The Blaze Evercade - 7 Months On

You may recall a post I wrote seven months ago about the Blaze Evercade, a then new entrant into the handheld gaming console market. Well, after steady use of the device and a thorough play through of my ever growing cartridge collection, I thought it time to give you an update on what's good about the Evercade, what's bad and what could be improved. 

The original box. It's kept in a safe place.

The good to begin with and it's pretty much as I said in my original post whilst noting that the build quality has stood up to some heavy use, the screen remains as good as ever and even the battery life has held up to around the three and a half/four hour mark even with fairly steady use every week. Controls remain as responsive as ever and I still really like the hardware. One improvement that has been seen is the ease of which cartridges can be swapped, it's loosened up enough not to be an issue any more. Also, revised firmware has been issued so that controls can be remapped. A small feature but one that some have found very useful, so kudos has to be given for listening to the customer and providing that support.

As for the bad, well, there's not much to say. Really, there is nothing that I would call the Evercade out for after several months of use. The only feature I really haven't used more than once is the HDMI port, which is down to me not being overly bothered about connecting the console to a TV, but as I said, that's just me. It's still a nice feature to have.

Improvements, well, that's a more difficult one to discuss. Whilst I would love Evercade to offer a couple of improvements, I am very aware that this is a device aimed at a specific price point and any changes made to the original hardware might affect that price point so adversely that it would defeat the purpose of the device in the first place. First of these would be a proper glass screen cover, rather than the plastic cover that currently ships. A bigger battery would also be lovely but the current one does the job well enough. Finally, a metal cased version would be fantastic but I am sure that would bump the price up into an area that Blaze would not be comfortable with. As it stands then, these are moon on a stick wishes but hopefully there might be some revised hardware in the future. As it stands though, what you can get now is very, very good. 

The complete collection... so far...

Games then, and when I purchased my Evercade, I managed to bag the first nine cartridges. As you can see from the pictures above and below, I have caught up with the release schedule since then and now have all of the currently available carts. And really, it's the most recent four carts that show the true genius of the Evercade system. 

The packaging of the carts still looks cool!

Starting at cart number 11, we have the double pack of Xeno Crisis and Tanglewood, the former an indie  twin stick shooter, the latter a Kickstarter funded Megadrive title that has since gained a wider release. Compared to the other carts, two games might seem a bit stingy but when it's two titles of this calibre, the equivalent of £7.50 per game is brilliant value indeed, especially when you consider the full price of the titles are £15.99 and £13.99 on Steam respectively.

Who doesn't love a bit of Dizzy?

Then you have cart 12 - The Oliver Twins Collection. Who amongst us as 8-bit computer owners used to look forward to some of the games in this collection? The range of Dizzy titles, both old and new is worth the price alone but you also have classics like Super Robin Hood, BMX Simulator and Firehawk! And if that isn't enough, all proceeds from this cart go to the National Videogame Museum - that's icing on the cake, so to speak. 

I wanted an Atari Lynx just for this game.

Carts 13 and 14 have the same theme, they cover a total of twenty five titles that were released for the Atari Lynx. The first volume is centred around the developer Songbird, the second volume covers Epyx. Whilst not all of the titles were originally released when the Lynx was supported by Atari, it is great that the later games have another outlet for people to experience them. As someone who really wanted a Lynx back in the day (and eventually settled on the Nintendo Gameboy and, for a couple of years, the Sega Gamegear), these two carts finally allowed me to try out those titles that looked so good in Computer and Videogames, and Mean Machines magazines.

I have waited a long time to play this. It was worth it!

This is the beauty of the Evercade. You can have original titles from long gone hardware as well as newer games developed for those same formats. You can have modern day indie titles that may have passed you buy and you can have collections from seminal (and world record holding) developers. There is such a wide variety of titles available on all fourteen currently available carts that there is pretty much something for everyone, excluding text and graphical adventures but hey, you never know!

Showing off that lovely screen!

The good thing about the Evercade is the extremely low cost of entry. For the list price of £59.99 (€69.99 or $79.99) including one cart, it really is a bargain. If you can get hold of the Premium pack for £79.99 (€89.99 or $99.99) with three carts included, even better. The cart prices are low too, £14.99 (€17.99 or $19.99) which could be described as not far off pocket money levels. Note, I have not received pocket money since the early 1990's and that was £4 per week, I have no idea what children today get. Overall, this very much falls into the affordable bracket.

It gets even better though, as Evercade have already announced four new cartridges due for release in early 2021 with Jaleco Collection 1, Piko Interactive 2, Indie Heroes Collection 1 (which includes the awesome Quest Arrest) and Worms Collection 1. This bodes well for even more releases next year. And yes, I'll be adding these to the collection, though I may have to find another shelf as there isn't enough room left on the current one.

There you have it then, the Blaze Evercade remains a brilliant little handheld gaming machine and one that will give you hours of enjoyment over the already wide range of carts out there. It's relatively inexpensive and the value for money from the carts is second to none. It's certainly been the best value gaming purchase I have made this year and I look forward to their future announcements.