Evercade

Good job I came on here as heading to GAME who have the Nacmo ones for £13 - 20% off = £10.40 that I would have bought them, the Oliver Twins Collection is the same price, I don't have real knowledge of Dizzy which is either a good thing of these are new to me or bad thing as NOstalgia for them.

That's one of the reasons C64, Atari and Intellevision Collections aren't on my list as of wants NOstalgia and likes of the upcoming Sunsoft one just look meh for £18, still think including all the coming soon carts thinks there's 47, and I've got a list of 26 (+ I own 5 carts) which I'm not going to go out of way to get more if I see in GAME, CEX, indie store and a good price as not sure are worth £18.

I'll let you know what I get.

Edit got from what was left that is playable, and not like Atari 2600 games

Oliver Collection, which for £10.40 for 11 games worth a punt
Piko 3
Worms
Gaelco Arcade 1

Brings me to 9 games and do have around £2 of reward in GAME, so may see if I can order Codemasters or something.

TCK wrote:

Aye that’s true. If Monster Hunter were either a 16-bit caveman 2D platformer or an hour-long Golden Axe clone, I’d have been co-hosting Monster Mash with you.

I'd play the shit out of a game like that as well.

Well that's one more summer games showcase I've watched then!

I dunno, it's difficult because I love the idea of these old games being celebrated; Nintendo are doing better, but outside of e.g. Pilotwings 64's tongue-in-cheek advert, it tends to be just a raw game footage of games you've never heard of - so I do appreciate the effort that Showcase went into. Getting excited about the Delphine collection, which are games that really stood out as classics, yeah I'm totally on board with that. I was going to joke "let me know when they announce the Hewson collection" but that's what the C64 collection is. Er... let me know when they announce the Cryo Interative collection

But straight off the bat having two separate SKUs for Duke Nukem Collections 1 and 2... this whole system still feels like this should have just been a publisher curating these things, like e.g. Hamster do with the arcade classics.

Maybe if all of Duke was on one cart they'ed want like £30 for it, why sold as two or can't fit on one cart.

The folks working at Blaze Entertainment have commented a few times about how the small storage space on these cartridges limits what they can include on a single collection. I remember one of their senior designers commenting on Discord that the reason the Gremlin Collection has two PlayStation games, two Mega Drive games, a SNES game and a Game Boy game is because no other combination of games available for license would fit together with the Evercade’s small memory capacity – an example they gave was that they couldn’t have Actua Golf without losing both Actua Soccer and Hardcore 4x4.

I can kind of excuse the Duke Nukem Collections here, there’s three PlayStation games on top of a GBA one and some MS-DOS remasters too. That doesn’t excuse the likes of the Sunsoft collection though. In all truth there’s been a few Evercade collections where I’ve thought that they'd certainly had the memory space and budget to be a bit more generous and include an additional two or three games.

Jimbob wrote:

But straight off the bat having two separate SKUs for Duke Nukem Collections 1 and 2... this whole system still feels like this should have just been a publisher curating these things, like e.g. Hamster do with the arcade classics.

I feel the same way. I like things about the Evercade as a whole and especially appreciate it as a celebration of old games, but on balance I’d prefer what you say. Or, even better, to go back to the days where you’d have a load of games on one disc and on all consoles. We were spoiled rotten by Midway Arcade Treasures, Taito Legends, SNK Arcade Classics and the likes back in the 2000s.

Played some more EC this afternoon including the monthly game which you get on VS or EXP, from the info I'm seeing once all the games are done it get put on indie collection 3. Which is great for people with a OG Evercade or I liked BIG2SMALL and might want to play more of it.

Sure I can buy that on GB, N64 or DC but that's $25-45 on its own compared to it on one cart with a bunch more for £18.

Now looking forward, see what July game is.

Blaze Entertainment announced the first product from the Evercade’s sister company, HyperMegaTech:



Aye, that’s just an Evercade again but with a new name - and essentially Blaze Entertainment’s fourth retro gaming hardware release in three-and-a-half years. That’s well cheeky.

On one hand the price, the good quality of the built-in games, the improved screen, the two additional shoulder buttons and the past/future Evercade cartridge compatibility make this something that I’ll likely buy when it comes out, probably the Taito one. At the very least it should be an inexpensive upgrade on my utterly knackered original Evercade from 2020.

On the other hand, I expressed something of a concern on the previous page about games being built-in and digital only:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

It sets a bad precedent. It's very foreseeable that other publishers - like, say, SEGA or Konami - would only agree to these licensing arrangements too. Then what happens when the Capcom license expires? You'll never be able to get a full collection in the future, and that sort of knackers one of the main things about the Evercade.

It effectively ringfences some of the systems' best games to this new hardware too, and it leaves behind the folk who'd already bought the original handheld and the Vs. console.

Will there be a Super Pocket for every partner publisher who doesn’t allow their games released physically on Evercade cartridges? The Super Pocket surely only exists because of licensing problems such as that. That’s mince for me and many others, who bought their Evercade(s) and want all the games on it. And what if you’re wanting collections by Capcom and Taito, are they expecting you to buy a new handheld each time?

I've been looking at picking the Exp because of Capcom, the Namco games and having a nice handheld Evercade. Those cost about £100 on eBay, this at half the price is tempting.

Though screen likely better on EXP, it has internet for monthly games, Capcom line up maybe different.

Today was the second Evercade Showcase which was an indie special


The Indie Computer Collection looks a tad meh, part from Citadel Remonstered and Tanks Fury.

The two new double packs, I'me keen on the one with Goodboy Galaxy, which I guess is like a new GBA game.

Then the big one, the first single cart and a special edition available Full Void that has just came out on steam which it has a 92% very positive but on Metacritic just a 66 from 4 reviews, from the trailer with the cutscenes etc looks cool.

I’m a bit mixed on that Showcase yesterday. I don’t like the direction of travel that they’re going with single carts, though it’s felt a bit inevitable that it would happen sooner or later. I’m surprised that they’re devoting it to Full Void, a fairly unheralded and niche indie game that doesn’t look like it’s proven to be that popular elsewhere. I thought it would have been a more eagerly awaited title such as Mega Cat Studio’s WrestleQuest, or a big-name RPG that justifies the cartridge space and cost. Fair dos, Full Void looks pretty good and it’s a major coup for its developer to have it spotlighted in this fashion. Truthfully though, it’s not a game I (or I think many others) would have paid much if any attention to in any other setting.

Special Editions is riddy behaviour, I didn’t expect it and I didn’t want it. It’s unnecessary in this case and a pretty poor and low-effort offering for the extras. There’s no chance I’m buying that for £24.99. The standard £17.99 would be a fair price for the single game, sleeve, artbook, comic, stickers and poster combined in my opinion, an extra eight quid is a scadge.

When I first saw ‘Home Computer Heroes’ flash up on the screen, straight away thought ‘ugh, that sounds pish’. When I realised it was just seven games I then thought ‘ugh, that reeks of pish too’. That said, when they explored the games a little further it looked more interesting than I thought it would or could be. It’s not exactly scoring high on the old NGamer Magazine Hype-o-Meter though. Seven games of this type feels stingy.

On a more positive note I’m up for December’s dual-cartridge games. I liked the look of Goodboy Galaxy when it was first announced in a Kickstarter campaign a couple of years back, it’s good to get that here. Witch n’ Wiz has been on Antstream Arcade for yonks but I thought it had ‘FUTURE EVERCADE RELEASE’ written all over it in big multicoloured letters. It looks all right, albeit just the same as about twenty other indie Evercade games.

Besides Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario World, Demons of Asteborg is the best game I’ve finished this year – I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I would definitely have bought it’s sequel Astebros on the strength of that, so I’m happy to see them bundled together here.

That’s them (presumably) announced everything for 2023:



Ten cartridges and two Super Pocket consoles could mean that it’s a very expensive five months for Evercade collectors. I won’t bother with the Super Pocket: Capcom Edition and I can’t see myself rushing to pre-order Home Computer Heroes, Full Void or Sunsoft Collection 1. I’ve got looooooooow expectations for PIKO Arcade Collection 1 but I’m happy to give new games a try. As for everything else, aye, I’m reasonably satisfied.

More arcade collections in 2024 please.

I certainly wouldn't have paid attention to Full Void if just on STEAM, that the spotlight put here on Evercade, which I'm keen on.