#oneaday Day 436: Evercade

I mentioned this on Twitter the other day, but I thought I'd talk about it a little here, too: I preordered an Evercade. More accurately, I preordered the "All-In" edition, which comes with the system, a carrying case and 9 cartridges, which is all but one of the ones that will be available at launch. (The 10th was originally set to release a little later, but the overall release date was pushed back slightly. At least I think that's what happened.)

I'm really excited about this system. If you've not come across it before, it's a new dedicated gaming handheld from a company called Blaze (who are part of the group that is made up of PQube, Rice Digital and Funstock Retro) specifically geared towards retro gaming. And it's clearly been designed by people who know what gaming colllectors and retro enthusiasts want.

Lovely packaged versions of games with manuals? Check. No Internet connectivity, which means no necessity to download patches or updates to games? Check. Pleasantly chunky physical media that is satisfying to handle and put in the system? Check. Ability to connect to a TV to enjoy these old classics on the big screen? Check.

And perhaps most importantly… stellar lineup of games? CHECK.

There's a really impressive launch lineup for this beast. Companies like Atari, Data East, Namco and numerous others are on board — and, delightfully, we're seeing some games among their respective collections that aren't just the same things we always see rereleases of. The Atari collections, for example, rather than simply being another Atari Flashback release, contain Atari 7800 titles for the first time — including the legendary Ninja Golf.

Interestingly, they've chosen to provide the console versions of the games in most cases, because they fit the device's screen a bit better. Arcade games are supposedly coming a bit later, but for now, the games are primarily geared towards a 4:3 landscape display.

So why's the screen 16:9? For flexibility, of course. The wider screen allows later games that use this aspect ratio to use the full screen — and devices that have an unconventional screen size, such as the Atari Lynx, can also be accommodated by this display. And, as I mentioned in yesterday's Patrons Only video, the Evercade is also going to be bringing back Atari Lynx games in an official capacity for the first time… ever, I think.

I'm really looking forward to this device, and you better believe there will be lots of articles about it on MoeGamer once it's in my hands! There's more than 100 launch games to get through, after all, so that should keep me busy when I'm not playing Atelier games, shouldn't it…?