System: HyperMegaTech Taito Super Pocket
Price: $59.99
Release Date: 11/13/2022

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Prelude

A year after the big handheld refresh in the Evercade lineup, Blaze Entertainment branches out to make a lineup of pocket-sized systems as an entry point into retro gaming. Starting out we have Taito and Capcom, and since Capcom is 100% repeats from the EXP’s built in library (excluding a few games that got cut), I went with Taito to give this lineup of systems a spin. Promising a small arcade experience on the go with Evercade compatibility, how does this handheld stack up, and is the Taito library worth being locked to a handheld system?

Presentation

From the start we have a pretty great color scheme and a surprisingly small design. I mean it when I say that photos may make the system look pretty reasonable to hold in the hands, but this thing is pretty small, a bit like the old GBC/GB Pockets in that sense. It can be a bit weird to grasp and there’s a certain warning about thumb placement I’ll note later, and it should also be noted that unlike the prior EC handhelds, this uses a 4:3 screen, which actually is a benefit for certain games, particularly titles from the SNES and GB/GBC lineups, as it makes their image scaling look crazy sharp on this thing. Seriously, games such as Magical Drop II, Metal Marines and Dragon View absolutely shine on this device as a result of the resolution choice here, and it looks far better than the OG’s screen, too.

A lot of Arcade games look fine too, and indeed, the built in Taito games tend to look pretty good, though one thing that this system does not play nicely with are Arcade games with vertical resolutions. On the EXP, that’s why the whole TATE button was introduced, and even on the OG these games looked pretty compressed, but here on Super Pocket most vertically oriented Arcade games are gonna look horrid on the original or pixel perfect display setting. Either the game has font that’ll be ant-sized to see, or everything will look a bit too squished and hard to see. (Kiki Kaikai was where this particularly drove me nuts, especially with the main character’s eyes not being that well scaled)

Oddly enough, I did find that stretching the entire game out to 4:3 made this a bit better, with fonts being much more readable even if the image gets blown up as a result. The original Space Invaders looks pretty darn good this way, and even the scanline option works well with that game and others reliant on black backgrounds, so hey, give your vertical games a shot with that display mode and see if they surprise you, too. Of the Taito Vertical games, I found that Volified looked pretty weird, but tolerable, Kiki Kaikai looked like a squished mess, and Space Invaders looked fine no matter how it scaled up. Trying to play the Toaplan carts on this thing just reminded me of how awkward vertical shooters looked on the Astro City Mini, but stuff like Lock n Chase was fine.

Other systems range wildly in terms of how their image scales. NES games look pretty solid, and most Genesis games do as well, though with how certain games varied in resolution, even fullscreening something like Flashback will make it look nowhere near as crisp as it would on an EXP. On the other hand, I found that titles like Phelios, Earthworm Jim, and Midnight Resistence scaled very well on this thing by changing their resolutions to either Original or Full Screen.

Emulation wise, the Taito games play and sound fine. Only one game i played was noticeably poor, (and even then, only briefly during the intro) and they run pretty much as they you’d expect. Their audio remains pretty accurate, (barring long, long lasting inaccuracies with stuff like Fairyland Story that not even Hamster could nail down) and the only sort of issues I had with the built in games was if I spammed the coin button too hard when booting up a new game. Space Invaders 91 is a Genesis game, and that looks and runs just fine too.

Otherwise, it played my carts pretty much the same as if I threw them into an OG Evercade, with the odd exception of Future Wars (wouldn’t boot) or Cathedral. (having to wait for an update to make it compatible) Basketbrawl’s Lynx port also looks like a vomit induced mess, but I chalk this up more to the resolution differences between that screen and this 4:3 one rather than anything wrong with the cart, and it’ll hopefully be patched in the future. The speakers on this thing are surprisingly great as well, with the epic music of games like Legend of Kage sounding very rich through them.

Gameplay

If I did this in the usual style of my Compilation reviews, I’d be here for an eternity as this thing has eighteen built in Taito games to go through! I did dabble in all of em though, and I’ll be giving a general overview of how these games feel on the pocket, how the Pocket controls in general, and other sort of oddities/frustrations/positives I noted after a week of playing this thing.

I’ll be blunt. The very first thing I noticed when using this thing and going right into Chack ‘n Pop, is how the d-pad feels just so weird compared to the prior Blaze D-Pads. With the OG Evercade, you had a solid foundation and build quality that surprised me, but it still had the potential issue of snapping off the console. With the VS, you had that controller’s D-pad, slightly tweaked to become more durable, and thus I really enjoy it and found it outstanding to use in 2D games, and I even used it as my docked Steam Deck controller for a good bit. Lastly with the EXP, you have the best D-pad yet, with excellent comfort and a design that has still not failed me a year later, even if some aspects such as my right trigger have since failed (though that was mainly due to an unwise decision cramming it into a tight case)

Thus, I expected that while the Super Pocket was unlikely to have a D-pad as good as the EXP’s, it should at the very least be easy to use and functional, right? Well, it took me several days of fiddling around and changing my muscle memory, but I eventually got it to work OK after I had to learn and quickly realize that this D-Pad does not like big thumbs, and especially hates if you touch its center. The big indicator was the diagonals, which just acted up big time and got stuck or failed to activate at all while crossing from one end of the D-Pad to another.

This was the most notable in Operation Wolf, which reproduces a lightgun game by letting you move a virtual cursor, and the typical way I rock the D-Pad did not work well at all, with constant dropped inputs and a very rigid feel. It wasn’t until a few days of reaching out to a retailer and other Evercaders that I realized the center of the D-pad could be pressed inward, (and it was not unique to my device) and that leads to the current input getting cut off. In fact, while testing various evercade carts, I noticed Chaos Engine treated this center piece as a start button, making it pretty apparent whatever the middle was, it was some form of button/neutral direction that messed with ongoing movements.

Begrudgingly, I had to avoid the center and use it on the edges, and once I did that for a good bit I ended up finding the D-Pad pretty OK. It works outstandingly in four-way games, which most titles on the Taito pocket happen to be. No problems at all with Space Invaders, and Volified was just as addictive as ever! As much as I still cannot stand to play something like the overhead portions of Blaster Master on this weird D-Pad, a lot of EC games were much more fun to play once I readjusted my thumb position, and I found myself preferring the quick UI and menuing of the pocket for games like Metal Marines and Pac-Attack, which are outstanding for on-the-go, 5 minute lunch break play sessions. In fact, digging out the C64 cart at work, I found that Uridium felt quite nice on this device, and eventually I grew to click with the Super Pocket a lot.

There still are some other gripes I have, besides the D-Pad taking a bit to get used to. You still have certain games that look a bit blurry no matter what screen resolution you pick, (mainly weird resolution Genesis titles) and the UI can be a bit too simple, since you’re unable to delete save states like you can on the other Evercade devices, nor are you able to remap the buttons. For Arcade games, Evercade has pretty weird default mappings, though thankfully the Taito stuff in the pocket is exempt from that usual backwards layout, with the layouts feeling pretty natural and great, save for Space Invaders 91, which somehow decided to map the Item button to a shoulder press. Still, for most other Evercade games I always found the default mappings to be fine, but I definitely can see the lack of a remap being a downer, especially on the Capcom edition where A is jump and B is attack. (think Xbox style, and you’ll see why this is weird)

The other minor gripes mainly relate to quirks about the Taito library, with Liquid Kids being a game with very weird framedrops present during the opening cinematic, but is otherwise perfectly rock solid in game and even upon dying and letting the intro play again. Then you have Bubble Bobble, which is completely unbeatable for the true ending due to not having a second player, and I at least wish they mapped a 2P start button somewhere solely for the purpose of throwing in the extra player right before the ending.

Otherwise besides those minor flaws and Wolf’s lightgun cursor not being a fitting replacement for everyone, The Super Pocket is generally a really solid device that is perfect for quick play sessions, and the evercade support is an amazing way to expand the library.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Super Pocket was a very difficult system for me to like. That D-pad’s weird middle really makes it feel a lot sloppier than prior Blaze D-Pads, and reminds me more of the bad Nintendo Switch Pro Controller D-Pad. If you can tolerate that, then you’ll likely have no issues with the middle allowing itself to be pressed down, and you won’t even notice if you shy away from games focusing on diagonal movement and just stick to the stock Taito games.

Still, once I was able to find my own way to deal with that D-pad, and found games that really shined on it, I began to really enjoy my time with the Super Pocket, and it is now my go-to desk toy for my dayjob. Quick to pull out for a couple of scorechase sessions or to continue whatever platformer I’m working my way through on an Evercade cart, and incredibly easy to put away once you’re done.

For the pricepoint this is an absolute steal, and if the built in games appeal to you then this is a must-buy for the quality emulation alone. However, if you’re more of a grownup gamer, or one that wants more features or options, then the Evercade EXP or especially the Evercade VS are Blaze devices I recommend a lot more. Still, this is a great starting point if you wanna dip slowly into the library, and I am curious to see what other Super Pockets we get in the future.

I give the Taito Super Pocket a 7 out of 10.