System: Evercade Alpha: Street Fighter Edition
Price: I dont know anymore but it’s around 300ish i think as of now before THE SUPREME COURT decides the arcade machine’s destined fate
Release Date: Late 2024
Prelude
We’ve covered a lot of Evercade related things, and I seem to just be on the train of covering whatever I can pick up. Thus, last year when I got a nice Alpha for Christmas, I was pretty eager to give it a review fairly quickly as I had done with other EC devices. But well, late 2024 anxiety/depression, a bit of a backlog, and some other things popping up kept me from having the time to dedicate to covering this.
So rejoice! I feel I’ve spent more than enough time with the Alpha to review it and give my thoughts a year on, and luckily these Capcom cabinets aren’t legacy in the wake of the new Taito cabinet. Yes, you still have to buy systems with built in software to play Capcom games. No, I don’t like it either. Yes, LRG being able to get Capcom after 8 years of attempts mean Blaze could probably do it now, but the future is unknowable. So how does this mini cab compare to the other ones on the market, yet alone as a way to play non-Arcade evercade titles?
Presentation
The first thing I noticed when pulling this out to play is that the Evercade Alpha is not comparable in size to the mini cabinets that have come out in recent years. The Astro City minis, the NEOGEO Mini, and the Egret II Mini all come nowhere near the same size as the Alpha, which is significantly bigger. On the Egret for instance, I can have it on my lap via a powerbank and enjoy it pretty much anywhere, albeit with the buttons being rather small. Here with the Alpha though, this thing is big, and while it can technically be played on a bed, I don’t recommend putting it on your lap with a powerbank. It technically works, but it isn’t comfortable at all.
I feel as a result of that plus some other factors, the Alpha does not have any HDMI-out capabilities at all. Your Capcom games are stuck to the screen of this arcade cabinet and this arcade cabinet only, and you can’t hook up the alpha to anything to use the arcade controls for something else. Mildly annoying to me at first, especially since this having USB-C makes this easier to hook up without worrying about power capabilities like the VS, but using the included power adapter and placing it on my breakfast table made for a pretty great spot for it. You can at least hook up some extra controllers via the USB ports on the front of the unit, at least.
Speaking of the power adapter, that’s the first big improvement with this system! Believe it or not, the EXP-R or VS-R never included a proper power brick with the right voltage. The EXP-R pretty much fixed the issue of the system dying if the battery threw a fit, but all VS models still will get cranky at you if you don’t plug in a USB cable into a brick with the right voltage, and they never included one. With the Evercade Alpha, you get a properly powered brick and a bunch of end adapters from the getgo, making the Alpha setup a much easier, headache-less situation if you don’t have a proper voltage power adapter.
The front of the unit will differ slightly depending on your model. The Taito one doesn’t even have the same joystick type, going for a cute ball-top I personally prefer over the bat-shaped one we have with this Street Fighter edition. Luckily, you are able to open this thing up and swap out the buttons/sticks with ones that will fit if you have the means to do so, which I do not. Either way, you have a neat border around the LCD screen, and in the Street Fighter model’s case, it’s a very accurate representation of the original Champion Edition border, typo and all. You also have a few marquees you can slide into the top of the unit, either to stick with the original SF2 Champion Edition one, or for say, Street Fighter Alpha 2 like I went with. It doesn’t match as a result, but still looks pretty decent.
The buttons on the unit are all nice and colorful, matching that of the real arcade machine too with the appropriate labels matching their respective attack types. They feel great and by default I had no issues with them, although some people do those button swaps I mentioned earlier with Sanwa parts. I may be an arcade fanatic, but I am too much of a beginner with parts to even know the difference between them all, so if you’re like me and can’t mod the buttons, rest assured they look and feel great.
The screen itself is a pretty good LCD screen, making for a great 4:3 aspect ratio. The Evercade Alpha’s UI is very similar to the modern ones from the EXP-R and VS-R, scaled nicely to fit on the Alpha’s screen, and even lets you do those cart combo games since there are two slots on the Arcade machine for cartridges. For the Arcade games included with the unit, they all scale up to the screen incredibly well and as horizontal games, they are crisp as can be and look great on this thing, with accurate sound emulation across the board. Pretty cool stuff.
You’d think introducing a cart slot and thus opening an Arcade unit up to a bunch of platforms would make for some weird scaling shenanigans, but surprisingly the Evercade Alpha looks great with a lot of different games and systems. Vertical games like the Toaplan ones are pretty darn crisp when scaled to the “Original” display option, even if there’s some black bars/borders on the sides as a result, and console titles will generally scale up nicely when in Original or Fullscreen. NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, the Computer games, all look great on this thing and by and large it seems if a game was meant for a 4:3 ratio, it’ll scale damn near perfectly on this thing, with the vertical/tate games not looking that much worse. (unlike the Super Pocket, where they have to be stretched out in order for you to have a chance to see damn near anything)
Pretty much everything I threw at this thing looked great on its screen, with maybe the Atari Lynx games being a little blockier than I’d like due to the weird nature of that screen. Still, even the Atari 2600/7800 titles look good on this, so if you aren’t bothered by the abnormal control layout for some platforms, this is a fun way to play a lot of crisp retro games.
Gameplay
With the visual/audio quirks out of the way, just how does the Evercade Alpha play these games? Well to start off, those built-in Street Fighter games all play as you’d expect, with the default mappings being pretty much perfect. You have the Street Fighter Alpha trilogy, II Champion Edition and II Turbo, (Infamous US difficulty included) plus Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, the only built in game to not use six buttons, all in one place.
These have all been reissued on modern systems plenty of times, so if you own them elsewhere, nothing here should surprise you. Alpha 2 is not the Gold edition, and Alpha 3 is not Upper, so with those expectations lowered, you’ll still find plenty of fun to be had with these games. Super Puzzle Fighter II and Alpha 2 are absolutely amazing to play at home with real arcade controls, and the other Street Fighters aren’t bad either for some scorechasing or 1CC attempting. (except Super Turbo, forget about it there)
A recent update added DIP Switch options to a lot of Arcade games on Evercade, but most of the Street Fighter games didn’t get the option to let you tweak anything, so any such changes are fairly limited here. Don’t feel bad about being unable to change the difficulty on Super Turbo; all difficulty options are busted on the non Japanese versions anyhow.
If the Evercade Alpha was just these six Street Fighter games, I’d be able to judge the Alpha as a pretty fun Arcade toy for Street Fighter maniacs, but not much else and definitely at an insanely high price of entry. (a price that could increase more depending on how current trade related things turn out, especially with Funstock unable to send them to the US now) Luckily, those two cartridge slots do a lot to help save this unit from being a cute toy to a pretty fierce competitor to the Egret II in terms of the whole “expand your library via extra physical goods” thing.
Yep, all the Arcade carts work. You can play the great Taito carts on the Capcom machine, or even throw the Irem cart on this for the funnies. Some games may need the buttons reconfigured to make the games play a bit better, but by and large every arcade game I’ve thrown on this thing felt incredible in comparison to the other Evercade devices, making this an excellent place to play the 20 something Arcade cartridges that currently exist.
One other category of games that I found surprisingly good on this unit, and one I’ve yet to cover on SFG in my Evercade reviews, are the Computer carts. The few that exist now all scale great to the Alpha’s screen, and look insanely crisp on it. It helps that the C64/Amiga both had joystick support back in the day, which makes playing games like Project X, Qwak, Magic Pockets, Boulder Dash and Jumpman way more enjoyable on this thing than you’d expect, and it helps they also look great on the screen, too. If you happen to have some of these carts, you might want to consider throwing them at this thing, as I think you’d be surprised by just how good they’d feel on it.
The murkiest lineup of cartridges for the Alpha are the Console ones. I mentioned how some stuff like the Atari carts play and look great on this thing, but what about when systems get more complicated? Well, the Intellivsion looks crisp on the Alpha as well, but fiddling with the keypad via the select button is an absolute pain on this thing, not to mention hardly any of the games available would benefit from a joystick. Moving onto the NES, things get a little bit better with the two buttons being easy to map onto the arcade buttons, but unless your game has diagonals in it using the arcade joystick to play these will feel quite weird, especially going from the Arcade version of Burgertime to a NES port meant for a D-Pad. Before a recent update finally allowed for them to be played on a TV, this was also another place to play the two Namco Museum cartridges that were otherwise blocked.
Moving onto the 16-bit stuff (since let’s face it, the few Master System games on Evercade play as you’d expect them to), things get a lot trickier. The Genesis is just purely fantastic for the Alpha due to the three button setup. Map A-B-C to the buttons in that order, and you have yourselves a great way to play some Genesis games, especially for the games that are shooters or action titles, with Granada and Xeno Crisis feeling magnificent on this thing. (though for the latter, I strongly advise you switch to 3 button mode) SNES is where it gets a bit complicated, since the four face buttons make for these games feeling rather awkward to play with the button layout, unless it’s something specific like a fighting game or a game that mostly uses one to three buttons. If they use all four, or heaven forbid, all four plus the L/R buttons, you can forget about the game feeling right on the Alpha.
Lastly, are the handhelds and newer consoles. GB/GBC/GBA/Lynx games look a bit weird here, but still control fine due to the limited buttons available. I was surprised by how much fun Blaster Master Boy was with Arcade controls, though stuff like Brain Bender feels pretty strange on an Arcade machine. Trying to play a 3D game on this thing is pure hell, so just don’t do it unless you want to challenge yourselves in Tomb Raider or Buggy, or plug in a normal USB controller. It was strangely compelling with Blood Omen, however. Then you have the native games, and stuff like Donut Dodo and Murtop feel right at home on this, being that they are arcade throwbacks and all, and even the Duke Nukem remasters play great here, being that they were originally PC games that could use a joystick. With that said, Full Void just feels silly on the Alpha. Either way, this thing can play a ton of games, and whether you’ll like how they feel on the Alpha or not is up to you. But if you like Genesis or Computer games, you might find a lot more than just the Arcade stuff to have fun with here!
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Evercade Alpha is a rather fun device. For arcade fanatics like myself with some Evercade arcade cartridges lying around, this is an absolute bliss to play, albeit an expensive one, and the fact Genesis and Computer titles feel great on this too make for a fun way to control these older games. That plus the ability to mod and change the joystick/buttons to the kind you like, really helps make the Alpha a cool device with some serious customization potential for those fanatics.
However as another Evercade device, and one that you might consider picking up to join the ecosystem, the Alpha becomes a much harder sell. Sure, everything technically works on the Alpha, but is it really fun to try playing Tomb Raider here without an extra controller? There are plenty of great carts to make the most out of it, but also plenty that you might end up missing out on because trying to actually sit down and play them on an Arcade panel is a recipe for pain.
It isn’t like the Evercade EXP or VS-R where you can just throw any of the carts in it and they’ll all feel fine, so you’ll have to do more due diligence when buying games here. Thus, I can only really commend this unit for existing fans of Evercade that already have a healthy library built up and really want that authentic Arcade feel, or access to some Capcom games. Street Fighter Alpha 2 may be an outstanding game, but not $300 great.
I give the Evercade Alpha: Street Fighter Edition a 7 out of 10.