Hello there! If you see this, that means my queue of backlogged games is winding down to the point I need content to fill in my weeks so that way, I don’t have weeks go by with no reviews on the site.

In comes the Evercade, a machine I’ve reviewed in various forms for SFG, which also relates to the Super Pocket I covered which is one of my most popular reviews in SFG history. I’m a retro compilation fan, so we might as well review some retro compilations in the form of these cartridges. I have all of the ones up to July 2024, though a factor I’ll get into a bit later has me hesitant to buy more.

So, how will I cover such various cartridges? Some have a few games, some have one game, some have many, many games. My usual format can work for compilations, but with these just popping into a system and playing, there’s not much of a “presentation” or even a unified “story” for these compilations… And am I to really break down 20 games one by one? Well the answer to all of that is I’ll do things on a case by case basis for Evercade to keep it within my format.

For the story segment, it’ll be a prelude. Just a general “hey this is what this cart’s themed after and introducing the developer”. I’ve done this a few times in other reviews.

For Presentation, I’ll highlight the systems the cartridge has to emulate and how well the EC/Cart emulates those if it’s the first time I’ve covered the system from a EC cart, so if I have a second cart with only genesis games, I won’t touch on it much. If a cart has weird quirks, i’ll note that as well.

Gameplay wise, I’ll do it in my usual SFG compilation format of listing games if there’s a small amount of em, and if they all have things worth saying, even if I can throw only a paragraph or two at it. However, when trying to draft a prototype review of Atari Collection 1, trying to cover every basic 2600 game broke me, so for stuff with lots of games or very simple titles, I’ll do a generalized summary that maybe touches on a few big games while acknowledging the fact I did play everything on the cart, just have little to say about it. But for something like say, Irem 1 with only a few games, that would all be broken down in depth.

This is my idea for EC reviews and I hope it keeps people engaged enough to know if they feel the want to spend $20 on a cart. I like these things, I still wanna support the company and I enjoy retro obscurities, but I have to admit on the day I’m drafting this, a week before it goes live, my Duke Nukem Collection 1 cartridge just upped and died. No fault of my own, just the EXP and Super Pocket having a fit recognizing it and having it stay mounted only for the thing to die a sad death with 10+ hrs down the drain. So be warned, these cartridges can brick and die. But there are at least ways to be careful enough with updates to not have the updates cause issues with carts, such as making sure you’re using a proper power source for the VS, have a very well charged EXP, and updating the firmware on all devices when possible. If anything, I found the VS to be super duper reliable and the best of all the evercade systems, so consider going with that if you’re anxious about the cart viability. Or hope the upcoming updates make things better, since Blaze have at least commented to working on the issue.

Sadly, this really sours my mood and hopefully doesn’t come up during the course of this review project, as I don’t want my reviews to be spoiled by my own personal experience with a cart going poof. But if it’s a common issue and a lot of people have it, I’ll call it out. Likewise if a cart still has a known, pending emulation bug, I’ll call it out too. They’ve at least been great on fixing the latter.

Well, that’s all for today’s brief into. One last thing is that for single cart games, I’ll review them like a normal game as to be expected. Otherwise though, I’m eager to get to these during my off periods, since the PS4 queue is LONG and filled with RPGs, so I need gap fillers… Evercade is a great way to do it! I’ll still be taking small steam/switch games now and then too, so there won’t be an evercade review every week; but I’ll try!