System: Evercade EXP-R
Price: $oh god oh heck i dont know every time i get ready to write a review the tariff meme man keeps messing with the levers and screwing up the price so all i know is that this is still cheaper than the OG Evercade EXP but some versions are bundled with games now and aaaaaaa don’t kill me i think it may be one hundred and twenty usd now but who knows what it is now.99
Release Date: Late 2024
Prelude
Another year, another Evercade hardware review! This time we have the Evercade EXP-R, which is seemingly just the Evercade EXP all over again, but in a gray color scheme this time!
…Wait a minute, why would I review a thing I basically reviewed several years ago? A device I generally liked quite a lot back then? Surely, something must be off about the thing, right?
Well, with no Capcom games built in, IREM Arcade 1 being replaced with the Tomb Raider collection I just reviewed, and some of the same flaws as the original still being present, what is even the point of me covering this revision? Honestly, both so I can re-examine the idea of the EXP as a whole now that we have more games and updates added to the Evercade ecosystem, and to see if this revision did fix some of my major issues with the prior EXP. Mostly stemming from how the EXP I used for that original review outright died on me and sports a battery with a controller that I’d deem questionable at best, and prone to failure. Not fun when your handheld is almost $200 USD!
The EXP-R on the other hand, has some minor tweaks to it both internally and externally, and is also (at first) a $100 handheld vs a nearly $200 one, leading to it seeming like a much better value than a pricier EXP.
Thus, I felt re-reviewing the EXP in the form of this newer revision would help explain my general thoughts on the Evercade UI and how I felt about the R after spending some time with it in comparison to the years I spent with the original EXP model. So for both Evercade newcomers and veterans, here’s what I feel about the EXP-R after over a half year of time with it.
Presentation
The first thing I noticed holding the EXP-R in my hands was just how nice the back grips felt. Some different kind of texture was applied to the back left and right sides of the unit, leading to a much better feel for horizontal play, which I found to be an immediate improvement for longer-session games. With more and more PS1 era titles hitting the system as of late, I feel this was a smart move, and the better gripping has led to me using the system for longer periods of time without much of a hassle. With that said, the TATE mode returns and still looks great with most 2 button vertical titles, but even the extra little grip on the back doesn’t do enough to stop my hands from falling asleep after a few minutes of play. Thus, they made a separate grip you have to buy for that if you aren’t a fan of how it feels when sideways, and I suppose I’ll be reviewing that later down the line, too.
Visually, compared to the original EXP, which was white and bright looking, ditching the red secondary coloring of the original Evercade, the EXP-R goes for a completely new color scheme to match the Evercade VS-R, a grey and blue color set I didn’t expect to like all that much going into it. Especially since without the white coloring, the cartridges totally stand out when inserted into the back of the system. Yet considering how the Super Pockets are in multiple colors and I got used to my Taito one having a white cart in it for over a year now, I found myself hardly bothered by the EXP-R’s cartridge color mismatch. The upcoming Solo model is to be in white, which should remedy this if the color mismatch bugs the crap out of you.
When it comes to the UI/Menu/emulation aspects, the EXP-R is identical to the EXP and VS in so many ways, to the point you might as well just chalk it up under “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Any QOL/tweaks got added to the OG EXPs/VS, got added to the R lineup, and vice versa. You’ve had some further improvements to emulation across various collections, and a few of the lingering ones I had issues about back when the original EXP hit are gone. Indie Heroes 2 sounds normal and not muffled, Data East Arcade 1 doesn’t crash in Magical Drop, and the built in games have better audio emulation with no muffling.
Pretty rock solid stuff across all the platforms evercade currently supports, including the lone N64 game. I can currently only count a couple of big issues with game emulation on a single hand at this point, so Blaze indeed does keep at it with improving their QC, and very recent collections I’ve had in hand at this point have had next to no issues outside of a single game being picky with save stating. (Karnov)
Alas, a few extra things I wished the EXP-R could have addressed just weren’t. The audio levels are incredibly quiet, not enough that you won’t be able to hear a game within your own home, but compared to the incredibly loud Super Pockets, the EXP-R’s max volume just isn’t high enough to hear out in public or anywhere where say, a fan is running in your bedroom during the middle of summer, and there’s still no battery percentage indicator, despite preview events for this unit having one visible on the UI, and the fact the OG Evercade was able to get one added in, yet neither the EXP or R have so far.
Speaking of battery, that is the biggest improvement I’m thankful Blaze have made here with the R, since it feels like the battery process has been completely redone here, and while I’m not sure of what specifics they did to make everything work nice and smoothly, I can say based off of eight months of play and seeing other people with issues on the original EXP having none with this model, I’m pretty confident the EXP-R will not suffer from the same battery curse that the original model did, including my own.
No matter how well you charged that original one, even if you used a perfect spec power adapter, the battery on the Original EXP was dreadful, and could fully die on you within 2-3 hours even when playing something as simple as a NES/SNES game. And sometimes the system would just have enough, kill the battery controller and refuse to function unless it was plugged into a wall adapter 24/7, which pretty much bricked your unit. The EXP-R on the other hand, shows you a temporary indicator whenever you plug it into a wall outlet now, (letting you know the charging works) and I’ve had no issues using the same old Switch Lite AC adapter I’ve used for my first two EXPs.
As of now, I roughly get around 3-5ish hours of battery life, on the higher if i’m playing nothing but NES games, and more on the lower end if I’m playing PS1/Native games. Either way, I’ve been able to bring this thing on road trips with me without having to charge it until I get to my destination, and the only thing that’d make me feel more confident about playing until I was certain the battery would hit 0%, would be if there was a darn percentage indicator. Still, the Super Pocket seems to have a slightly better battery, and lasted me a lot longer without charging even when playing Arcade titles.
Gameplay
Now here’s where the Evercade EXP is pretty identical to the original, if that model was a working one. You still have the same assortment of buttons and the same nice D-Pad as before, and every evercade cart the original unit could handle is playable on this one. Somehow, Bubble Seahorse Adventures on Indie Heroes 3 is not compatible yet on this or the alpha, so you’ll have to lament the fact that a singular game on the entire Evercade ecosystem doesn’t work. I guess Seahorses would make a gray handheld explode.
Nevertheless, you don’t have the built in Capcom games anymore, but you do have the assortment of 10+ random games from indies thrown into the system via passwords, and one of them in particular (Gotris) is a big favorite of mine that still plays just as nicely on the EXP-R. I’m not giving you the passwords so you gotta go hunt those yourself, but outside of a few C64 games and Gotris, the hidden games are rather lackluster. Still, if you somehow get a version of the EXP-R with no cart and have nothing to play, you technically do.
Of course, an actual cartridge would offer some fun, and for the original EXP-R model I have, the Tomb Raider Collection 1 cart was a great bundle pick, with all three games having tons and tons of content. I held off on Evercade reviews for a while and made that my last pre-EXP R one for a reason, and that’s because Lara’s adventures are really good, even with the roughness of III. So just that cart will get you by for quite a while if you don’t want to expand the library.
System updates over the years have added some extra fun QOL to the Evercade, which are reflected here on the EXP-R. Button remapping is a thing now that works incredibly well, and DIP Switches are a thing for most Arcade games helping to make them more customizable. They won’t make them a cakewalk though, so don’t get your hopes up that you’ll suddenly be able to power through Crude Buster without a hassle.
Cartridge wise, I had no issues fitting any of the carts into my unit, whether that was a first print from 2020 like my old Namco/Technos carts, or a much newer cart like Windjammers. Both fit in snug and fine and gave me no real issues. When it comes to that brick crisis I mentioned in prior articles, I’ve had no carts on my EXP-R die on me that weren’t already dead. The one Evercade cart I had that died and never came back (Piko 4) just refuses to work and it doesn’t seem like any true fix will come for those that are in that dire of a state. On the other hand, my revived Duke Nukem cart still works great and I feel relieved about that, but my revived Indie Heroes 3 cart un-revived itself on my original EXP and is also a big brick, so the EXP-R won’t cast any super duper revival magic on the most bricked of carts.
Nevertheless, I’ve been putting in way more hours into the longer games on Evercade on my EXP-R, with no issues even in titles I have to save state in a lot. (Hi Tomb Raider) So if you’ve been a little worried about cart viability, stick with an EXP-R and maybe not use it on a Super Pocket, (since I’m partly curious if that system’s different means of reading carts is what borked my stuff to begin with) and you should be golden. It also helps that the system doesn’t have a real risk of abruptly dying anymore, which also helps to keep the EXP-R as a pretty darn fun system and one that’s an easy upgrade from the EXP, even if it the R isn’t marketed as one.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the (somewhat) lower price point, better battery, and better comfort feel does help to make the EXP-R a much, much easier device to recommend than the original EXP. It also helps that after my many months of using it on both intensive PS1 games and simplistic NES titles, that I felt this was a more reliable and fun alternative to that original white EXP model, and has been my go-to portable handheld Evercade device outside of any work breaks I take with my Super Pocket. I just really wish the speakers were louder, since I’m bewildered how the Super Pocket’s speaker easily overpowers it.
Sure, you don’t get some Capcom gems like Legendary Wings built in anymore, (and the Capcom Pocket doesn’t even have that one) but even post tariffs, at least for now, the price has gone down a lot since the originally expensive and shaky EXP. I dunno what all the EXP-R Solo bundles will include with cartridges, but even with the EXP-R including Tomb Raider, there are plenty of ways you can just buy a cartridge and be entertained for plenty of hours. Grab either Tomb Raider or Legacy of Kain and you’ll be occupied for a while.
If you already have an Evercade library and your original EXP is still working fine, then I don’t think the upgrade is as essential, but the new grip of the console is still nice enough for me to ultimately prefer, and if you’re considering jumping up from a Super Pocket or just want to pick this up as your first Evercade anything, then this is a no brainer, provided you make sure it comes with a nice cartridge in a bundle. Gotris won’t last you forever, but with cartridges including longer and longer games, this is a great device to enjoy some retro games on!
I give the Evercade EXP-R an 8 out of 10.