Evercade - buy your retro games on carts for this thing


Looks to be microUSB for charging. I wonder if this'll be a target for hacking; generally those far these micro handhelds have been based around rPis and are basically open computing platforms (albeit with limited input devices), but this is a commercial proposition, albeit from a small retro company rather than a multinational (often japanese) behemoth, which tends to be seen as a fairer target to hackers trying to open these things up.
 
Evercade's twitter account has confirmed that the next publisher and cartridge will be announced on Monday. So why am I posting today? It's been two weeks; you know how hard it is for me to hold in hype.
 
So, Evercade announced two new publishers today, and only one of them is Data East. They sure know how to surprise people.

Both Data East and Interplay are on board, folks. Because no new console should show its face without an Earthworm Jim title, isn't that right, Intellivision Amico?
[doublepost=1558382953,1558381896][/doublepost]Those lineups are...

Interplay Collection 1
Clay Fighter
Earthworm Jim
Battle Chess
Boogerman
Incantation
Titan

Data East Collection 1
Bad Dudes
Burger Time
Midnight Resistance
Side Pocket
Karate Champ
Joe and Mac 2
Fighter's History
Two Crude Dudes
Magical Drop II
Burnin' Rubber
 
At the very least, Earthworm Jim and other Shiny titles appear to be currently licensable by Atari. I'm not sure about any of the other 'interplay' titles. Data East seems to have been split up amongst multiple small Japanese companies, so they've done well to find contacts to license those, I think.

On a technical level, those Interplay games look the most interesting. I think all of the Data East titles are NES era or before, but the interplay ones I recognise were most famously SNES titles. Perhaps there was a crappy NES port of those games as well that I failed to notice at the time and that's what we're getting I guess. I recall there was a disappointing Game Gear release of Earthworm Jim at least.
 
Oh boy... Funstock... they were behind the GameGadget as well, if I remember correctly.

If yes... then it's probably just the same thing again.
 
According to wikipedia, the Game Gadget was made by Blaze in Europe, but Blaze has long been one of those trading names that seemingly everyone uses. Meanwhile, the funstock website has a shop with dozens of cheap handhelds they've done previously or simply stock (I've not checked which is which), but to be sure of their credentials I'd need to so some more research into how they actually hold up. At least in your shop you're honest when you read the description which units are a little lacking, say the Atari Flashback mini things.
 
Ah, right, Blaze. Though I'm not sure Blaze is not somehow connected with FunStock, as FunStock ALWAYS had all Blaze products and previews in their shop.
And AFAIR it was Funstock who sold me the remaining stock of Blaze's GameGadgets for a cheap price.

Could be they're not connected at all though.
 
I always remember with a smile the years before I met this forum... when the only console that I knew of were just nintendo or sony... now the number of them becomes increasingly overwhelming
 
I reckon that before I registered here I'd already watched the odd episode of ashens, although to be fair I never actually registered during the gp32x years or the gp2x years, just lurked and watched a few ashens on youtube. And all of that was LCD tat, not anything of the current level, I guess; I blame the raspberry Pi for all of that.
 
Evercade tweeted that they're revealing their fourth publisher exclusively through Nintendo Life on Monday. They also say it's a "good one".

Nintendo Life has been covering the thing since it was announced though, so I don't think this news will necessarily be related to Nintendo. But hey, if it is, Evercade can take all my money.
[doublepost=1558737406,1558727439][/doublepost]Been doing more browsing. Their updated FAQ mentions that their fourth publisher will be a "very big one". Nintendo Life's last Evercade article also says Monday's announcement will be "pretty amazing".

There's still no way we're looking at Nintendo though, right? That's what would amaze me.
 
Well, if PQube, owners of Funstock Retro, really are behind this, Nintendo has done business with them before, what with the Switch games they've published.

But yeah, it's probably a dream too far...
 
So, this guy tweeted Evercade asking for a hint on the fourth publisher, and Evercade tweeted back a screencap from the Detective Pikachu movie where Pikachu has all his notes out.

If they wanted to give me the wrong idea, they have totally done it. All the Pokeymanz games for Evercade, make it happen!
 
if you want retro pokemon get a GBA SP - cheaper, way better form factor (why did they ever quit that design ...) and it has more (retro) games ... also you can hunt / collect them if you seem the cheap somewhere

this is a really weird bird, the design is meh (for me) also renders only, the specs are a secret and given the games they announced it is running some kind of emulation but with a proprietary storage media (thats the worst of both worlds combined)

the pricepoint seems fair though
 
I dunno what the price of sourcing all of the GB and GBA pokemon games would be, and I never managed to pick up a half decent GBA flash cart at a reliable shop (I don't ebay, which probably affects that greatly), but I did get an R4 for my DS for comparison fairly easily, if you wanted to go down that route.

Edit: Regading the SP shape, they next did the micro where the point was to make it cheap and tiny, but after that came the original DS which had a very similar hinge design to the SP. Of course, they had to add flanges to accommodate the controls which had been pushed out due to the second screen, and the undercarriage is a lot bigger largely because of the bigger screen pushing the battery out to the side, but in terms of it's contstruction at least it's very reminiscent of the SP. The DS Lite struck out in a new more modern form factor and pretty much lost the link back to the SP though.
 
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When asked if its games were emulated roms or ports, Evercade's twitter said they were a combination of both, but that they start with the original rom. Interesting, as their website FAQ previously made it sound like strict emulation.

Sorry, anticipating this fourth publisher reveal on Monday has made me chatty.
 
Yeah, AIUI that's not completely uncommon at least in the commercial emulator writing sphere. I remember the bleemcast releases they were going to make for the Dreamcast, the initial release I think was 'tuned' for Grand Turismo, where tuned meant they were emulating the majority of the original console, but replacing certain ranges of emulated instructions with precomputed code. In practice, I think people discovered the discs could actually run more than just GT, and then the makers decided it wasn't worth producing the discs, perhaps due to that but perhaps also due to the complete collapse of the dreamcast market.
 
Two updates. The first is that the announcement of the fourth publisher will now happen on Tuesday. That's only a one day delay; not too bad.

The second is that another dude asked for a hint, and Evercade tweeted back "Here's a hint...", followed by a pizza slice emoji. Now I'm confused and maybe a bit frightened. The next publisher better not turn out to be me.
 
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