Evercade - buy your retro games on carts for this thing

[JDTAY]

My hype for this started fading a little today. I realized, usually the point of not pirating games is to support the developers, but in this case the games are twenty-five to forty years old, and the developers are likely retired or dead. It's not like buying this will create a market for new retro games to be developed.

I mean, it might be good for people who don't pirate to be able to access games they normally couldn't access. Maybe this will be like a Virtual Console that Nintendo doesn't screw up.

Anyway, still waiting to see what that announcement's like later this week.

 

[levi]

Buying old games rarely profits the developers in any case. If you buy some kind of modern compilation from the original publishers (or those who've bought out the rights in any case) you profit the owners of the title, and if you buy second hand you profit the old owners of the cart/disc whatever.

 

[JDTAY]

Today I learned that their website has more than one page and isn't the most professionally made thing ever.

http://evercade.co.uk/tag/another/

Maybe we can dig around the hidden pages for info.
[doublepost=1555973714,1555971398][/doublepost]Hmm, everything just seems to be example pages for the site's theme. Not sure though, since there are over a hundred pages to go through.

 

[JDTAY]

They just updated their site with their first publishing partner... Atari. A big name to be sure. Also one known to license itself out for whatever spare change you have on you.
[doublepost=1556210734,1556209833][/doublepost]It says the first Atari cartridge will have twenty games on it. Seems reasonable enough for Atari games. Well, I still haven't seen a price yet though. But knowing that they want to create as many "collectable" cartridges as possible, twenty games per cart seems pretty good, since I know they can squeeze like seven carts maximum outta Atari itself at that rate.

What I'm wondering now is if they can get Activision on board with its Atari titles.

 

[EvilDragon]

Atari is no big name anymore.
They're selling their classic game licenses to anyone who asks.

Also, what about that upcoming Atari console...? It's awfully quiet here. Yes, I know they promoted the new Ryzen CPU (basically ), but nothing could yet be seen of the OS, of the case... nothing.

I wouldn't trust anything with Atari right now, as it has NOTHING to do with the Atari back then.

 

[levi]

Yeah, Atari now or at least a few years ago was a 10 man company who got out of bankruptcy by offering an online casino kind of thing. And even then, they're basically the bones of Infogrames (a French company) under a different name. But they do have rights to most of the old early 80s Atari games apart from Battlezone I think.

 

[JDTAY]

Site has just been updated again. Standard edition, which includes system and one cart, is $79. Premium edition, which has system and three carts, is $99.

Also, this thing has Ninja Golf. Certainly there's no way that's anything but a positive?

 

[vcoleiro1]

I think I'll reserve judgement until I know who is behind the project

 

[JDTAY]

Reservations are for fancy restaurants. It's more fun to believe!

Just watch, the next cart will be a Dragon Quest Gameboy collection featuring I & II, III, Monsters, and Monsters 2, both versions.

I mean, okay, probably not, but they also said probably not to Leicester, so...

 

[levi]

According to their main page, the following list of games from systems will be on the first cart:

2600/VCS:
Centipede
Adventure
Asteroids
Missile Command
Crystal Castles
Desert Falcon
Canyon Bomber
Gravitar
Double Dunk
Steeplechase
Night Driver
Tempest
Video Pinball
Aquaventure
Swordquest
Yar's Return (new sequel to the famous game first seen on a shitty flashback console)

7800:
Alien Brigade
Food Fight
Motor Psycho
Ninja Golf

I'm disappointed we're not getting the arcade original games of some of those 2600 games, specifically Tempest and Crystal Castles. I've not seen the 2600 versions of those games, but I don't expect them to be able to replicate the flair of the arcade games.

 

[JDTAY]

Oddly enough, the number one complaint in the comments of Nintendo Life's coverage of this seems to be the circular d-pad. I don't think most people realize that circular d-pads aren't inherently bad, it just depends on how well they're made. I had a Genesis CDX with two six-button controllers with circular d-pads growing up, and those were so comfortable and accurate, it spoiled me for life. Nintendo cross d-pads all feel like they're trying to kill my thumbs by contrast.

Plus, I know another certain upcoming handheld with a circular d-pad which is poised to rock our worlds...

 

[PowerGod]

Oddly enough, the number one complaint in the comments of Nintendo Life's coverage of this seems to be the circular d-pad.

...and I was thinking it was the only good thing... I still can't understand what's the point in using cartridges by now...

 

[JDTAY]

Because cartridges always work. If the Wii wasn't successful enough to keep its digital store going, what makes you think anything today will be? I'm tired of temporary gaming.

I wanna take it a step even further though. Imagine this: Console or handheld that runs entirely on hardware that's inside each game cart. Future-proofing finally achieved. A total pain to pirate too. Someone's gonna do it eventually, right? I mean, designing custom hardware for each game used to be practical enough for arcades, why not for consoles?

Edit: I guess plug-and-play already qualifies as this though, and doesn't use cartridges. So yeah, maybe we can get rid of carts. Just as soon as they release plug-and-play Skyrim...

 

[vcoleiro1]

Word on the street is that pqube -> FunstockRetro are behind the Evercade

 

[andyB911]

Word on the street is that pqube -> FunstockRetro are behind the Evercade

Thats a skill - making 16 mins of video out of what is about 30 secs worth of information! On topic, mildly interested at this point...

 

[PowerGod]

Because cartridges always work.

Well, even USB sticks or SD...

 

[pmprog]

My money is on the cart being USB mass storage with a custom connector

 

[levi]

Because cartridges always work. If the Wii wasn't successful enough to keep its digital store going, what makes you think anything today will be? I'm tired of temporary gaming.

I wanna take it a step even further though. Imagine this: Console or handheld that runs entirely on hardware that's inside each game cart. Future-proofing finally achieved. A total pain to pirate too. Someone's gonna do it eventually, right? I mean, designing custom hardware for each game used to be practical enough for arcades, why not for consoles?

Except for NES carts, gotta blow with a little spit to get those to work sometimes.

But yeah, I have a few homebrew apps installed on my Wii, and use it to image and then play my old gamecube discs, which you can only take from my cold, dead hands. Screw anything online only, or even stuff that has online registration that breaks when they finally turn the servers off.

Some old LCD-based games used to have all of the gubbins in the game cart and only the controls in the shell. They were almost all unmitigated disasters in the main, but that's probably got more to do with Tiger electronics game making nous I reckon.

 

[fusion_power]

I actualy like this retro-cartridge idea. You have a collection of multiple original games on a cartridge, you can collect many different cartridges (if available of course). You have different systems on a single Handheld, just like a "normal" Retro/Emulation device but with licensed games that are conserved on an removable hardware card (unlike certain Nintendo Retro devices).
I can imagine to see various incarnations of this device, to emulate more powerful devices. Only the cartridges should be downwards compatible on these devices.

 

[JDTAY]

They seem to be in the middle of updating their site again. I see a Q4 2019 release window and a new page full of Atari GIFs.
[doublepost=1556650367,1556632619][/doublepost]They've updated their FAQ. Before it said they would be announcing three publishers this month, now it just says that they've announced Atari and will be announcing three more "shortly".

Already moving the goalposts, are we, Evercade? Uh-huh. I see how it is.