Evercade?!

[Tanooki]

@RREDDWARFF That's the best news I could have heard, solid package deal.  I randomly when I don't forget a few times a month look to ebay to see if something unavoidably nicely priced pops up with the carts I'd care for, but nothing yet.  I figure if I hit that weird space where I just can't find time for it and feel bad, I want to get in low enough to just break even with fees ditching it.

[Giles N]

On 8/11/2021 at 5:14 AM, Songbird said:

Thanks, I appreciate that! I am doing my best to keep Evercade items in stock, but my presales are fairly small so I don't get a large allocation at distribution. It's a finely tuned, highly chaotic process.

 

Which releases are Songbird, and which are from other companies?

 

Is Songbird the overarching distributor of like all Evercade games, or an Evercade Shop/Stock and publisher among other?

 

You did the Lynx 1 and 2 right?

Edited August 29, 2021 by Giles N

[Songbird]

To answer your questions: Songbird provided the licenses for the Evercade Lynx #1 cart, and yes Songbird is an official online retailer (but not distributor) for Evercade merchandise.

[Parker77]

On 8/19/2021 at 1:47 PM, jgkspsx said:

I love the majority of the games on Piko 1. Exploding Fist and Magic Girl are the only ones I really hate. Let’s go through the list to make sure I’m being honest.

The biggest shame is that even now, the Spectrum and C64 version of Exploding Fist are great fun. Not sure what the NES atrocity is all about.

[roots.genoa]

There are two reasons for that (I think):

- Evercade carts always use console versions; you can verify that with the Worms, Codemasters, and upcoming Bitmap Brothers collections for instance

- Piko is specialized in unreleased/obscure games, so I guess the NES port of Exploding Fist was unreleased at the time, and Piko may not have the license for the other versions.

[+jgkspsx]

3 hours ago, Parker77 said:

The biggest shame is that even now, the Spectrum and C64 version of Exploding Fist are great fun. Not sure what the NES atrocity is all about.

That pretty much says it all.

 

Apparently the C64 firmware is really expensive to license. Dunno about the Speccy. They seem very averse to home computer versions in general, preferring NES ports that range from great to atrocious. I think NES emulators are a lot easier to license and more rock-solid than most platforms, which is why everyone else in the retro handheld business like MyArcade uses them ahead of better Turbografx and Master System versions.

[Tanooki]

NES emulators are a dime a dozen so the licensing is little as they can just bid for the most accurate vs lowest price.  So few give a crap about more obscure old home computer emulators so you have few to maybe just one that'll work on hardware so then you can ask a whole lot more with no one else to drive it down with a lowball.

[wolfy62]

On 8/25/2021 at 9:07 PM, King_Salamon said:

I went and got the Founders Edition of the VS but have the standard handheld... I guess I'm weird.  lol  

Me too!

[Friendly Amico]

Can it run Jaguar games? I never had one and would love a cart dedicated to Atari Jaguar ? wasn’t the controller complicated or something lol

[Abzeronow]

On 9/4/2021 at 7:08 AM, roots.genoa said:

There are two reasons for that (I think):

- Evercade carts always use console versions; you can verify that with the Worms, Codemasters, and upcoming Bitmap Brothers collections for instance

- Piko is specialized in unreleased/obscure games, so I guess the NES port of Exploding Fist was unreleased at the time, and Piko may not have the license for the other versions.

Yes, Exploding Fist was unreleased until Piko did, the NES port was developed by Beam Software and was developed in 1989.  It was going to be published by Tradewest.  Having played it, yeah it would have been bad by 1989 standards but at least the game plays better than Karate Champ IMHO.

[+jgkspsx]

On 9/10/2021 at 12:20 AM, Friendly Amico said:

Can it run Jaguar games? I never had one and would love a cart dedicated to Atari Jaguar ? wasn’t the controller complicated or something lol

The controller isn’t so much of a problem as the fact that the hardware is super complex and there are no great emulators for it even for PCs, much less anemic handhelds.

[RREDDWARFF]

I want to give a shout out to Carl at Songbird. I ordered the Codemasters Collection for Evercade and ended up with a faulty cartridge. Carl was polite and quickly replaced it. Great customer service and communication too. Thanks, I greatly appreciate it!

[Songbird]

Thanks and glad we got that issue resolved for you!

[+GoldLeader]

On 9/11/2021 at 10:44 AM, jgkspsx said:

The controller isn’t so much of a problem as the fact that the hardware is super complex and there are no great emulators for it even for PCs, much less anemic handhelds.

 

Ooooaahh!  It can't run Jaguar?   Man it Can't run Jaguar!  Damn!  How are we ever gonna get a Jaguar Mini if nothing can ever run Jaguar?    Jaguar?? Jaguar!  Jaguar Jaguar J a g u a r  JAAAgUauRRrrrrrr!

[Video]

Got my code master cart last week. Lot of great games, surprisingly. I wasn't aware they did that many.

 

That's up to cart 19, I thought I was being massively over optimistic building my display to hold 30 carts, but maybe not, heh, even considering the restart on the count with the arcade releases in a couple months.

[+jgkspsx]

The Codemasters cart is missing many of Codemasters’ best, and the heavy hitters on it are all Sensible Software titles that Codies bought out in the 2000s. I still love it, though…

 

… except Sensible Soccer doesn’t work on mine

[RREDDWARFF]

20 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

The Codemasters cart is missing many of Codemasters’ best, and the heavy hitters on it are all Sensible Software titles that Codies bought out in the 2000s. I still love it, though…

 

… except Sensible Soccer doesn’t work on mine

Didn't they make Micro Machines? I would love to see that on there next collection.

[+jgkspsx]

They did, when they were in an exclusive agreement with Galoob. The chances are slim we will ever see reissues of those games…

[RREDDWARFF]

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

They did, when they were in an exclusive agreement with Galoob. The chances are slim we will ever see reissues of those games…

☹️

[roots.genoa]

One thing that surprised me with the Codemasters cart, is that some of the NES games (Bee 52, Big Nose) look as if they're in stereoscopic 3D. I think it's due to the art style; sprites feature black outline. Maybe it's just me though. ?

 

I'm also pleasantly surprised by the Mega Cat 2. It's all Genesis games (except for Roniu's Tale which doesn't even launch for me, I guess you need to update just to get the demo) and they're very interesting puzzlers.

[7800Knight]

More news here:  Evercade Release Update - VS Delayed until Mid December (EU) and January (US) - Evercade : Evercade

 

Sadly, the release of the Evercade VS plus a number of cartridges has been delayed.  If  you live in Europe, you have to wait until December.  If you are in North America, you'll have to wait until January.

 

At least they are promising to announce more cartridges in December.

 

On the plus side, I ordered from Songbird the Oliver Twins collection and the Atari Lynx 2 collection.

[+jgkspsx]

I have plenty to play, I can wait. It is a shame they missed Xmas, though.

[Songbird]

3 minutes ago, 7800Knight said:

On the plus side, I ordered from Songbird the Oliver Twins collection and the Atari Lynx 2 collection.

Thanks! Some great games on both of those.

 

[7800Knight]

17 minutes ago, Songbird said:

Thanks! Some great games on both of those.

 

Seconded.  The Dizzy games are fun.  Plus the Lynx collection has potent games like Chip's Challenge!

[Songbird]

Personally I like CM2 better than Chip's... but they're both pretty cool!