Evercade 2024 Year in Review

It’s wild to think that Evercade - this little throwaway retro handheld with the cartridge gimmick - is soon to be entering its fifth year.

In just over four and a half years, they’ve released six pieces of hardware (not counting variants or Super Pockets) and a massive 63 cartridges totaling 528 games (not counting built-ins and secrets)! It might not be for everyone, but there’s no denying that Evercade has been a success in its market. That’s not to say things have been perfect, but Evercade has offered me far and away the best value for my gaming dollar for the past two and a half years.

When I bought my Evercade handheld back in July 2022, I imagined I’d end up with 10 or 15 carts and forget about it after a year or so when something new and shiny caught my attention. Instead, here I am with a full set of carts, several more pieces of hardware, and a bunch of new friends in the Evercade Discord.

But Evercade is nothing without the games. I know some folks collect for shelfpieces or to resell, but by and large folks are into it to actually play the games. So let’s talk about some of the things that happened this year through the lens of some of the games I've enjoyed playing.

Giga Carts

Come on, there’s no talking about Evercade 2024 without talking about Tomb Raider and Legacy of Kain.

Seriously, in 2024 Evercade got some of the most legendary games of all time (plus Legacy of Kain). Can you believe it? When I got into Evercade they had just released some BS from Intellivision and some arcade games nobody had ever heard of. And they worked their way up to this. Quite a feat.

Now of course, not everyone loves these “Giga carts,” which are named for the amount of data they hold - twice that of a standard cart. Depending on what draws you to Evercade, you may be a little bit less enthusiastic.

Some folks just don’t get on with the early 3D games and are worried about a perceived push into more PS1 games. Others may be drawn to Evercade to discover less well-known games and don’t really care about picking up these games, some of which had just seen remasters released on all major platforms a few months before the Evercade release.

Tomb Raider

If you somehow aren’t familiar with Tomb Raider, it’s a 3D action-adventure game from 1996. You play the titular tomb raider, Lara Croft (come on, you have at least heard of Lara, right?). You visit various archaeological sites, carefully navigate dangerous ruins to solve puzzles, and blow away any living (or undead) thing you find there.

Tomb Raider a bit divisive among modern gamers. When the remasters released a few months before the Evercade carts, there was a lot of discourse among the Twitter and YouTube crowds about how the game has aged. Especially regarding the controls.

The thing to know about Tomb Raider is that it is primarily an adventure game, secondarily a puzzle game, and tertiarily an action game. A second thing to know about Tomb Raider is that…well it’s old. Many gamers fired up the Remaster, selected the “modern” control scheme, and reached for their analogue stick like it was Uncharted. Heck, even in the Evercade community folks were asking for analogue support for this game.

Here’s a tip: do not touch an analogue stick for this game. Tomb Raider has less in common with modern 3D action games and more in common with classic cinematic platformers like Prince of Persia. All of your movement (more or less) and all of the elements of the level are on a grid, and the controls are designed to help you navigate that grid.

Learn the controls and lean into them. They will feel stiff and a bit janky, but they will keep you alive…most of the time.

Blood Omen

As with Tomb Raider, the community had a bit of a mixed reaction to the Legacy of Kain cart announcement.

Some again simply don’t vibe with PlayStation-era games. And without the brand recognition of a Tomb Raider, some were unwilling to even give it a chance. Still some others seemed to be disappointed because they had convinced themselves this cart would be something else based on a clue from Blaze and seemed unable to deal with the reality.

Whatever the case, I was excited about this. I had played Soul Reaver on Dreamcast back in the day but had never played Blood Omen. So I was looking forward to checking it out.

Blood Omen scratches a very specific itch for me. It’s janky and melodramatic, it doesn’t look especially good, and the combat really takes some getting used it. But it all just works for me. Despite not having ever played this game before, it still gave me a feeling of nostalgia. Even though it isn’t an RPG itself, technically speaking, it does feel an awful lot like an old isometric computer RPG.

There are several little subsystems at play throughout the game; different forms to take, different spells and items to use, different times of day. And, despite the copious cut scenes and voice acting, there’s a lot that the game just leaves you to discover on your own - or to miss completely.

There’s something about wandering into a tavern just to see a big empty room with a dozen NPCs power-walking back and forth from end to end. Like, you’re trying, I can see it…even if it’s not quite working. And that kind of ambition and confidence really takes the game a long way.

Cult Classics

As much as people may worry that Evercade is all about The Big Names or entirely focused on PlayStation, there were still plenty of items on the menu for discovery junkies and those who perfer their retro games with fewer bits and dimensions.

As you may have heard me say before, I’m not especially knowledgeable about video games. I’ve played them all my life, but the hobby has always been in the playing rather than the learning.

Indeed, before getting into Evercade I had played 27 of the games currently available on the platform and had heard of a further 23 games. That means I had no idea about 90% of the currently library. So by and large, each new cart has been a complete learning experience for me.

During cart announcements, there are sometimes games that everyone is freaking out about like they are as well-known as Tomb Raider, but I’ve never heard of them. I love that Evercade gives me the opportunity to learn about these games that are beloved but not quite household names.

Ufouria: The Saga

Ufouria: The Saga is an exploration platformer for the NES which was, sadly, never released in North America.

You control a cute little guy called Bop-Louie and you need to explore the pretty sizeable map to find items and upgrades, fight bosses, and rescue your friends that will help you traverse different obstacles in the world. Ultimately, your aim is to gather your friends and beat the big boss get back home.

Ufouria is, to me, the platonic ideal of an NES game. The graphics, the sound and music, the gameplay, the…password system. They’re all exactly how NES games are in my most nostalgic memories. Oddly, it made me feel nostalgia for Alwa’s Awakening - a much newer game.

It’s charming, just the right amount of challenging, and one of the best games I played last year.

Batsugun: Special Version

One of my biggest blind spots for game is shoot em ups. While I had played a few in my time, I never really clicked with any and I never really identified it as a genre I was interested in.

Then Evercade started releasing Toaplan collections. The ability to get this kind of curated experience, especially for genres I don’t have a good gauge for myself, is one of my favorite parts of Evercade collections.

You can read more about Batsugun: Special Version in my Toaplan Arcade 3 review, but this game is almost perfectly balanced. The great graphics, sound, and music. The spectacle of a proto-bullet-hell. The tiny hitbox letting you pull off some really exciting dodges and keeping you on the edge of your seat.

There’s a reason everyone was excited to see this on a cart, and now I can see why.

Modern Indies

The thing about old games is they aren’t making any more of them. Once Blaze has licensed all they can license, that’s it. So modern indie games are also an important set of games, cause those are coming out every day.

Blaze tends to release a couple of indie carts per year and it’s always interesting to see what folks are doing with old systems. How they can push the hardware limits or apply modern design principles to deliver something novel.

Compared to 2023, we didn’t get a ton of indie content, with only Indie Heroes 3 at the beginning of the year and an unfortunate indie dual cart at the end of the year.

Some of the games on Indie Heroes 3 were native games - games running directly on Evercade’s Linux OS rather than within an emulator.

Native games are a bit of a tricky subject. They are all built completely differently, with different engines and build pipelines. That means problems pop up pretty regularly.

Corrupted saves from power cuts, control mapping issues on new hardware, unexplained slow loading. Each time Blaze releases new hardware, it seems like it requires coordination with the developers of these games to fix bugs and support is often delayed.

Blaze will be continuing to explore native games in 2025 with Murtop (which uses the same engine as Donut Dodo, at least), but I honestly wouldn’t blame them for pumping the brakes on native until they get some of the issues sorted out.

Donut Dodo

Donut Dodo is a modern indie game in the style of a classic arcade game and running natively on the Evercade. It lives in my brain as a 2023 game since I probably put 30 hours into it while it was Game of the Month back then. But it actually released on Indie Heroes 3 in 2024. And I’ve probably put another 30 hours into it since then.

To my point above about native games, at launch Donut Dodo had improperly-mapped controls on Super Pockets and unexplained long loading times on the VS/EXP. And each took a while to fix. However, everything has been sorted out and Donut Dodo is a joy to play.

Run around each of the 5 stages avoiding enemies and other hazards, collect the little donuts (grab the flashing one for a compounding bonus), and then touch the Dodo’s big donut. There are 3 difficulty modes and after the 5 stages the game automatically loops to the next difficulty. If you’re going for speed rather than score, you can also unlock a speedrunning mode.

This game is excellent and, for some, may be worth the price of the cart by itself.

big2small

big2small is not a native game, but a modern indie for gameboy color.

For folks who may want a break from the fast-paced action of Donut Dodo, big2small offers a well-designed and charmingly-presented puzzle experience.

Control three animals which, when moved in a direction, will keep going until they hit a wall or obstacle. Each has unique movement properties - the ability to jump rivers, move through mouseholes, etc - that you must use to help the others into position over their favorite food. If you solve the puzzle within a specified number of moves, you may even unlock a bonus level.

The puzzles in this game are very well designed, often bordering on devious, but very rarely frustrating. And there are a ton of them, even without the bonus levels.

Home Computer Discoveries

As I mentioned above, what initially got me into Evercade was games I’d never heard of before. And within that, one of the great pleasures of the platform for me has been the home computer carts.

My family owned a C64 when I was quite young, but I don’t have any memories of it. And other than that my first real gaming memories are of DOS and NES. So it has been great to be able to explore this era of C64 and Amiga and MSX (and maybe Spectrum some day??).

These carts aren’t for everyone, but they offer a great selection from common microcomputer platforms. They require a bit more poking at and reading and trying to really uncover sometimes, but we got three good home computer carts this year with several great games that warrant that effort.

Cyberdyne Warrior

But let’s take a break from talking about good games for a second and chat about Cyberdyne Warrior. Just look at that screenshot, ain’t it a beaut?

One of the most interesting aspects of retro games (or modern retro games) is how game devs match up their visions and their ambitions with the limitations imposed by their hardware. And nowhere is that negotiation more apparent than with classic home computer platforms.

Cyberdyne Warrior doesn’t, uh, look like much. Everything on the screen just appears to be vague shapes and it’s not really clear what you’re meant to do. Through copious experimentation, reading the Evercade manual, and maybe even digging up the original manual, you will learn more about the game.

Soon you'll find that those gaps between the platforms aren’t pits - those are the rest of the level. Make your way around the level killing enemies, avoiding obstacles, collecting coins, and tracking down droids. Return the droids to the non-descript “^UP” icon to save the droids and enter the shop where you can buy more ammo, upgrade your gun, buy back health, and extend the time for the level. Save all the droids to move to the next level.

The levels are varied, but the danger is great in all of them. Very often you’ll flip a screen right into an enemy or other damaging obstacle. And everything respawns as you flip screens, so navigating the level can be pretty slow as you kill the same enemies over and over again.

All that being said, once you’ve learned the levels a little bit and know what to look out for, this game is a ton of fun. Tracking down all the droids, knowing when to return to the shop, pushing your luck on the timer so you can upgrade your gun. There is lots to learn about this game on your way to mastery.

Cadaver

One of my first gaming memories is playing Legend of Zelda on NES. Wandering around, not quite sure what I’m doing, not quite sure what I’m supposed to be doing, just figuring it out as I go. Indeed I don’t think I ever got past the 5th dungeon back then, but I don’t remember ever feeling frustrated or impatient about it.

Cadaver…isn’t like Zelda. But it gives me a lot of the same feelings. Truth be told, I’m still on the second level of the game, after taking lots of time and attempts to complete the first level.

Cadaver is an isometric adventure game with some really involved and obtuse puzzles. Like most adventure games of the era, interacting with the world and the objects you’ll encounter is unnecessarily complex, driven by a collection of action icons in the lower left. There are a lot of vague notes scattered around the levels (well…the level I’ve done) to provide hints, but it’s mostly up to you to figure out what to do. And you’d better do it right or you may find yourself locked out of a solution and stuck in the level.

I’ve seen there are some useful guides (and tbh peeked in a couple instances), and there are always YouTube longplays. But for me it’s been an almost contemplative time wandering the rooms picking stuff up and trying to figure out what to do. I might feel different if I didn’t have save states around to save me locking myself up, but I do have save states so it's fine.

There may come a time where I use the guide for more than an immediate unblocking, but for now I’m just enjoying the experience.

Arcade Action

Of course, it was a big year for arcade stuff, with the introduction of the Evercade Alphas. Arcade games have been a big draw for a lot of players and the introduction of the Alpha caused arcade communities to really sit up and take notice (not least of which due to the review units Blaze sent out).

Some members of the Evercade community were a little wary, with the announcement coming right around the announcements of the VS-R and EXP-R making it seem like an inordinate amount of hardware to be shipping. Some are still holding onto their reservations, but I think most folks have seen that Blaze were able to deliver, both on the hardware front and the cartridge front.

The Alpha has been very well-received both within and outside of the community. Unfortunately, the popularity has lead to some pre-order snafus for folks. But folks who have received their units are by and large satisfied with them.

Of course, Blaze made sure to release plenty of fresh, new arcade carts to go along with the Alphas.

Last Mission

One of this year's arcade carts is Data East Arcade 2, sequel to one of my favorite carts. You can hear further thoughts on this cart in my Data East Arcade 2 review.

One of my favorite games on this cart is Last Mission, a weirdo multi-directional shooter.

Fly around the level killing enemies to fill up the star gauge at the bottom of the screen. Bases yield power-ups and alternate weapons, which you can switch between at will. Once the gauge is full, the level's boss is summoned.

Like many games on the cart, this game isn't great. But it does have a certain something about it that keeps me coming back. That's the magic of these arcade carts, it's so easy to just pop in a few credits and have a quick blast.

Mega Man: The Power Battles

I'd really be remiss to not mention a game from an Alpha.

I picked up a Mega Man Alpha and it has been lovely. It's the perfect size for my shelf, the controls on the standard edition are perfectly fine, and it offers a whole new way to play some of my favorite games.

It's worth mentioning that this is a built-in game. Having games locked to specific pieces of hardware is a bit of a bummer. That goes for the Alphas, just as it did the EXP and does the Super Pockets. Though honestly compared to the built-ins on the EXP I don't care about the Alpha built-ins enough to really care that they aren't on a cart.

That being said, I do really dig Power Battles. I know it's not a great game, and it's not a “real” Mega Man game. But it is a fun game.

Take on all of your favorite robot masters in a new and focused way. You don't have any of the levels or platforming, but you have a ton of fun boss fights on tap. With room for a second player if you huddle around the screen.

It's not my favorite game, but it's good fun. Which makes it good as a value-add built in to the hardware. I can't say I'm especially upset not having it on a cart.

Wrap Up

We finished 2024 with 12 new carts and nearly 100 new games. We got some great new hardware, including a neato bartop arcade and the EXP-R which seems to fix most of the reliability issues with the original EXP.

There were some delays along the way, but in the end Blaze delivered everything they promised.

On the software side, we saw an increase in cartridge stability and many folks with “broken” carts saw them start working again. I never had any cart problems so I didn't get to enjoy the fix myself

We also saw the return of the arcade high score and turbo features. High scores still don't work everywhere, but they work most places. And there's still no way to reset the table, which is quite a shame. But it's cool to see these new features continue to be added and supported by Blaze, adding more value to the ecosystem. Hopefully they see it through the rest of the way this year.

We don't know quite what we have to look forward to on 2025, aside from some nebulous deal with SNK. Of course we're getting our Indie Heroes, and we know we've got more giga carts on the horizon. But we don't know any more than that.

But after all this time, I'm excited to see what Blaze has planned for us all. When they say they're excited for this year, I trust them enough at this point to be excited too.