(Game Sack Theme) - Hello, and welcome to Game Sack. Gonna check out the Evercade today. And this thing just showed
up in the mail a few days ago with a whole mess of games and it surprised the hell out of me. Turns out that I have a
bunch of emails about this that I didn't read. I'm sorry about that, but I really wasn't gonna
cover it but then I thought, let's just see what the
Evercade is all about. So let's take a closer
look at the system itself. (bright upbeat music) Evercade is a handheld system
made by Blaze Entertainment who are based in the UK. You can play games on the built in 4.3
inch widescreen display or on your TV in 720P
by using an HDMI cable. As for the controls, it has
a Super Nintendo style layout with the diamond configuration
and two shoulder buttons though the names of the buttons
are in different places. The system uses
interchangeable game cartridges with multiple games on each. I do like the plastic clamshell cases as well as the fact that
manuals are included with them. There are two versions of the Evercade. The lowest cost one is 80 US dollars and includes just one game. The premium version costs $100 and it comes with three
games right in the box. Each game cartridge is advertised
the selling for $20 each. The system also comes
with a USB charging cable. On a full charge, they claim
about four to five hours of battery life which isn't a ton. However, based on my test,
that is pretty accurate. This system does not however, come with a mini HDMI
cable that you'll need if you wanna play games on your TV. Internally the Evercade is using a 1.2 Ghz Cortex A7 ARM processor
for its emulation duties. The screen resolution is 480x272 pixels, which is the same as a Sony PSP. Provided is a menu button which allows you to set the brightness
for the built in screen as well as select if you wanna play games in the original size or stretch to 16:9. During the gameplay, the menu button can give
you a few more options. First and foremost are the save slots. You can also adjust the picture size as well as exit back to the
main menu of the cartridge. As for the quality of the
game screen itself, it's fine. I mean, the colors
generally look pretty good. But since it has non integer scaling, there's a bit of shimmering
during the scrolling on pretty much every game. Fortunately, it seems to
be a fairly quick screen as I don't notice much blur at all. Playing via HDMI is much
preferred in my opinion. Unfortunately, there
are no scaling options. So that means you'll
get varying pixel sizes due to the non integer scaling, and again shimmering in the scrolling. The emulation is mostly fine. The Genesis emulator is called BlastEm which is a cycle-accurate
emulator on the PC, which I've personally never tried. What's cool though, is that
it was ported to the Evercade by the emulator author himself. Sadly, this particular
emulator is extremely blurry, especially when you're
connecting it via HDMI. I can't seem to find any information on what other emulators are used here. The sound emulation is mostly okay, but there are some issues
which I'll get into when I talk about the games. From what I understand, the emulators reside on
each cartridge itself, so it's possible for a set
of games to use a newer and better emulator in the future. Going back to the controls. You can't change the defaults at all. For example, NES games
use these two buttons and I'd rather use these two. The Genesis uses A, B and Y. Playing Genesis games on any controller with a diamond configuration like this is usually not the best experience. As for the buttons themselves,
they feel pretty good. Even the D-pad is nice. I do not enjoy how the menu button is right below the D-pad however. It's extremely easy to
accidentally hit during gameplay especially when you're
playing a fighting game. I've also accidentally
hit the Start button which is below the A button. It's really easy to do. These buttons should all be lower. I do like how the power switch
is an actual physical switch instead of the push and hold nonsense that we usually get these days. (bright upbeat music) Okay, let's keep in mind that this is a relatively low cost device so we can't go in expecting something like the PlayStation Vita, which still doesn't have ideal
button and stick placements. Anyway, let's check out
all of the games I received for this system. (bright techno music) Atari Collection 1
comes with every version of the Evercade so let's start here. This has 20 games on it, including Centipede,
Adventure, Alien Brigade, Asteroids, Missile
Command, Crystal Castles, Food Fight, Desert Falcon,
Motor Psycho, Canyon Bomber, Gravitar, Double Dunk,
Ninja Golf, Steeplechase, Night Driver, Tempest,
Video Pinball, Aquaventure, Yars' Return and Swordquest Earthworld. All of these are original
Atari 2600 and 7800 games. The ones that originated in the arcade are represented by the 2600 versions here. Most of these games were before my time and although I played Atari as a kid, I always enjoyed the games
that were in the arcade about 100 times more. So most of the games that
are on this cartridge don't personally appeal to me very much. The A button acts as the
button in the Atari 2600 games. But be careful. Pressing the X button
resets the 7800 games and it happened to me more
than once 'cause I'm an idiot. Yars' Return is on here
which was released in 2005. My favorite game on this
collection is probably Ninja Golf for the 7800. You hit the ball and you have
to deal with ninjas and frogs and other evil things on your
way to wherever the ball lies. As a golf game, it's actually not bad. As a ninja game, it kind
of gets boring quickly. (low quality 7800 sound effects) Interplay Collection 1 comes
with the premium version of the Evercade. It has six games including
the first Clayfighter, Earthworm Jim, Battle Chess, Boogerman, Incantation and Titan. Clayfighter is the Super Nintendo version and it's not the Tournament
Edition unfortunately, and it plays fine on the Evercade. Earthworm Jim is the Genesis version. I feel this is much better
than the Super NES version except for the controls
provided here on the Evercade. Even when changing them
in the option screen, I can't find anything that
works well for this game as I can't set anything to the X button which severely hurts playability. The Super Nintendo version probably would have been
preferred because of the control. But actually, no. I'll get to that later. Boogerman is the Super Nintendo version and the controls are messed up too; button A jumps and button Y attacks. So imagine using your thumb
like this for the entire game and no, you cannot change the controls. Incantation is a Super NES game where you control a little wizard. Once again, A jumps and Y attacks which makes playing this one a huge chore. I think I might be able to
get into this one a lot more if the button mapping wasn't horrible. Battle Chess seems to be the NES version but I've never played any
version before honestly. Regardless, it plays fine if a bit slow. Finally Titan is an NES game which kind of is a more
advanced take on Breakout and also less interesting than Breakout. This cartridge could have
been a lot better I feel. (playful upbeat music) Data East Collection 1 is the third game included with the Premium
Pack and I love Data East. It includes 10 games: Bad Dudes, Burger Time, Midnight
Resistance, Side Pocket, Karate Champ, Joe and
Mac 2, Fighter's History, Two Crude Dudes, Magical
Drop 2 and Burnin' Rubber. Sadly, every game on
here is the home version instead of the arcade. This is especially disappointing
with Two Crude Dudes which went through significant downgrades during the port home. By the way, Two Crude Dude
started out sounding fine but soon sound changed to this. (game screeching) Restarting the game fixed it. And while I like the Genesis
version of Midnight Resistance more than the arcade version, especially when it comes to
the control and the sound, the Evercade button mapping
practically ruins the game. I was able to sort of get used to it, but it's still not very optimal at all to be jumping with the Y button. They just didn't put much
thought into porting these games like at all. Side Pocket is a Super Nintendo
version and it plays fine. I really enjoy this game. Joe and Mac 2 started out sounding fine, but soon the sound disappeared completely. Overall, there's just so much
potential in this package, but they came up short by
including the inferior versions of most of the games. And not to mention the
horrible button mapping. - [Announcer] Round two, fight! (upbeat music) Dynamite! - Technos Collection 1
comes with eight games: Double Dragon, Double Dragon 2, Renegade, Super Spike V'ball, Super Dodgeball, Crash 'N the Boys Street
Challenge, Super Double Dragon and River City Ransom. Double Dragon is the NES version and the first thing I noticed is that the A and B buttons are backwards. The button labeled A on the Evercade is the same as the button
labeled A on the NES pad. That is a huge flaw. But for this particular
game, you can get used to it. Double Dragon 2 however,
which is also the NES version is almost completely
broken because of this. On the NES, button B attacks to your left and button A which is
to the right of button B attacks to your right. It feels very natural. Here it's backward, so the left button attacks to your right and the right button to your left. I can't believe that
they didn't catch this and I can't play it well like this at all. Of course Renegade is
the NES sport as well and it also suffers from
these broken controls. This is a hard enough game as it is. River City Ransom works well enough despite the backwards controls. That's a good thing too
because this is a great game. Super Dodgeball is here in
all of its flickering glory, and you can't increase the
sprite limit on the Evercade. I like this game on the Neo
Geo, but not really on the NES. And here's Super Double Dragon, which is a Super Nintendo game. This game has absolutely no audio. I rebooted it, and then
suddenly, it had sound. The Super NES emulation seems fine here other than the odd button placement, but that doesn't really hurt this game. And this is a pretty good game, even if it's slow and clunky. I think it might be my
favorite one on the cartridge. Still, overall, I don't highly recommend Technos Collection 1. (mediocre music) So as you can tell, I have quite a few serious issues so far. But this next collection
might be interesting as it has a lot of forgotten games from the 8 and 16-bit eras. Let's check it out. (upbeat music) Piko Interactive Collection
1 has 20 games on it. If you didn't know, Piko is a publisher that has been buying up
rights to tons of old games including overseas Homebrew games and a few others that were never released. Included here are Switchblade,
Dragon View, Top Racer Power Punch II, Brave Battle Saga, 8 Eyes, Nightshade,
Radical Rex, The Humans, Dork and Ymp, I think it's pronounced, Magic Girl, Water Margin, Iron Commando, Drakkhen, Tinhead, The Immortal, Power Piggs of the Dark Age, Canon - Legend of the New Gods, Way of the Exploding Fist and Jim Power - The Lost Dimensions. You remember 8 Eyes
from the NES, of course. I mean, who possibly couldn't? The problem is yep, you guessed it, the controls are now backwards. This seems to be an ongoing thing that plagues all games on the Evercade. Brave Battle Saga is an
RPG for the Mega Drive which was translated. The title screen says
Legend of the Magic Warrior and the splash screen
says Brave Battle Saga. Oh well, whatever. Unfortunately, the game
audio soon changed to this. Canon - Legend of the New Gods
is another translated RPG. This time the sound went completely away just after starting the game. Jeez! Drakkhen is a very early
RPG for the Super Nintendo. I remember renting it and
not liking it very much. Interesting that it uses a
polygon landscape though. It's pseudo sequel called
Dragon View is also here. This one is better and yes,
it still uses polygons. It also has side view action sequences which have you jumping with A and attacking with Y. Iron Commando is a fairly mediocre and kind of choppy Super
Nintendo beat em up. Even the Genesis version
of The Immortal is here. I'm just amazed that the NES
version isn't here instead. The Super NES version of Jim Power is here and it still has the painful scrolling. Now I've heard that they plan to fix this for a future release, but they certainly
didn't for this version. Magic Girl is an average vertical shooter for the Mega Drive. It kind of hurts my eyes
sometimes with how choppy it can be, but it plays okay. The Genesis version of
Radical Rex is on here. I doubt they wanted to use
the space it would need for the Sega CD soundtrack,
and that's fine. It's just Radical Rex. I started up some Genesis
homebrew game called Switchblade. As I was trying to figure out what to do, the sound decided it wanted to fail. (ominous music) Tinhead is on here and
it's the Genesis version. There's not really much
more to say about Tinhead that I haven't before. Top Racer used to be Top
Gear on the Super Nintendo. I guess they had to rename
it for one reason or another. I really liked this game. Okay, check out the
control setup I chose here. I used the bottom three buttons and have nothing selected
for the top button of the diamond configuration. Will the game respect my
desired control scheme? NOPE! Gas is where I assigned it. Nitro is where I assigned it. But the brakes are button Y which is at the top of
the diamond configuration. It's like they go out of their
way to break the controls for every single game. Water Margin is a Homebrew
game on the Mega Drive that plays like Knights
of the Round from Capcom. We've talked about it before on the show. (upbeat music) Next up is Namco Museum Collection 1. This is gotta be good, right? Overall, it has a decent
collection of games, I suppose. It has 11 titles:
Galaxian, Pac Man, Xevious, Mappy, Dig Dug, Star Luster, Battle Cars, Metal Marines, Libble
Rabble, Quad Challenge and Mappy Kids. Battle Cars is a Super Nintendo game that was only ever
released in North America. Unfortunately, the sound failed soon after I started the game. And then the entire game completely froze. Lovely. Dig Dug is on here. I love Dig Dug. You can't go wrong here. Galaxian is also on here. Of course these are the NES
versions and not the arcade. I've never played Libble Rabble before, but here it didn't have any sound at all. Mappy Kids is here and until
now this game was only released in Japan on the Famicom. Unfortunately, the jump and
action buttons are backwards here on the Evercade. Metal Marines is a Super NES strategy game and yet another title but
started up with no sound at all. Pac Man is here and of
course, it's the NES version. The Evercade could
easily emulate the arcade but I think it's because they
already have an NES emulator and don't wanna make an arcade
emulator for each game here. I mean, it's a lot cheaper
and easier that way. Quad Challenge is a slightly
interesting Genesis game that I've always been slightly
fascinated with, slightly. Is Namco Mmuseum Collection 2 any better? Well at least the sound
worked for the first time for every game on this one. This one also has 11
games: Pac-Attack, Galaga, Warp Man, Dig Dug II, The Tower of Druaga, Burning Force, Phelios, Weapon Lord, Dragon Spirit, Splatterhouse
2 and Splatterhouse 3. Of course once again, it's the home versions where applicable. I've always kind of enjoyed Burning Force and it plays well enough on the Evercade. I still don't like the
music in stage two very much but the other stages make up for it. (super crappy music) Pac-attack is an interesting puzzle game that can be pretty fun
for a minute or two. Dragon Spirit is here
and it's a great game. The NES version is good, but I kind of wish they
had a PC Engine emulator for this one. A lot of people really love Weapon Lord but I can never really get into it no matter how many times I try. The Super Nintendo version
is represented here. Warp Man has you controlling
what looks like a space Dig Dug shooting down a prerequisite
number of enemies. And Phelios is as tough as ever. (super scary music) Okay, okay. I've accepted that all the games
need to be the home version if they're based on an arcade game. Also, the best cartridge for the system is coming up in this next segment. It'll be the last collection
of games I talk about. (bright upbeat music) Next is Atari Collection 2
which has another 20 games. Basketbrawl, Yars' Revenge, Solaris, Centipede again, but
this time for the 7800, Asteroids, same deal, Demons to Diamonds, Desert Falcon, Haunted House, Sprintmaster, Radar Lock, Millipede, Submarine Commander, Planet Smashers, Realsports Tennis, Wizard, Air Sea Battle, Bowling, Street Racer, Dark Chambers and Human Cannonball. Many of the same things that I said about the first collection
can be applied here, but this one is definitely a
lot more interesting to me. I was intrigued to see
more 7800 games on here like Desert Falcon, which
is Atari's answer to Zaxxon. It was also fun playing
the upgraded versions of Asteroids and Centipede. Basketbrawl kind of sucks though as no matter how much I
punched the other guys, I can't get the ball. I think somehow I was
able to score though. It was probably my teammate that did it. Solaris is an interesting game released late in the life of the 2600. I remember seeing commercials
on TV for this one. I'm gonna have to read the
instructions on how to play it so I can figure out what to do. Radar Lock is pretty
ambitious for the 2600 but that's not surprising considering it was released in 1989. And of course the classic,
Yars' Revenge is on here. (game buzzing and stuff) Now it's time for Interplay Collection 2 coming at you with six more games. Claymates, Earthworm
Jim 2, Clay Fighter 2, Prehistorik Man, The
Adventures of Rad Gravity and The Brainies. I'll talk about Claymates
and Clay Fighter 2 next week on a real Super Nintendo. Earthworm Jim is the
Super Nintendo version. Will the controls be as I set them here? Of course not. The gun and weapon select
buttons are reversed. You just can't seem to win here. Prehistorik Man is a Super NES game that might be interesting
if the button mapping weren't messed up as a result
of being on the Evercade. The same thing can be said
about Rad Gravity here. The Brainies is a puzzle
game where you need to match the colored fuzzball
to the same color disc. It's a pretty simple concept. Unfortunately, it doesn't suffer from any button layout issues. Overall, this cart
really isn't much better than the first Interplay collection. (bright upbeat music) Finally, we have Mega
Cat Studios Collection 1. This one offers up 10 indie games: Coffee Crisis, Old Towers,
Tanzer, Little Medusa, Super Painter, Multidude, Almost Hero, Creepy Brawlers, Justice
Duel and Log Jammers. Almost Hero is on the NES and it's inspired by River City Ransom. The fighting action is kind of stiff but I found the dialogue as
your fighting pretty funny. It seems like a good one
to spend some time with. Creepy Brawlers is basically a boxing game like Mike Tyson's Punchout
except creepy instead. Coffee Crisis is a Genesis beat em up. You control baristas out to
save the world from aliens and people who are possessed. I really liked the animation in this one but sometimes the control
feels a touch unresponsive. Just as Duel has you
playing historical figures like Abraham Lincoln,
who of course is a robot, you basically just shoot down enemies. I got bored pretty fast with this one as there's not a lot of variety. Log Jammers is an NES game
that seems to be inspired by Windjammers on the Neo Geo except that this one is really
twitchy and hard to play. Little Medusa is a Genesis game where you need to turn creatures to stone and then push them so
that they make bridges then you collect the stars
to complete the level. One hit, and you need to
start all over again though and it's really easy to get hit. As a result, I didn't
care much for this one but it shows potential. Multidude is for the NES and has you pressing buttons
to switch between two dudes to get to the exit. A much better game is Old
Tower which is similar but has an automatic dashing concept. This one is for the Genesis and you need to collect all of the coins before the exits light up. Sometimes you have to switch
back and forth between dudes. I played this one for a while
and I definitely recommend it. The music is really good too. So that helps. (upbeat music) Super Painter is a NES game
where you need to color the gray blocks by touching them and then proceed to the exit. Simple concept and I like it. You can jump over enemies as well. I played this one for longer
than I thought I would. And last we have Tanzer where
the audio messed up right away in the title screen. I really wanted to play
this so I restarted it, and the audio messed up again! Okay, I'm gonna try once more. (upbeat music) All right, third time's a charm, I guess. Anyway, this game is awesome! And look, I can actually assign
the buttons the way I want on the Evercade, meaning
that it plays perfectly here. Well, except for the
aforementioned sound issues. You run along slashing
enemies and collecting gold. The control is quite good. The graphics are on the minimal
side but still pleasant. The music is fantastic. I want this game on my real Genesis. You only get one life and as I was taken back
to the title screen, the audio did this. Yikes. Overall, I'd say that this was probably my favorite cartridge for the Evercade. (upbeat music) And there you go. That's the Evercade for you. You know I can forgive that they only have the
home versions on here, it helps keep the costs low. And I can even forgive
that shimmering scrolling and the blurry Genesis graphics. What I cannot forgive is
that they don't allow you to remap the buttons
on a system-wide level. I mean, what the hell? That is a serious overlook. Hopefully this can be fixed
with a firmware update, but I don't even know if that's possible. Anyway, what do you guys
think of the Evercade? Are you gonna get one? Let me know. In the meantime, thank you
for watching Game Sack. (Game Sack Credits Theme) You know these Evercade
cartridges kind of look like the cartridges that go into
the Neo Geo Pocket Color. You don't think?
(bright upbeat music) (kick ass rock music) Woooooah!!!! Neo Turf Masters on the
Neo Geo Pocket has never been so intense! (kick ass rock music) Next game! It's Metal Slug on the Neo Geo Pocket being played on the Evercade! Intense! (kick ass rock music) That's right. I'm probably losing my mind. Oh well, no big loss. Whoooooooaaahh!!!!
(kickass rock music)
