5 of the best quick games on Evercade

Sometimes, you’re in the mood for a long, meaty game that you can zone out with for hours at a time. And at other times, you just want something you can enjoy for five or ten minutes while your pasta cooks or your significant other is hogging the bathroom. Evercade caters to both types of gaming experience, and today we’re focusing on the latter. (We looked at the former a while back.)

So let’s take a look at 5 of the best quick games on Evercade!

Galaxian

Old arcade games are hard to beat for pick-up-and-play, quick-hit action, and the two Namco Museum Collection cartridges are packed full of titles like this. Galaxian, found on Namco Museum Collection 1, is an all-time classic of the shoot ’em up genre, building on the foundation established by Taito’s Space Invaders with enemies that dive and swoop as well as simply moving back and forth or dropping bombs. While simple in and of itself, it’s a great game with which to develop some skills that will serve you well when playing more advanced shoot ’em ups: precisely dodging incoming attacks, keeping an eye on the whole screen rather than just where your ship is, and hitting targets with pinpoint accuracy.

In many ways, Galaxian can be thought of as the “thinking man’s shoot ’em up” in that it’s a little more deliberately paced than many titles which came later. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though — but the fact individual games are inevitably quite short, particularly when you’re starting out, make it a great title to spend a quick five minutes with. Or you can always settle in for a longer session if you really want to master it!

California Games

The Atari Lynx version of California Games, found on Atari Lynx Collection 2, is the very definition of pick-up-and-play. It’s the game that was most commonly used to demonstrate the Atari Lynx back on its original release, because its four events are all so straightforward to understand, while also showing off the graphical capabilities of the platform. At the same time, each of them has a surprising amount of depth, and chasing high scores for each of them quickly becomes a compelling experience that will keep you coming back for more.

If you’re a newbie to California Games, the Surfing and Footbag events are the easiest to get up and running with. The BMX and Half-Pipe events both require a bit more practice to learn how to handle them — but once you’re familiar with how they work, each event only takes a couple of minutes at most for a single attempt. You won’t be able to stop at just one, though.

Minky Monkey

As an early arcade game, Minky Monkey from Technos Arcade 1 unsurprisingly wants to get you up and running as quickly as possible, then keep you coming back for more. It achieves this through almost childishly simple mechanics coupled with a stiff challenge factor and an excellent sense of risk versus reward, the very essence of good arcade games. All you need to do is follow the on-screen instructions, bringing various pieces of fruit to the top or bottom of the screen. Easy, right?

On your first few attempts, you might struggle to keep up with Minky Monkey, but once you realise you can hold more than one piece of fruit at a time, you’ll be well away. Once you get to grips with the basic mechanics, Minky Monkey quickly becomes a surprisingly compelling game that you’ll want to continue improving at, a little at a time. And the solid scoring system gives you just the means to track your progress!

Beer Slinger

You know we love our Indie Heroes around here, and Beer Slinger from Indie Heroes Collection 2 was a nice little extra on top of the Game of the Month entries that made up the majority of the compilation. Your task in Beer Slinger is simple: just serve the beers that people ask for. But people are impatient, so as the in-game week progresses and your bar gets busier, you’ll need to plan your moves out on the fly to be as efficient as possible!

Beer Slinger can be beaten in a matter of minutes if you’re good enough, but it’s still fun to play. It’s a great game to fire up if you just want to enjoy the high of quickly making progress — or hearing an 8-bit home console doing its best to speak various types of beer at you. The music’s super catchy, too.

Uridium

 

Your first couple of goes in Uridium from TheC64 Collection 2 will doubtless be concluded in a matter of seconds. Don’t give up, though, because once you get to grips with handling your Manta fighter, one of the C64’s very best shoot ’em ups awaits. Uridium might look like it moves at a breakneck pace, but it’s a game where it pays to take your time a bit, learn the layouts of the various dreadnoughts and strategically eliminate your targets as efficiently as possible.

Back in the day, Uridium was a showcase title for the C64’s graphical capabilities, particularly how well it could handle scrolling. Nowadays, it’s great for a quick blast — and as with so many seemingly tricky titles from the mid ’80s, practice really does make perfect!

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So there’s our picks for the best quick games on Evercade. But what are yours? Hit us up on social media, including Facebook, Discord and Twitter, and let us know what your top picks are!