When British company Blaze Entertainment unveiled its first Evercade handheld in 2019, I thought it was a nice idea but obviously doomed. There are a million ways to play retro games for free, a wealth of retro game compilations on consoles and PC, releasing games on cartridges seemed anachronistic, and did we really need yet another device that can play Pac-Man and Asteroids?
Well, wipe the egg off my face because we’re now seven years on and Evercade has steadily gone from strength to strength. Since 2019, they’ve released a series of increasingly impressive devices while expanding their library through deals with iconic companies like Capcom, SNK, Namco, Sunsoft, and Rare.
Now the company that mines gaming’s past is moving into the future with the Evercade Nexus, a new device designed to bring more 32- and 64-bit games to the library. I attended their Evercade Nexus Community First Play event in London, played the Nexus, and discussed the company’s ambitions with Evercade’s own Sean Cleaver.
“They love physical games, they love physical media”
There’s not too much to say about the Nexus, but that’s hardly a criticism. It feels like a premium product. The IPS screen is vivid, sharp, and responsive. I love that it’s easy to switch to TATE mode for vertical shooters, and after a few bouts of King of the Fighters 2000, I felt totally at home. The Nexus isn’t trying to be anything other than a focused retro game machine, but at a relatively affordable $199.99 / £169.99 (with Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie included), it feels like a good deal.
The only wrinkle is the apparent lack of a sleep or suspend mode. You can freely save your state, but ending a session means powering the Nexus down and starting up from scratch when you pick it back up. It’s hardly a dealbreaker, but the Nintendo DS and PSP had sleep modes two decades ago, so it’s a headscratcher that the Nexus can’t do it now.
Anyhow, I’ve long been curious how the Blaze negotiates for the rights to so many retro killer apps. Cleaver revealed it’s not as tricky as you might think, especially as gaming companies are also miserably staring down the barrel of a digital-only future: “For the most part, they all love physical, they love physical games, they love physical media, so they really like what we’re trying to do in bringing back the authenticity of that experience.”
Cleaver explained that Evercade always has and will always be focused on physical devices and game cartridges: “We make sure that we’ve got no downloads, we stay physical, we don’t feature-creep our way out of it, there’s no subscriptions, you just go to a shop or a retailer – which retailers love because we’re bringing people there – and we make sure that that is the message. Right now, by coincidence or not, it’s a message that’s resonating in the mainstream.”
“We solved a problem that people didn’t know they had”
I admitted that I was skeptical when I first heard about Evercade’s plans to sell a curated handful of games on individual cartridges. Why would someone pay 30 bucks for ten games when they could pay not much more for a questionably legal Temu handheld with tens of thousands of pre-loaded games?
“It’s mad, isn’t it? We solved a problem that people didn’t know they had. They didn’t know that too much choice was ruining their fun until they didn’t have that choice anymore. Once you’ve gone down that route and you realize, ‘oh, actually, I can get 50,000 games and play two of them for ten minutes and then put it on a shelf, or I can play between 10 and 14 games, but I’ll spend time with them.’”
One of the day’s highlights was getting my hands on Evercade’s new versions of Rare’s legendary Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. These are 60fps “enhanced” ports to Evercade hardware based on the original source code, developed with help from Rare themselves, and with many modern quality-of-life improvements.
It’s the pack-in game for the Nexus, with its large screen and analog controls making it a great showcase for the system. However, Banjo-Kazooie is also on the Super Pocket, a teensy Game Boy Pocket-sized device with a 2.8in screen and, crucially, no analog stick. The idea of playing Banjo with a D-pad feels blasphemous, so I wondered if the team had any qualms about this release:
“We did a lot of testing and worked with Rare directly to make sure the experience was good. Obviously, you have to make concessions with some of the controls, but it worked really, really well. Rare’s wealth of knowledge about that game just made it easy for us to make a port and for everyone to be happy. I think a lot of people were pleasantly surprised by how well it ported.”
I’ve had some decent hands-on time with Banjo on the Super Pocket and, though I’d always prefer to play it with an analog stick, it plays fine enough with a D-pad and four face buttons. I’m not sure how well I’d do on Super Pocket in the tricky final battle against Gruntilda, but it was at least enough to get me through most of Mumbo’s Mountain.
Evercade’s future looks bright. It has a killer library, great hardware, a passionate community, and its years-long focus on physical media appears to be paying off as gamers loudly grumble about being unwillingly dragged into Sony’s all-digital dystopia. Who would have thought that one of the most uplifting things about the gaming future would be its past?
The Evercade Nexus will be released on Oct 30. The HyperMegaTech Super Pocket Rare Edition with Banjo-Kazooie is available now. The writer attended the Evercade Nexus Community First Play as a member of the public.
