) - A Bold, If Familiar, Debut For SNK On Blaze's System

The Evercade family of systems has seen some amazing collections over the past few years, but few have been quite as eagerly-awaited as the Neo Geo Arcade 1 cartridge. Much of this will be down to the fact that, once upon a time, SNK's home console was considered to be one of the most desirable platforms on the planet; it delivered coin-op quality games in your living room but was, to coin a phrase borrowed from a particular beer maker, "reassuringly expensive."

In the decades that have followed since the Neo Geo AES and MVS hardware thrilled gamers all over the world, most of the best games have been made available in other ways. We've seen collections on the PS2, Wii, PSP and (more recently) Switch, and almost all of the console's leading offerings are available for digital download on modern systems.

You might imagine, then, that yet another compendium of SNK titles isn't going to offer that many surprises – and you'd mostly be right. Neo Geo Arcade 1 is a relatively safe selection of six Neo Geo greats, and won't be all that shocking to anyone who has followed the fortunes of the format in recent times.

That said, this pack has its fair share of undeniable quality. Metal Slug, considered by many to be the pinnacle of the 'run and gun' genre and one of Neo Geo's greatest games, is present and correct. It offers a level of purity that became less apparent as the series went on, and while some would argue that Metal Slug X or Metal Slug 3 are superior, there's no denying its status as a stone-cold classic – no matter how overly familiar you are with it in 2025.

Oddly, Blaze and SNK have decided to include a later entry in the King of Fighters series rather than starting at the beginning, so we've got King of Fighters 2000. The good news is that this is still an amazing team-based brawler, and the Evercade's D-pad is perfect for pulling off special moves.

Shock Troopers is up next, and is a top-down shooter that scratches many of the same itches that Metal Slug does. The visuals are fantastic, and it certainly gives genre staples like Commando and Mercs a run for their money.

Sengoku and Magician Lord are arguably the two weakest inclusions in this collection; the former is a fairly basic belt-scrolling fighter with average visuals, while the latter is a Ghouls 'n Ghosts-inspired action platformer with superb presentation that hasn't aged as well as it perhaps could have. Still, neither game is bad, by any means, and you'll have lots of fun with both once you've played all the other titles on this cart.

Finally, we have the Neo Geo CD exclusive shmup Ironclad, which is expensive to obtain in its original format. It's probably the highlight of this pack, as it hasn't been widely available on console for a while; its only release came on the now-defunct Wii Virtual Console back in 2009 (it's available on PC via GoG, however). The CGI visuals look a bit dated now, but it's a fantastic shooter and almost worth the price of admission on its own.

So, while some people might scoff at the fact that so many of these games are available elsewhere, only the most pessimistic of players could see this collection as anything less than excellent; sure, more games would have been nice, but given what similar packs are selling for on other systems, it's hard to grumble too much – and Blaze clearly has long-term plans for Neo Geo, as the two more collections have already been confirmed.