Evercade?!

[+madman]

I've spent more time w/IH2, I have to say this is a great cart and a value at $20. I think most of us on AA are into homebrew/indie games, personally I really only keep track of Lynx/Jag homebrew. So to be introduced to these other titles while supporting the developers is great. Yes, we can all download ROMs and put them on flash carts, but TDP and Nessy alone would cost $20 from the developers which is still a fair price. If you want the "real thing" on OG hardware or even a physical copy people can go that route. I'm sure the revenue the devs get is minimal, but these carts are a good way to get introduced to new indie games. I didn't think I'd get this much into an emulation console yet here we are.

[Recycled]

I didn't wait "a few weeks."  Picked up Indie Heroes 2 last night due to all the positive raving about it.  I'll get C64  2 on day one.

[Steven Pendleton]

I forgot something earlier.

 

I have said this before (many times, actually) and I will say this again: Kyuukyoku Tiger is a stupidly badass game. If you haven't played it, you should, because it's awesome. It will crush your soul and make you feel insignificant, but it's never unfair and it's a hell of a lot of fun to play. It's extremely close to being an S-tier Toaplan game, with the only thing holding it back from that status is the unbalanced weapons (get blue spread shot, ignore the rest). Most of that awesomeness is contained in Twin Cobra, but not all of it. It's still probably the best game on the cart.

 

Second place on this cart goes to Fire Shark, which, aside from the potential to do a magnificent chain death (which I promise will absolutely happen to you if you die on stage 6 or later, so don't die on stage 6 or later), is also a super badass game, especially with the completely insane size of the massive max power spread shot (it seriously covers the entire screen. It's crazy) and the max power flamethrower. I like playing it more than Twin Cobra, but it's objectively not actually a better game due to the potential to chain death in a few spots due to the combination of no checkpoints + no speed powerups when you need them upon death, and also its weapon imbalance (once again, use the blue spread shot and ignore the rest outside of a few very specific places).

 

Damn, I wish I could play these games for the first time again so much, especially to see that max power flamethrower for the first time again. That thing is absolutely ridiculous.

[+jgkspsx]

Piko 1 is going legacy 😭

 

If you might ever get an Evercade, grab that cart!!!!!

[+madman]

I grabbed Piko 1 when I ordered IH2 last week, haven't played it yet. Piko 2 is a no from me, dawg. Same w/Codemasters that went legacy.

[+jgkspsx]

Codemasters isn’t legacy yet…

 

Piko 1 and Codemasters 1 are some of the collections that most define the Evercade for me. Tons of games in different genres with a little something for everyone.

[+madman]

Ah yeah, I confused that w/the Oliver Twins cart.

[famicommander]

I'll say it again, my most played carts are the ones full of indie games. Morphcat, Mega Cat 1 and 2, Indie Heroes 1 and now 2, Xeno Crisis/Tanglewood, Alwa's Awakening/Cathedral. Those are the ones you want to track down in case they get discontinued. The rest of the carts are mostly full of games you've played a hundred times and/or can find on any number of platforms.

[+jgkspsx]

I don’t disagree, but there are some exceptions. Piko 1 is full of stuff that most people have never played before. The Namco collections have some original translations and unusual games. The Lynx 1 collection has a bunch of stuff from Songbird that would be very expensive to buy individually. Etc.

 

Plus I am happy to support wider legal availability of Toaplan, Irem, Renovation, and so on.

[+madman]

^ That's exactly why I got Piko 1, but I get fami's point as well...everyone is going to be into different things on the Evercade. Some will buy anything they release, even if it's a cart full of NES games that stunk 30+ years ago. Not everyone who buys it is an AA member who owns 30 consoles, there could be someone who has never played INTV before so those carts might interest them. TBH if I didn't have a Neo Geo I probably wouldn't know about Xeno Crisis so that would be new to me. Even gamer friends I've known for 25+ years aren't familiar with the Lynx even though it's well known to people like us. 

 

I'll throw out one other criticism on the system, at first I thought it was cool that they included manuals but now that I've opened a few other carts I feel like the manuals are one small step above "better than nothing". They're not providing much beyond what you see on the game selection screen. And I get it, you can't have full manuals for 15 games included. Speaking of the menu, I'm not sure I understand the "Stats" section, I just played a little TDP and it says I've played the game for 1 minute, is that total time spent or just time spent last time I loaded a save state? Because well, I played it way more than 1 minute. 

[+jgkspsx]

The manuals were very light on real content for the first year but improved a lot particularly this last year, IMO.

 

The time tracking in the stats does not work right. That is one of the things they are trying to fix in the next firmware, which sounds to be coming this month if I read it right.

[fallenone]

I got an Evercade for Christmas and plan on buying the whole collection before some become too hard to find. 

 

Something I'd like to see on the Evercade in the future is some of the wonder homebrew games that have been sold here at AtariAge and at select other homebrew sites. I know I can just use an Atari Flashback Portable for 2600 homebrews but not for 7800 titles. 

[+madman]

A cart of AA published homebrew would be great, but I imagine AA was only the publisher and the original developers still own the rights. It'd be awesome to have Beef Drop on the Evercade.

[+jgkspsx]

It’s similar to licensing to the Indie Heroes or Mega Cat (who are just the publishers of many of the games on those compilations). I think it would be great for AtariAge and great for getting the word about amazing homebrew out to the wider world. And I want to be able to play games like Raptor, Mr Yo Yo, EXO, etc in Evercade high score competitions. I wonder if they have talked to @Albert or vice versa. The idea has been coming up a lot in the Evercade Discord and not just from AA members.

 

That said, ports of games like Burgertime and Q*Bert are not in the cards because of copyright and trademark issues. It would have to be original games only. But there are tons of those to choose from.

[+madman]

Yeah that's fair as I suppose Beef Drop is basically a direct ripoff of BT whereas something like Beer Slinger on IH2 is different in gameplay than Tapper.

[Recycled]

On 2/3/2023 at 3:41 PM, jgkspsx said:

Piko 1 is going legacy 😭

 

If you might ever get an Evercade, grab that cart!!!!!

Ok. Got it.  Now that's enough Evercade carts for now!  Probably picked up 9 or 10 over the last month!

[+madman]

Does anyone know if @Songbird or another US retailer will be getting those EXP carrying cases? I'm sure there are plenty of generic cases that the EXP would fit in, but it'd be nice to have the official one, I just don't want to place a Funstock order for a case.

[Songbird]

I'll have them as soon as my distributor confirms they are coming. Should be here by April.

[TrekMD]

1 hour ago, Songbird said:

I'll have them as soon as my distributor confirms they are coming. Should be here by April.

Excellent!  I didn't want to place an order just for the case with Funstock either. 

[+madman]

Royal Mail finally came through, I got my Funstock order. I think I'm most looking forward to Bruce Lee, ermm, "Lee" on the C64 cart. I used to spend hours on that one as a kid.

[Bill Loguidice]

28 minutes ago, madman said:

Royal Mail finally came through, I got my Funstock order. I think I'm most looking forward to Bruce Lee, ermm, "Lee" on the C64 cart. I used to spend hours on that one as a kid.

It's a good implementation. I was able to get quite far on my first playthrough on the original Evercade handheld. The save states are a nice bonus if you don't want to play through the early screens so often.

[Songbird]

Pre-orders are open for Toaplan #2 and The C64 #2! Release date is April 28, 2023. Other Evercade games on back-order should also be available by then.

[+madman]

I spent some time w/the Lynx I cart recently, I found the fact that A/B on the Evercade are mapped to the same buttons on the Lynx, but they're physically swapped which is maddening. I suppose any in-game instructions would've had to have been edited to reflect the Evercade mapping and I realize X/Y make up for this, but then you're using the top buttons which seems unnatural as well. Maybe it's less of an issue if you don't have 30 years of muscle memory from playing the actual Lynx.

[Songbird]

That was something we discussed during Evercade testing. We decided to keep the games compatible with pre-existing manuals, in case fans decided to look them up. But I think the Evercade team has also talked about supporting a button remapping feature at some point.

[famicommander]

2 hours ago, madman said:

I spent some time w/the Lynx I cart recently, I found the fact that A/B on the Evercade are mapped to the same buttons on the Lynx, but they're physically swapped which is maddening. I suppose any in-game instructions would've had to have been edited to reflect the Evercade mapping and I realize X/Y make up for this, but then you're using the top buttons which seems unnatural as well. Maybe it's less of an issue if you don't have 30 years of muscle memory from playing the actual Lynx.

I had a similar issue with my Game Gear. I bought a modded one with RGB output and a Genesis controller port, and for the most part I love it, but the two action buttons are reversed and consequently I'm constantly accidentally jumping when I mean to attack or vice versa when I play Shinobi II or similar. It's especially hard to break the habit when it's a boss fight and I remember the attack patterns I've been using for decades.