Earnest Evans Collection

The Earnest Evans Collection, then. "Earnest who?" was my first thought when I saw the title. Of course, I had hoped to kick-start my Gamereactor career with some "hidden gems", some really nice 16-bit gems that most people have never heard of. But unfortunately... Earnest Evans did not live up to those expectations.

What we have here is a loosely assembled trilogy consisting of Earnest Evans (available in both Mega Drive and Mega CD versions), El Viento (Mega Drive) and Annet Returns (Mega-CD). The first two are action platformers, while the last part is a beat 'em up. The games share the same universe, characters and a really refreshing, exuberant and delightfully cheeky style that is recognisable from many Sega games of the same era. Unfortunately, they also share a half-baked game design with more style than substance, as well as an almost paralysing feeling of "we've seen this before, but better".

The first game, Earnest Evans, immediately establishes the fundamental issues with the entire trilogy. In still images, it appears ambitious and cinematic; the cover promotes it as a cinematic action adventure with an Indiana Jones-like protagonist who travels through exotic environments, searches for legendary treasures, and survives deadly traps. There's also a touch of Castlevania here, with the whip and the unforgiving platform jumping. So what could possibly go wrong, right?! Well, as soon as you actually sit there with the controller in your hand, everything quickly falls apart...

Our Indy clone Earnest moves like a marionette whose strings are tangled up. It's not really that the controls are bad, I would rather describe them as bizarre. Every step, jump and whip crack feels unnatural and forced. This is because Earnest is made up of several separate sprites (parts) that move independently of each other. The idea was probably to simulate a more realistic movement pattern, but the reality is that I end up flailing around like a drunken fool in involuntary spasms, with Earnest sometimes throwing himself on the floor, crawling around, walking on his knees or performing completely impossible forward rolls that invariably end in a spike trap.

The tracks and monsters also give a somewhat disjointed, ill-conceived impression. Although the story takes me to underground cave systems, mountain peaks and deserts, the game could just as easily have been set on Mars. Many of the enemies range from strange (living Moai statues stolen from Gradius) to things that are simply inexplicable (the Michael Jackson vampire wizard who doesn't hesitate to show off his dance moves). Of course, the difficulty level also fluctuates between playfully easy and absurdly difficult. Worst of all, there is no invincibility period after being hit, which means that even the most insignificant enemy can quickly devour an entire life meter with repeated hits. The end result is a frustrating, difficult to control and unforgiving platform game with no redeeming qualities.

In the second game, El Viento, the pace is faster and we finally get controls that work. At first glance, you could almost mistake it for a cousin of early Ninja Gaiden, but apart from the surface, the similarities quickly end. In El Viento, we play as the anime girl Anett, a tough chick in 1920s America who fights against a mad cult leader and the gangster Al Capone, who together are trying to resurrect an ancient Cthulhu god in order to destroy the world. Yes... with such a batshit story, you can't help but love El Viento! And the fact is, it's clearly the best game in the collection, but bragging about it is like bragging about being the least broken window in a shattered glass house.

El Viento suffers from the same fundamental problem as its predecessor; it prioritises style over substance. It's an intense action platformer that requires quick reactions, but at the same time doesn't deliver a well-thought-out level or enemy design where I, as a player, have answers to all the challenges thrown at me. The difficulty level is uneven, with some extremely difficult bosses (the battle wagon on the first track...), which is probably intentional in order to extend the short playing time.

El Viento is playable and can even impress in short moments, but the overall feeling is still that the cinematic framing is more of a Rocky montage of loosely assembled action scenes rather than there being any actual meaning or thought behind it.

The last game, Annet Returns, feels like the moment when the developers gave up and stopped trying. In this beat 'em up, Anett is back in what is perhaps the most monotonous and joyless fighting game I have ever encountered. Wave after wave of uninspired enemies wash over me in this Streets of Rage and Golden Axe clone. But everything that felt even slightly unique or energetic in its predecessors is quickly reduced to routine here, with a dramatic curve as lively as the breathing monitor of a recently deceased person. I struggle on, walking to the right on the scrolling TV screen in a zombie-like state, becoming more and more apathetic with every keystroke. And it is somewhere here, when I have almost fallen into a coma, that I realise that Anett Returns puts its finger on why this trilogy of games is so forgotten - the reason why it has been relegated to the backyard of gaming history. The games are simply too bland; there is nothing here that has not been done better by games that came before and after.

Does the Earnest Evans Collection have no value whatsoever, in other words? I don't know, maybe? But the fact that these games are now being re-released in modern formats still raises a legitimate question: why? Is there any point in preserving and re-releasing even games that weren't even good when they were first released?

As a cultural and historical document of a bygone era, the Earnest Evans Collection is not entirely without value. In an era when retro is often synonymous with carefully curated nostalgia in the form of classics, there is undeniably something liberatingly punk and cheeky about also making room for crappy games. This trilogy represents a fascinating misstep in gaming history, a misstep where more focus was placed on art design and cutscenes than on actual gameplay. It symbolises a branch that did not bear fruit, but whose mistakes others could learn from. These are interesting titles that bear witness to a time when Japanese game developers experimented wildly, sometimes without understanding either the limitations of the medium or their own.

From that perspective, there is definitely intrinsic value in the Earnest Evans Collection. For those interested in gaming history, the collection can be seen as a digital mausoleum of unrealised ambitions, half-baked ideas and game mechanics that already felt outdated and old when they were first released. It's like a time capsule from the early 90s - a time when cool anime babes and lavish cutscenes were thought to be enough to sell a game.

In the end, Earnest Evans Collection is not the throwback to the great games of yesteryear that I had hoped for. Rather, it is a reminder that for every old retro game we love and look back on with nostalgic glasses, there were also lots of half-baked wannabes. Games that tried, but didn't quite make it all the way. And perhaps that is precisely where Earnest Evans's real merit lies, in reminding us that not everything was better in the past.