We admire Blaze Entertainment’s dedication to its home market. The Evercade platform has become a celebration of British developers, from Codemasters to Gremlin to the freaking Oliver Twins. Rare might be the isles’ crown jewel, though. And recently, it appears to be Blaze’s focus. Today, I’m looking at the latest release, a Banjo-Kazooie-themed Super Pocket, which might make the best case for purchase of the HyperMegaTech line so far. The Rare Super Pocket does overlap a lot with the Rare Collection 1 we covered late last year. It shares Atic Atac, Battletoads (NES), Cobra Triangle, Conker’s Pocket Tales, Gunfright, Jetpac, Knight Lore and Lunar Jetman. It loses Battletoads (Arcade), R.C. Pro-Am, Underwurlde and Sabre Wulf. It replaces them with Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, R.C. Pro-Am II, Slalom, Snake Rattle’n’Roll and Solar Jetman. And, of course, one more, which I’ll get to shortly. I suppose if you really want to play the missing titles, you can use the Evercade cart in this thing, redundant though it mostly would be! And I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a second Rare Collection cart eventually for Evercade owners to play these exclusives. Photo by Siliconera The main draw is Banjo-Kazooie. It’s a native port, presumably the same as the one we’ll see on the dual-pack cartridge with the sequel later this year. As N64 emulation appears to stretch the limits of the Evercade platform, native versions like these are nice to see. The button prompts are changed and any Nintendo-specific stuff is gone, but the primary benefit is how well it runs and looks on the hardware. I went back to the original to compare a bit, and the Super Pocket version is sharper and shows a bit more detail, while preserving the intended presentation. (A nice little touch: Save File 3 Banjo is now playing literally this Super Pocket.) If anything holds back this version of Banjo-Kazooie, it’s the Super Pocket’s lack of analog input. This is something I’ll be interested in seeing with the game’s Evercade release, since analog controller support exists, but here, you have to make do. Combined with some moves that require holding an L or R button on the back, the game’s more of a dexterity challenge this time around. I found myself making more use of camera controls to make sure tricky jumps were head-on, and generally putting less emphasis on getting every single collectible. That’s tough in this game, though. Photo by Siliconera In addition to the Banjo-Kazooie Super Pocket, this latest wave of releases also includes two Evercade cartridges: Activision Collection 3 and NeoGeo Arcade 4. Each of these installments has multiple predecessors to let you know what to expect. We’re not sure Activision’s Atari 2600 library can really sustain three separate collections, but if we’re recommending one in this third set, we’ll pick Barnstorming? The flying game holds up decently. NeoGeo Arcade 4 has eight more games that are mostly excellent, in stark contrast to the current owners of SNK, who are not. The King of Fighters 2002 is probably enough for some to pick this one up, but we especially enjoy the variety in this cart. Baseball Stars 2! King of the Monsters! Blazing Star and Metal Slug 4! Oh, and 3 Count Bout, Robo Army and Fatal Fury Special are fine too, we suppose. The Banjo-Kazooie Rare Edition Super Pocket is hitting storefronts this month for $69.99 alongside the latest Evercade cartridges. We may earn a commission if you purchase from certain links. Learn more here.