Well, it seems my plan to start reviewing Evercade games had some wrenches thrown into it. And with this weekend’s ordeal, I can’t really begin to start covering the stuff like I had planned to with Irem Arcade, without getting this elephant out of the room.
The Evercade ecosystem has a potential reliability problem. A lot of people have reported stuff going wrong and breaking, and while it supposedly isn’t more than 1% of the products sold per Blaze, I’ve had a string of bad luck and seen a bunch of other strings of bad luck, that indicate how this situation is still unacceptable for a product of this nature, and how I’m hoping, praying the Blaze team are on fixing this. Because lord help me if more stuff dies as I keep at my reviewing and collecting habits.
I wasn’t sure where to really begin and I should also reiterate despite my pissed off nature, I still believe this company will make things right. That may outright shock you considering how I don’t hesitate to grill other companies for shitty build quality or QC, but considering recent events in the Evercade media sphere like a recent Press day at their UK headquarters, along with recent statements mentioned by the Evercade crew, I am confident there is a path to victory and security for the ecosystem in a way that won’t screw over people like me anymore.
But let’s get in with well, what the heck Evercade does and why I’m annoyed. And why I guess this is another in the list of big caveats to consider before jumping into the ecosystem.
Simplicity and Fun
The Evercade was a thing I reviewed in 2021 because I already was turned away from it, and I came away positive even with my very first unit having a dead pixel because the Blaze Support was swift, responsive and quick to help me. I couldn’t get rid of the dead pixel, but a border update would mitigate it and the system still worked otherwise, and I found myself very happy with a system I bounced off a year prior due to big issues that were way more concerning.
You may have seen it. A pretty big review of the Evercade done on YT by a big retro YTer, which pointed out a bunch of bugs that were nos for me; button remapping issues, weird sound problems with the HDMI-out, and weird bugs all around. It seemed like a system with promise due to a strong launch library, that seemed doomed for the bin I put my Retro Bit Generations. I even made a pretty snarky remark on their facebook after that video went live, then thought little else of it.
But then they announced Renovation 1. And if you know me, I love Renovation/Telenet stuff. And then I looked at their post-launch lineup, and saw an awful lot of great gems and new retro games to try. Then I noticed they had a home console coming out with some pretty cool hits, and I decided to go all in back in 2021. I was pretty much in love and seeing the community be passionate about the product was very exciting indeed. There were some delays with the VS here in the states and some carts that annoyed me, but ultimately the team were on top of things and proved their trust; a good thing too considering I just broke off another company for not giving a single shit about quality control that same year.
And yeah. There were software updates. The OG Evercade got a very rad one bringing it in line with the VS. Some carts got updates, but rarely, and there really wasn’t much issues reported. The VS could update carts and I didn’t hear much about that doing anything in particular even in 2021/2022. It was pretty much just a slowly ramping up production schedule, which is good for a company like blaze, considering how many limprints and other outfits try to get the big guns right away and immediately crash into financial ruin shortly afterward. It also helped a lot that their shipping, CS, and communication was super rock solid to the point I’m kinda amazed that a small team from the UK has better communication skills than big limprint companies that have been in the game for nearly a god damn decade.
It shows to me that Blaze cares and their openness on discord and via press reiterated that to me. You don’t go from launching the OG handheld in such a weird “how did you not catch this?” state to an easy recommend without listening to feedback and putting in all the work to get the most out of that small, little piece of tech. And they nailed it.
For the most part Evercade systems were plug and play and get straight to the fun, with maybe an update like every month or so. They weren’t common, it was pretty simple, and even as newer things like Amiga and C64 came in that needed updates, they were fairly straightforward. There were still cart issues of course, but they seemed very, very rare and something that only really happened with certain batches of certain carts, like an early batch of Codemasters carts that really hated you trying to play Super Skidmarks, or some Oliver Twins carts not playing nice.
Hell, with the VS the only issue I can still think of related to it to this very day is how it needs a strong enough power brick not provided in the box at all for the micro USB to plug into. Otherwise, some native games like the Duke Remasters or Cathedral throw a fit. Duke still throws a fit even with a power brick if you insert it with another cart, but that’s an issue with that game itself and not the VS. Of all Evercade systems, the VS is the most reliable and the best of em.
But then things started to get a bit too uncomfortable, and one device is a thing that I have to partly blame for it. And another factor, looming in the shadows.
EXP Grinding Pain
The Evercade EXP came out in late 2022 and I reviewed it for this very site shortly after. I liked it a good bit, but not as much as my VS. Was a pretty smart way of taking the VS experience on the go with a bunch of new features like firmware updates and other improvements.
As of August 3rd, 2024, my EXP I used for that review not even two years ago, is fully dead.
Yeah. A Scream of death. So how the heck did this happen? Well, I don’t know, except for what I do know the final nail was; the battery inside the EXP just gave up. Something made it freak out, it didn’t want to hold a charge anymore, and thus it died. I’m not the only person this happened to, and will not be the last.
Even early on in the EXP’s life, I saw a slight uptick in people posting about odd problems with it on the socials. The battery life was a common complaint, but even mine, which lasted about 2-4 hrs on average, wasn’t enough for me to get annoyed by due to me rarely leaving my home and having access to a power bank if I was on an extended trip. The power draw would depend on the game played, with NES games lasting a long while, but native/PS1 games draining it in no time. It was pretty tricky to pinpoint as unlike the OG handheld, there was no battery percentage anymore for… some reason. I don’t know why and this really confuses me, honestly.
Then a few people reported issues with certain games on certain carts refusing to boot at all, despite them working fine on the OG handheld. It also impacted the VS. This has a reason, and it’s one I’ll get into a bit later, since it partly is what led to this current issue to begin with. You also had people reporting stuff like the EXP getting very hot during gameplay, the built in Capcom games randomly crashing, and even random battery deaths akin to my own I just had.
These could and understandably were written off as first batch woes; the same way early Switch consoles randomly died and so forth, but over the year of 2023, it just felt like the issue was slowly increasing, like a cup filling with a droplet of water, hour by hour. Nothing to indicate an overflowing cup then, but one that would be building up if not addressed. Even later pressings of the EXP, appeared to still have these random faults, but to a lesser extent. Someone in the Evercade discord even went through more than 1 replacement EXP unit over it ceasing to work. (all provided free of charge by the handy support team, thankfully).
Then the Carts started to fail. And the cup began to fill up slightly faster.
Creeping Death
If an Evercade cartridge dies, it usually shows via one of three ways.
A: One or more games stops working on the EXP/VS but just fine on the Super Pocket/OG. This is for a reason I’ll get into later.
B: It doesn’t read on one device at all but reads on other devices. Unsure why this happens, but it may be due to general corruption. Sometimes games vanish entirely or their artwork, too.
C: Fully dies, unable to read on any system whatsoever. Something got corrupted and now you have a brick!
I had a few in Category A for a bit, but one of those was the aforementioned Skidmarks cart from the first batch, (which they sent me a new one for that worked fine, hassle free), and a C64 cart that they outright fixed via a firmware update shortly it randomly stopped remembering data and save states and eventually stopped booting my games on the VS, leading me to have a duplicate working copy. Those seem to be the ones I hear about the most in social groups, and even then, it isn’t to the point you’ll see dozens of people bring this up in social media chatter. These issues have not gotten to broken dam levels yet. A lot of these seem to be caused by either random bad luck, some update being weird (more on those in a bit), or swapping between the OG/SP and newer Evercade systems. For me, I played C64 and Codemasters on the OG before I upgraded to the newer models, so maybe that did it? Again though, I’m not sure.
But oh. Oh. The reason this article is being made is because Issue C has happened to me twice now, including as recently as yesterday. I noted in my preview piece for the EC reviews, that my first Duke Nukem cart just stopped working after being picky on my EXP/Super Pocket with being read, despite everything being pristine and the game only having been in my hands since late november.
Full brick. 10 Hours of progress lost. I already got a working replacement, but my enthusiasm to keep going is gone. I’m not touching this set again, because who knows if this happens to my new one?
Then yesterday, out at a restaurant and wanting to play some Donut Dodo on Indie Heroes 3… I swap from IH3 to Mega Cat 1 to play a puzzler, then back to IH3… And another brick. Doesn’t work on the VS when I get home, doesn’t work on the EXP when I tried there (and this was my newer one since again, my old EXP had the battery death last week!), it just is fully dead. No progress really lost this time besides high scores, but it still pisses me off as this was only a four month old purchase.
Four months. And a game on flash memory, the same damn thing 20 year old DS cartridges that still work fine use, is already dead. Yeah, I’m pissed, and I’ve still been seeing this issue crop up in spots a little bit more than I used to. Usually Issue A is the most common, but that usually gets fixed if you throw it on a super pocket or OG handheld and can play it there. But for a full death like this? Either I have a very bad string of luck, or swapping between the VS/EXP and Pocket is killing these carts.
Or something else, because Indie Heroes 3 was an interesting case for me. See, I updated it in the VS just fine, because it had some general bug fixes, and the Super Pocket got a firmware update some months ago too. Both done without a hitch. But after the update? Exclusively played on the Super Pocket because Donut Dodo just doesn’t like the EXP/VS due to a loading time situation, one I’m pretty sure ties into why situation A happens to begin with. But on Pocket? It’s snappy and fun as hell, and I was really enjoying it on my vacation a month ago.
Alas. That’s no more. While all 3 of my broken things have replacements, (including my EXP, which I already had a replacement from a year ago due to the R2 button on my older one being absolutely busted, but I still wanted to use it for non R2 games since well, my Capcom saves were on the unit) this is still unacceptable and worrying for a device like this. Especially when you consider the original EXP is nearly $200. Luckily the EXP-R is only $100 and boasts a new battery, but who knows if that’s capable of having the same issues as the OG EXP could have. I’m really hoping it doesn’t, as if it reuses the EXP battery again, we’re right back where we started with some of them randomly refusing to hold charges out of nowhere, and the battery being a big pain in the ass to replace.
I posted on social groups and the discord. Lots of tips and kind attempts at helping, but nothing that could save either of my three systems. My Duke was refusing to mount on anything, my EXP had screamed a final scream until I can get a wizard to replace the battery, and my Indie Heroes 3 just died despite being played on the most popular of the Blaze devices.
Theories ran wild as to why my carts fully died, some of which are quite frankly utterly stupid like loose electrons weakening the cart the longer you go without playing them. Considering how often I played both carts in my Super Pocket (one almost exclusively), this was pretty silly to see as a theory. It also still plays other games like my Mega Cat without a hitch and with no problem and I play those far less often. Several fans also suggested, with some lowkey blaming me for hotswapping the carts on the pocket, due to me mentioning I wanted to play something else.
First off, hotswapping has been stated by Blaze staff many times to be safe and OK to do as long as you’re in the menu and not mid-game. I’ve done it hundreds of times before, to no issue before now. It might be that removing the cart right after it was read on my pocket could have done a small thing to corrupt something on the cart to make it not mount, but I’ve swapped way faster on my VS to no issues there at all, so if this is a pocket exclusive thing then that should be updated immediately to mitigate that issue.
Some also suggested cleaning the cart, which is a normally good idea… If it wasn’t for the fact that these carts are brand new and pristine. They were only months old after all. I even had Duke 1 showing an issue randomly not being read in my EXP in the middle of playing it, despite it being snug in the cart slot and clean as can be. That was when the issues with that cart first started appearing, and at first I blamed my EXP because well, it’s the EXP with the battery that was about to die, maybe that corrupted something due to the long load times? But again, my IH3 cart was never in my EXP/VS outside of when I first got it, so that theory was ruled out to me rather quickly.
But then a near miss made me think maybe the cart might have a thing off about it? Just a slim chance. My Piko 4 stopped reading on Pocket the other day too, but unlike IH3, A clean with alcohol and playing it on my VS just fine, and it was working in my pocket yet again. Too close to be anywhere but my shelf of games for now though, but at least that did the trick. Alas, no dice with IH3, so whatever saved my Piko may just have been a bad case of a contact gone dirty or something.
So yeah, for my two bricked carts, I got nothing conclusive on why they just fully died. The only thing both had in common, was that they were both played on my super pocket extensively, but so were other carts that work just fine still. Both were newer, so maybe a newer batch of carts used cheaper contacts or something, but we’d be hearing a lot more cases otherwise if that were true. I’ve also seen no reports of C64 3 being bricked, and only a singular Sunsoft 2 brick report in the usual groups I’m in, so I doubt that’s the case either. I did swap them for other games before they bricked, but a hotswap on a menu shouldn’t kill the carts, as that’s a main part of the ecosystem and has been since the very first firmware of the OG Evercade. Either way, this is very bad, and I hope, dearly hope, that this is being worked on to never happen again.
The good news is, it seems like it is. The worrying news is, I fear it’s a game of whack a mole that might endanger things further, or cause a fracture that may deal a lot of damage to the brand, especially the longer we go on without a new major statement on it. There was one back in January, insisting it’s a very small percentage of people having problems… But I still find it concerning and alarming that these issues seem to have the potential to grow out of control.
Whack-a-Mole Security
Let’s go back to Group A for cart deaths. There is a reason why these carts work on some systems and not others, and it has to do with a battle against an unfortunate trend for any gaming device: Piracy. See, not long after the Evercade came out and started to build following, there were attempts in made by some to circumvent the device and the cartridges, sorta like how you’d see a lot of mini consoles trying to get hacked to see what could work on it.
What originally was just a system with sets of games that would maybe have an occasional update to the firmware, eventually evolved into the EXP/VS model we have today with more detailed updates that introduce new features, bug fixes, UI updates, etc. And with that, the attempts to squash said exploits would begin, and then a battle would kick off in the background. It did not help that the sources responsible for the continued exploits weren’t doing so out of their own boredom or curiosity either; they were deadset on trying to make the Evercade an emulator machine whether anyone wanted it to be or not, which is honestly an incredibly silly goal to even want considering the vast array of emulation devices that are way more open and compatible than the Evercade would be. Needless to say, a group of people were continually exploiting the thing in such a way that it would lead to rampant piracy if gone unchecked, and if I may be quite blunt, they aren’t really nice people in the slightest, and are absolutely not in this to help find obscure bugs or tip Blaze off on exploits.
Do note that squashing exploits is good and vital for these sorts of platforms; piracy risk is a big key to determining if a license holder wants to sign on to a platform or not, and the Nintendo DS in particular got hammered by piracy, so much so that a bunch of games in the west either bombed horribly or didn’t end up coming over at all due to the sheer explosion of piracy making publishers not want to touch the platform. No platform holder or licensor wants it.
The Evercade solution to this sleeping beast lurking in the distance was putting up more integrity checks while reading a cartridge. In theory, this should be easy to do since legit carts = good to go, read while piracy carts = will not work. However, it seems this is ultimately what causes problem A to pop up; something will get saved wrong or written in such a way that it makes a game on a cartridge no longer get recognized properly by the EXP/VS. Thus, you have your cases of a game refusing to boot on a cartridge, despite it being read just fine and the other games on it booting. This is also why the OG/Super Pocket systems do not suffer from this, and why carts that act picky on the big systems work fine on those smaller devices, since it does not run those checks. It also seems to be the reason why some games take a longer time to load on VS/EXP.
Now is the Evercade on the verge of becoming a DS tier Piracy device? I hope not, and I don’t think it will, but it’s clear we have a game of whack-a-mole here. Blaze updates the consoles, also touching up these checks now and again, breaking the exploits, only for the exploits to try to catch up and thus require yet another case of fixer-uppers. When there was a period of time when bug fix updates were only tied to Game of the Month drops, you could see how a small team would be having difficulties keeping everything in a position to not go wrong.
And indeed, late last year there were a good set of updates to the Evercade ecosystem, such as fixing SRAM and some general emulation issues across the board, including some long, long overdue ones. I was especially happy to see Psycho Pinball getting a sound channel patch! However, as part of this rollout another set of patches dropped for Arcade cartridges, and this caused a lot of people to have their carts turned into situation A or C scenarios; whether due to the long update times, being updated under weird power circumstances, or the old way cartridge updates worked, a lot of people got their carts scrambled, so Blaze pulled back that patch and kept the other general fixes intact. Since then, that Arcade cartridge patch has not been reissued, presumably to roll out later without the risk of things breaking again, and after a Library update dropped that seems to have gone off without a hitch, things have been very quiet in bug fix land.
Recent reports from the Blaze media day event some influencers and writers went to for covering the EXP/VS-R and Evercade Alpha devices, also indicate that the team is absolutely aware of the anxiety with cartridge bricks and such and is working on it; I’m hoping the long gap between feature updates and bug fixes is because they want to make sure this is done right and not rushed out hastily like that Arcade update was last year, and they’ve at least been receptive of feedback as a result. It’s also safe to assume the Alpha will have some sort of integrity check system as well, hopefully one that doesn’t lead to situation A happening as much as it seems to at times.
This ain’t some old machine that was discontinued years ago, this is an active ecosystem and if you’re in control of the means to do so, stopping pirates is a must; but this current system of integrity checks and the odd fact the Super Pocket doesn’t have said checks, really makes me ponder if the reason my carts in the C category broke is because swapping between one device that doesn’t check them constantly to one that’s a lot more lax, leads to some crazy, unforeseen cartridge corruption that left me with two bricks. If they were situation A bricks, I’d be fine with just playing them on my pocket until something got smoothed out on the other systems.
But to have one cart go to a situation C scenario almost exclusively on the Pocket, only being used on the VS once for a cartridge update? Something extra has to be causing this. And I really, really hope that whatever it is, Blaze puts a stop to it before the end of the year. And for that group of pirates to knock it off, especially the infuriating “oh come here and use our shady tools and product if your cart is broken or bricked, it totally will help you” attempt at “support” I see them attempting on socials to people caught up in this mess, which feels incredibly slimy considering the reason we’re all in this mess is because of their actions kicking off a whack-a-mole game that caught ordinary users like me up in the mess.
(For the record, I looked into said methods myself after my duke cart brick, and not only would it require me spending more money on something not reliable in the slightest, but it would only be remotely useful if I had the somehow magic foresight to use it on my cartridge before the brick, so to see some from that community try to act like they’re the know-it-alls of the ecosystem is pretty infuriating, especially considering how they’re the boastful “free speech” types. Yes, those kind of people.)
Conclusion
So is the Evercade doomed to have a serious fatal flaw forever like the Turbografx 16 Mini? Are they destined to just always die on you like my EXP did, and are the carts all going to blow up in smoke in 3-5 years time?
I don’t think so, but I do worry that if everyone at Blaze vanished into thin air tomorrow and nobody worked on Evercade stuff ever again, it could fill that cup up to overflowing levels. But the fact they’re actively working on stuff, have taken a long time cooking the next bugfix update has me filled with confidence, and I am hoping with the upcoming EXP-R, that whole issue I had with my EXP battery is a thing of the past, and from all accounts the VS and Super Pockets are pretty free of hardware faults; you probably won’t have to worry about them randomly dying on you like the white EXP.
As of now though, nobody has early access to the R for opening it apart to look at. I’m debating buying one to cover for the site despite it being a simple model change, but considering how well the Super Pocket review did, I’m leaning more toward nabbing it for the sake of clarity and transparency.
And yes, my Evercade cartridge reviews will go on as planned. Even with two of them bricked, I got replacements for both of them incoming, with one already in my hands and working as it should. I’m definitely going to be a lot more wary of swapping carts between the Super Pockets and the VS for the time being, though. There’s still not quite a consistent cause for these bricks, and I hope what happened to me (the cart just refusing to work on anything) never happens to anyone else; indeed, Blaze cites a very low percentage of the sorts of issues I touched on today having been reported to them, and I can say that there are still plenty of carts and products I’ve personally never seen anyone report a bricking issue with, even recent titles like C64 3 or Asteborg.
But still, this is pretty worrying, and while I think it still is in good hands, I do have to make the case clear. These issues can happen. One of the systems with the trouble spot, appears to be retiring in favor of a machine with a better battery, which hopefully will not have these sorts of random, rare system death scenarios. And hopefully whatever is being worked on for the next feature update, will be done in such a way that any sort of cart fixes could be done by the console or done in a way that reduces the chance of the carts from bricking.
Because lord help me, I still love this thing despite the frustrations, and I want it to succeed and grow to bring out more obscure retro compilations. So I’m writing this more as a prayer, that hopefully whatever is causing these rare issues is on the verge of being addressed; and that the whack-a-mole in the background can be stopped once and for all to keep the ecosystem secure without bad actors trying to ruin the fun.
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