What Do People Think Of The Evercade?

[dataDave]

That design looks so cheap compared to equally priced (and already tried and tested) Chinese alternatives.

[Lebowski]

I recent picked up an Evercade EXP limited edition off eBay secondhand, this one was selling for the £200 mark at launch but their are a few at the £100 mark now, on the bay

https://evercade.co.uk/evercade-exp-limited-edition/

The Good

Initial research into it made me think it was a decent enough thing as it came with two nice carts plus all the Capcom games built in and felt like a nice way to collect and emulate some of this stuff legally. It was decent enough at first, software is nice and unit feels really sturdy and well made and a lot nicer than some of these cheap Chinese handheld consoles, Presentation was amazing too really nice box artwork and all sorts of nice accompanying posters and artwork for the games included, as well as a certificate letting you know that the black variation was limited to 5000 units.

the Roms included from Capcom are nice, Final fight and Mega Man X are great the included cartridges are decent too, stuff like R-type, In the hunt, and Snow Bros being highlights for me. The only included version of Street Fighter is the hyper fighting arcade version, with no options to change the speed or configure the game, (to me it felt like street fighter running at the wrong speed). The screen is nice enough and it has the usual emulation filters it also has extra buttons and a dedicated Tate mode which flips the screen and how the dpad works.

the bad

The screen is the wrong aspect ratio for any of the included games though with black bars or obnoxious graphic surrounds in both tate and standard mode.

Options for your games are limited and the battery life is poor at 3-4 hours, mine was even worse as it was dead as a door nail and wouldn't accept a charge, (common Problem it seems) it comes with a non user replaceable battery and i would normally have had a go at replacing it but it looks pretty horrible as its buried under the guts of the consoles and glued into the shell requiring you to completely disassemble the whole unit. Theirs not much documentation on which battery would work with this unit either so if you don't know what your doing you could be creating a potential fire hazard/ samsung note.

The other issue i came across while trouble shooting was that the carts have a really high fail rate, they are not like the traditional carts of old, your essentially buying a really small capacity SD card in a fancy shell, its why there are lots of reports of these carts going bad after a year or two. It means they can patch games too which can also brick the carts. thse things wont last as long as NES carts i highly doubt they will be any still working when this system gets to the age of my copy of Mega Man 2 which still plays as well as it ever did.

I sent it back as it wasn't working properly with the dead battery i dont think i will be picking another up, it just seems like the battery in this and the life of the carts are a ticking time bomb.

[wakka]

If that's the good I'm looking forward to hearing the bad!

[Lebowski]

If that's the good I'm looking forward to hearing the bad!

lol the whole second part is bad i took out the second heading

[Baseley09]

Nice feedback, will probably pick up one of those Evercade compatible Hyper Pocket thingys.

[egparadigm]

That has totally put me off evercade (I was never likely to buy one really).

[Lebowski]

That has totally put me off evercade (I was never likely to buy one really).

I really like the idea of it as a way to get a series of retro games legally, but it feels like this isn't reliable enough or built with longevity in mind, Blaze don't exactly have a good history of developing quality products either i'm sure they started with plug and play consoles which where not well received.

[Dogg Thang]

I’m back on my Evercade, mostly replaying the Dizzy games, which I adore and love having them on this but also highlights what is almost always an issue with the system: the wrong versions being included for whatever reason, and the Bitmap Bros collection (same issue there too). In spite of everything, I do love this system and might pick up more carts. Any more recent recommendations?

I’m also tempted by the EXP. I’m still on the original model. Lebowski, I see you didn’t really rate it. Has anyone else gone from the original model to the EXP? Any feelings on whether it might be worth the jump or am I best just sticking with what I have?

[Lebowski]

I picked up the Hyper Pocket the Taito one and it’s a great bit of kit for the price, £50. i had a few carts left over from my brief dip into Evercade so was nice to have a unit that plays them. No HDMI out no wifi though so the EXP still has its place.

[gunrock]

Been playing my Evercade EXP a bit over the Xmas period. Quite enjoyed Full Void, and also the Team 17 collection (mostly Arcade Pool)

[Nu-Eclipse]

Codemasters and Technos Collection carts to be retired.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/04/two-more-evercade-carts-are-being-retired

[cutmymilk]

Ouch. Bad for new collectors with numerical OCD

It will no doubt stop people getting into it altogether.

[Lebowski]

Theirs all sorts of reliability issues with the carts as they're read-writable by the system for updating purposes, Ive seen people compare them to SD cards in a fancy shell. My evercade stuff has gone to Ebay certain carts sell pretty well at the moment i cant see this lasting though and I bet finding working carts will be harder and harder as time goes on.

[fuse]

New hardware for these just got announced, the EXP-R and VS-R.



The main listed difference seems to be a price reduction, assumedly from cheaper manufacturing costs, and that they're going to be bundled with one of these "Giga Carts" that is not yet announced. The VS-R newly allows for TATE, which is handy, whereas the EXP-R seems to have lost the bundled-in Capcom games and the HDMI-out port of the EXP. Both the VS and the EXP are now being phased out already.

[Lebowski]

New hardware for these just got announced, the EXP-R and VS-R.



The main listed difference seems to be a price reduction, assumedly from cheaper manufacturing costs, and that they're going to be bundled with one of these "Giga Carts" that is not yet announced. The VS-R newly allows for TATE, which is handy, whereas the EXP-R seems to have lost the bundled-in Capcom games and the HDMI-out port of the EXP. Both the VS and the EXP are now being phased out already.

As a system, it still really baffles me it feels like it should be this compelling product for retro collectors a library of forgotten classic games with nice boxes and a full colour manual, but as an owner the reality is you end up with a library of curiosities not classics.

The techs not quite there and the cart designs are flawed technically as well as looking pretty horrible ascetically, cheap off-white plastic and no label. The offerings for retro collections else where are often a lot more polished, this is games and nothing else. You never quite know what version of a game you're going to get on an Evercade cart sometimes you get the home version sometimes an arcade ROM with some collections being called out for not offering the best version of a game. They're often quite mean too, with some collections offering a small amount of games per cart with one or two classics and then filling out the cart with obscure or bad games.