Hello everyone! When I announced I wanted to do impression articles on gaming showcases and whatnot, that didn’t mean strictly Nintendo; just whatever I felt like and got into. Evercade is obviously one I’m pretty much for as one with the goal of reviewing all the carts in the library (that I am able), so to hear of new hardware in a risky RAM chip limited environment? Pretty bold play.
Anyhow, let’s break down that reveal video, and just go over my general thoughts and if I’ll even bother to pick one up for SFG coverage…
I actually thought this would be some sort of presentation or mini trailer showing more than just the system and a cart, but I think having a quickie vid and some website info to go over is fine with me. Makes for a shorter writeup while still getting me in the habit of these fun impressions articles. Anyhow, in the very short trailer we got, we saw the Nexus is pretty much akin to the new wireless controller Blaze is putting out in a few months from now for the VS/Alpha, with Dual analog sticks and a fancier design. No Rapid-Fire option on the system, but that makes me more hopeful you can eventually increase the amount of shots per second since the controller will let you do that, and the Arcade games have too slow of an autofire setting.
Right away we also saw the cart shown off with this system, akin to the Tomb Raider pack-in for the EXP-R, and that’s a dual pack of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. Yes, the N64 games. Yes, they work on the ancient clunky OG Evercade from 2020. Yes, they’re native ports to make up for the lack of a N64 layout and difficulties in emulation.
I’m not surprised to see Kazooie here with the Rare Super Pocket and all, (plus Blast Corps accidentally getting mentioned as a game Evercade has some kind of rights to due to preliminary listings of the Super Pocket, so that’ll probably come out on some kind of cart as well) but Tooie actually did surprise me a little. OK, sure, you work hard on porting a pretty popular N64 game to a Super Pocket that you can throw at someone for only $70, pretty darn impressive and it’s clear that wasn’t just gonna be a Pocket exclusive forever.
But the sequel too!?! That’s two very long, huge platformers on one cart which makes it akin to the Tomb Raider titles in terms of scope, and is a very good deal indeed, and immensely talented work by Blaze to make native ports for such a device. As a pack-in game for the handheld with analogue sticks, it was a smart choice and for $200 I think it’s very fair as a bundle option, especially in the midst of a RAM crisis where parts might be gone or higher in price depending on what Data Centers feel like toying with. (Blaze did confirm on their discord server that they secured the components already, so this launch batch will be fine from that at least)
Speaking of launch, there’s a limited edition from Funstock that gives the Evercade N64 Color buttons. It already fully sold out between when the trailer dropped and when I got off work, which would annoy me if I wasn’t abstaining for other reasons I’ll get into later. If anything, I’m pretty proud of blaze for having the fastest selling Evercade CE to date; some of the other ones took an incredibly long time to sell out with the Super Pocket CEs basically rotting on Funstock for months until launch. (The NeoGeo one sold much quicker, within days) Hopefully that means more people into the ecosystem, more sales into the ecosystem, and thus, more license opportunities! I can’t say I don’t dream of Sony letting Blaze use their own Psygnosis stuff, or Konami giving them the PCE library for license, so maybe some of that will happen with this success?
But yeah, the system genuinely looks pretty cool. The two dual sticks are there in placement that gives me PS Vita vibes, the shoulder buttons are akin to those from the current EXP, the EXP Tate Mode returns but goes in the other direction, (Since the right stick acts as a controller, and now you have more buttons instead of just two! Handy for Lost Tomb and such.) the UI got a small little tweak to be fancier, (and still no battery percentage, which is my biggest gripe that I have so far OS wise) and the NEXUS logo is colored akin to the lightbar on the VS, so I presume you can change the colors at will. Yet another system to give the SFG color scheme to! All in all, I think it’s a great upgrade for those who have an older EC, but for those who can’t afford/don’t wanna get this, I am very relieved Blaze is making nothing exclusive to this for the time being.
So, $200, October release, pretty cool pack-in game, so will I pick it up at launch and cover for SFG? Probably not for a while. I’m kinda wanting to just in case the thing gets hard to find come October, but multiple things are keeping me from going gung-ho for it, and some of those tie back to other reasons some carts are being reviewed way way later than I would normally that are Me reasons, and others are just simpler. The simple reason is I just don’t feel like there’s that much on Evercade that needs dual analog yet, or even single analog. I just figured out my Xbox wired controller works in analog mode on Evercade like a charm and tested the games I had that benefited from Analog mode, but they were all fine as-is in D-Pad setup.
The PS1 only had a slim amount of games mandating the Dualshock, so you can play all the PS1 analog games with the D-Pad setup perfectly fine. Glover would benefit from the Analog controller, but that and the Banjo games are the only titles made for a console that needed an analog stick on all controllers. Ironically, I’d probably be using the analog stick the most for those TATE Shooting games, since even digital controls map pretty well to an analog stick for arcade games, but my Alpha already gives me a top tier experience if I wanna feel premium with those games. Thus unless a lot more analog games come out that feel worse in D-Pad mode, I’m not in a huge rush to buy one. There are five more carts to reveal before this thing comes out, so maybe 2/3 of em will need analog sticks, but I’m doubtful since only Red Cart 52 is unannounced and Banjo is 53, and Computer/Arcade games do not need dual analog to function. Knowing my luck it’ll just be Rare Collection 2 or Activision 3 anyway.
…OK, now for the extra bit that’s more of a “me” thing but a bit i’ve only gone over in passing here and will help clear up why I put certain carts/accessories in a delay bin where I deliberately hold off on covering them until a certain amount of time passes, and while yes, I have a huge backlog of carts to go through still, it would mean if say, I’d really like to cover the carts close to launch, I’d deliberately not do so on purpose.
As of now, these are just two companies who put out Evercade carts; Microsoft and SNK. Both have reasons for me to really shy away from covering their stuff on modern platforms, and neither are on my PR list for good reason; I cannot stand what their ownership does. Obviously no corporation is perfect, nor ownership is perfect, nor do normies at a company equal the actions of their dumb executives.
But personally, I just do not like giving oxygen to a company that’s helped in a genocide, been told about it by staff and how to back off/cut the contracts, and willingly chooses to not do anything about it. It ain’t complex foreign policy or wondering how to do it in a way that won’t collapse a voting bloc like political parties have to contend with, (and why it ain’t as easy for them to change as fast as one would like) it’s pretty cut and dry; block services until they stop using them for genocidal shit. Microsoft has been stalling, so the BDS Movement called for people to do the most they can to block and not buy Microsoft Products until they reverse course. Being a cause that’s been dear to me for five years now, I abide by this and that is why I just stopped reviewing Xbox versions of games altogether on SFG. So what does this have to do with Evercade?
Well, Microsoft owns Activision and Rare as companies; those two are still companies within microsoft, but buying anything they license does put money in microsoft’s pocket… as does most other things you do on a Windows machine. As a rare primary Mac user, I’m an odd duck in that I barely have to interact with microsoft stuff. BDS is simple for me to follow for that and other places i seldom/barely use, but some places I can’t avoid using due to the availability of certain items in my town and whatnot, so I do the best I can. Thus, since I did promise to fully cover all the Evercade carts, I decided for the MS/SNK carts to buy those carts used or via aftermarket sources, and review them months and months late; I’m just now getting around to reviewing the Neo Geo Super Pocket despite it being out for a year, as an example, but I likely will withhold the Activision Cart review until the end of the year even though I own it now. Just a me thing really, and I’m not gonna atomize you if you buy these carts or anything (nor will my review scores be impacted at all even if I may add disclaimers to the preludes), but I do at least wanna give a heads up on why I do things the way I do with those companies.
With the Banjo Cart being a pack-in for all versions of the Nexus, and the Nexus itself not having a cartless SKU, I think it’s fair to say I’m in no rush to get one unless FOMO gets me or I somehow get a review unit; I’d still be willing to take one since it’s hardware and the cartridge itself I wouldn’t have to review until later, and that’s what I’d do if I picked up the hardware earlier than I expect I will.
With RAM prices being all sorts of wack lately, I do accept I might have to break my own rules a little so I don’t end up in a situation where in 2027 something happens and I can’t find a single unit for non-insane prices all year. Hopefully the locked in stock also means 2027 stock is in good shape for the Nexus, too. I’m still excited for the hardware regardless, and i’m just glad other people are happy with it, even if the pack-in situation leaves me with a tricky situation, but one I’ll just have to deal with later.