This is a bizarre one; on one hand this is a collection of two rough-but-charming NES homebrews from 2021 and 2022 respectively but on the other this is published (and possibly developed, I haven't looked too deep into this "Pixelcraft" company, if not I apologise) by the slightly infamous Ratalaika Games, known for shitting out relatively bearable shovelware on PSN. And unfortunately the polish on this little collection of two shows that.

The games themselves are diamonds in the rough; very short, they take a lot of inspiration from the Mega Man series and are a bare bones action platformer with a tongue in cheek storyline about a narcissistic anti-hero that cares for nothing but himself. The emulation of these games is absolutely atrocious though.

While the UI offers a couple "cheats" like infinite lives and health and the mandatory rewind button (things that are not quite what someone who actually wants to experience the games want to mess with) and a smattering of filter and screen options, the actual presentation of the Panzer duology is less than stellar with significant slowdown taking a seat to some of the worst sound lag I've heard in a while, the music pausing briefly every few seconds for a grating audio experience that ultimately has you trying to race through the games just to have it end. That's a shame, because these are little hombrew oddities that deserve a little home and a little appreciation.