Evercade - buy your retro games on carts for this thing

[Hellfleck]

first hit on the "Namco Collection" gave me : 9,99€ Gameboy Advance Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary ... so 20 $ seems somewhat unreasonable

 

[PowerGod]

There was a Samurai Pizza Cats game? Wow! I liked the Anime or better, the edited Cartoon version we had here in germany (the original Anime is pretty different actualy). Didn't knew there was an NES game too.

Wait... what ?! I never heard about this before. I though it was just a fan made game O_O

 

[JDTAY]

Anyway, I guess I should post that Namco Collection 1 lineup here for convenience. I dunno, I was kinda waiting on levi to do it.

Galaxian
Pac-Man
Xevious
Mappy
Dig Dug
Star Luster
Battle Cars
Metal Marines
Quad Challenge
Libble Rabble
Mappy Kids

11 titles for $20. I think of it more like unlimited quarters for eighty quarters.

 

[levi]

Hmm, I think in the actual arcades I've played Galaxian, Pac-man and Dig Dug from that list (and maybe Xevious once). And I certainly never put anywhere near eighty 10p pieces into them, it's actually more like I've played the three (or four) of them less than a dozen times in total. I was more interested in seeing how they compared to the home ports I already had access to.

That said, I did buy Williams Arcade Classics on the Dreamcast for probably something like the same price, and that only comprised six games, but I could play an official release of Defender for far longer than any of those Namco games.

But anyway, my guess at Pac-man was right after all!

 

[fusion_power]

Wait... what ?! I never heard about this before. I though it was just a fan made game O_O

You missed alot then. I recommend to check Youtube for both, the american and the original japanese intro for instance. Great and funny show anyways. ^^

 

[JDTAY]

Hey guys, Evercade tweeted about six hours ago asking for games requests, and have been replying to a lot of requests since then. If you want to get yours in, their handle is evercaderetro

One interesting thing to note is that they say they're working hard on getting modern retro style games on the Evercade. Would probably take quite a bit of optimization to make those games work on eighty dollar hardware, but optimization never hurt anyone.

 

[fusion_power]

Well, it also depends of what the hardware is capable of I guess? What games could we expect from the technical side (ignoring licenses for a second)?

 

[JDTAY]

They haven't really revealed anything about the internal hardware yet, so tough to say. They tell people who want to develop their own games for Evercade to email them though.

My first thought about modern retro was Stardew Valley, but at one and a half GB, I don't know if it would fit on their carts. Plus, no online multiplayer on Evercade. Hmmm...
[doublepost=1559399006,1559398232][/doublepost]Well, one more thing I should note: The exact request posed to them was for "original" retro style games. So maybe this doesn't apply to the modern retro style games already out there. But yes, they said they're "working hard" on getting original games for Evercade.

 

[levi]

Well, it also depends of what the hardware is capable of I guess? What games could we expect from the technical side (ignoring licenses for a second)?

Not a lot I reckon. So far of their official releases we've only really seen VCS 2600 stuff and stuff that I expect is the NES versions only. Even indie games as old and apparently simple as VVVVVV didn't run as well on my GHz pandora as my i686 laptop last time I tried it, so I reckon something like that's far beyond what this Evercade hardware can do. VVVVVV has at most 4 colours in it's dynamic palette I think, although it does run very fast, and is kind of a twitch game.

 

[fusion_power]

VVVVVV has actualy surprising high hardware requirements compared to it's visual appearence. I remember that the Pandora-port had some slowdowns without overclocking. Could be caused by the port though. Not many "retro" games seems to really have retro hardware requirements. Stardew Valleys already needs 500MB on the disc? For sound/music I guess?
I hope we get detailesd Evercade hardware specs. I don't trust such projects much when they don't tell what's actualy under the hood.

 

[pmprog]

I remember playing Convoy, which is pretty "basic", not just in art style, but game play (don't get me wrong, it's a lot of fun), but the first time it tries to do an explosion - which is a particle effect with squares - it's grinds one of my low power PCs to a halt for about 5 seconds. Once it's done, it kinda runs okay again.

Looking through the games list, I noticed Midnight Resistance! One of my favourite platform shooters, but it has a crazy control scheme and I've never really got the MAME version sussed on my desktop. So I'm wondering if they've got a reconfigured MAME, or they're running a ported version

 

[levi]

Good spot, Midnight Resistance never had a 2600 or a NES port; the only console it appeared on was the Megadrive. It did get ported to various 8-bit home computers from the ZX spectrum via the Amstrad 464 to the C64, so perhaps they're emulating one of those instead. Remains to be seen I guess.

 

[JDTAY]

Namco Collection 2 just announced. Galaga, Druaga, Dig Dug II, a couple of Splatterhouses... Looks p good.

 

[levi]

Full list for the Namco 2 collection is:

Galaga
Pac-Attack
Tower of Druaga
Phelios
Dragon Spirit (the New Legend)
Dig Dug 2
Burning Force
Weapon Lord
Warp Man
Splatterhouse part 2
Splatterhouse part 3

Now I've no idea what they're actually emulating for those games. Pac-attack never had an arcade release, but did get released on Megadrive and SNES, while on the other hand Tower of Druga only had an 8-bit release alongside it's arcade release. Splatterhouse part 2 and 3 were Megadrive exclusives too.

Those numbered boxes at the top suggest they're NES ports.

I'll just note that thus far we've not seen any of these games running, so we don't yet know the quality of the emulation.

Edit: And Dragon Spirit: The New Legend was a disappointing NES sequel, not the game you played on your ST.

 

[Hellfleck]

almost a 1:1 list of the games for this one https://www.myarcadegaming.com/collections/mini-player/products/namco-museum-mini-player

damn that one looks sexy actually

 

[JDTAY]

So, uh, it's been a while...

Evercade just announced a collection of ten indie games by the same studio, Megacat.

Also, they're teasing something for tomorrow on YouTube.

 

[levi]

You can buy some of those Megacat games on Dragonbox, and some that aren't on there. I'm rather interested in what they'll charge for this though, those game in an actual cart things tend to go for the sort of prices that one of these evercade carts have been going for thus far, so they could easily charge up to about $100 for that cart, but hopefully they aren't going to.

Of the games I recognised, Dragonbox reckons they're NES or Megadrive games, and I know Tanzer to be a kind of strider-like shootery thing on Megadrive.

I think they've kind of announced enough games now. Now I really want to see the hardware in action somehow.

Edit: Fixed editing screwups

 

[spud42]

touch of the de ja vue's there levi.. lol

 

[JDTAY]

So, since the last time I checked, Evercade announced a new release date of March 20, 2020. I didn't really expect them to make the original Q4 2019 release date anyway.

They say they've got two new publishers to announce this month. Keep your eyes peeled.

 

[JDTAY]

Piko Interactive Collection 1 announced. 20 games.

Looked it up, apparently this is a more recent company that specializes in acquiring old IPs, including previously unreleased games.