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.

The Blaze Evercade

The Starter Pack and 7 additional cartridges.

The Blaze Evercade originally fell into the "wait and see" category when I first heard about it, as I had owned a couple of  Blaze products in the past and hadn't been overly impressed with them. Yet, as early YouTube reviews appeared, it started to grow on me. The reviews were actually decent - noting issues here and there, but on the whole, I got a very positive impression of the device. My only bugbear was the seemingly spongy d-pad that I took an immediate, if unwarranted, dislike to because of the videos. In the end, though, I took the plunge and pre-ordered the Starter Pack and the other 8 cartridges available at the time.

Delivered by what seemed to be the world's cheeriest postman at 7am last Saturday morning, I quickly disposed of the delivery packaging to reveal this:

Are you not excited by this?

The box is good quality and well designed. It reminds me very much of '80's and '90's console packaging that screams about the hardware and software, leaving you without any doubts as to what you're going to get. True, it's quite "busy" but I think it's a good design for the Evercade. The outer sleeve slides off easily and reveals the console box itself which is more restrained. Opening that box reveals the console in a plastic insert and a small Quick Start Guide. Beneath that is the included game cartridge (Namco Museum Collection 1) and a USB to micro-USB cable for charging. No plug adapter is included but it's likely you'll already have at least a few of those dotted around the house. Nor is a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable included either, so you'll need to buy one if you want to use the Evercade with a TV. One last thing to note, the plastic trays in the box are cheap but do the job, though a far cry from the quality of the cardboard packaging.

I can't fault the design...

...though the plastic trays are cheap.

Out of the box, what does the Evercade offer? A 4.3 inch screen, four main buttons (A, B, X and Y), Select, Start and Menu buttons, and left and right shoulder buttons. On the whole, these feel quite good, though the shoulder buttons do feel a little light but give a decent click when pressed. The d-pad is large and actually very good. Certainly any fears I had prior to using it have gone and I find it works very well. Some have commented about the gameplay button layout, leading to a firmware patch to remap them. That's a personal choice but I'm happy with the way it comes out of the box. Around the device, you have a power switch, cartridge port, micro-USB for charging, mini-HDMI for TV display, a 3.5mm headphone jack and volume buttons. There are also a pair of speakers  on the front that provide decent stereo sound.

Start up screen.

The console itself is well built and quite sturdy, measuring approximately 18cm x 8cm x 2cm. It's not overly heavy at 250g and fits nicely into your hands. The plastic is not textured though, so may get a bit slippy.

The screen, certainly on the highest brightness, is well suited to sunlit rooms. whilst on the low setting, it's very comfortable for playing in darkened areas. The screen ratio in games is usually 4:3 as that's their original ratio, which leaves black borders on either edge of the display, but full screen can be selected from the in game menu, as can save and load states for each title. A note of the full screen option - this appears to just stretch the image across the full width of the display that makes a lot of the titles look just plain wrong, so for me, the correct aspect ratio would be the original 4:3 for a lot of titles. Whilst I am on the subject of the screen, the viewing angles from either side are okay, but the vertical angles are pretty poor - not that this is much of a problem as this is a single player system, regardless of whether the titles offer two player options.

The screen is very nice.

The Starter Pack comes with one cartridge, the Namco Museum Collection 1, containing 11 titles. These include PAC-MAN, Galaxian, Dig Dug and Xevious. This is without doubt the best cart to pack in with the console. Given who it is aimed for, these four titles will evoke a heavy sense of nostalgia and draw you in straight away. As for the rest of the titles on this cart, most I hadn't heard of but Star Luster is a forgotten classic in my humble opinion. I also ordered all of the available cartridges at the same time as the console and, as with Namco 1, whilst there were some titles I was familiar with, there were many I wasn't and discovering these was a joy in itself. Several additional cartridges have been announced for the Evercade, taking the total up to 14 at the time of writing and more are planned. These include two Atari Lynx Collections, The Oliver Twins Collection (which not only supports the excellent National Videogame Museum, but also brings back several Dizzy titles), and a Xeno Crisis/Tanglewood double pack, evidence that the Evercade could be a good home to Indie developers as well.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the cartridge packaging. It's lovely. It holds the cartridge securely and the included colour manual for each cartidge provides instructions and a bit of history for the individual games. They are a nice touch and take me back to a time when packaging actually meant something. I don't know about you, but games manuals were often as important (and entertaining) as the games. The cases also look great on the shelf too...

Console gaming how it used to be.

The manuals are very polished and a lovely touch.

Sorry, Bazcardz, you'll have to move when more carts arrive...

Downsides? Well, I would like to see a better quality screen cover, glass instead of plastic. This is a handheld and people will travel with it. I wouldn't feel comfortable shoving this in a rucksack without the accompanying carry case which, by the way, I haven't bought. Battery life could be a smidge better - four hours just doesn't seem quite enough but it's not a major problem either. The only other issue is the cartridge slot itself - it's very tight to fit the carts in and taking them out can result in some worrying creaking from the body of the console, depending on how you leverage the cart out. Evercade have said that it gets looser with use (Oh, Matron!), but I can't help but think that there could have been an alternative mechanism used other than friction. Oh well, it's not a deal breaker and just means you have to take a bit of care, which is no bad thing.

So having played with this for a week, I am happy with the Evercade. The design and build quality are very good and the games selection is varied and entertaining. True, it can be a bit hit and miss depending on the cartridge but let's be honest here, how many compilations (be it music, games or whatever) have you bought where every title was to your liking? The current range of titles covers an awful lot of retro gaming and as noted above, there are plans for several more. Certainly, I get the impression that they're in it for the long run. With the control layout, there would be no issues with games from systems as modern(!) as the Amiga CD32 and the 3DO being released, and I am sure the Evercade could handle those with ease. I would love to see the likes of Guardian and Star Fighter 3000!

You can order the Evercade from Funstock.co.uk, Argos and Amazon. If you are a retro gaming fan and like the idea of a portable console that covers legally emulated games, then have a look at this. For the price, £59.99 for the starter pack, it's a lovely little system and one that I hope to see supported for a long time to come.