Evercade: A new retro cartridge-based console | Ashens 

I used to support a lad who was convinced that Ashens was a pair of talking hands, told Ashens about this when I met him and he goes: Don't spoil the magic.

@@DoctorBastard Yoshikage Kira approve this comment

I mean, I wish I could say I relate. But after seeing him in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and other such movies. I've always known he was more than two disembodied hands.

@@SakuraAvalon that took me a second haha

@@FelineBlue me too. I was about to look for an IMDb page lol

Agreed 100%, and Joe who runs GameSack, and gets really technical compared to Ashens did not give this very high prase, and ran into every issue people are complaining about.

I plan to buy it when it's on clearance. Might even buy 2 and leave one sealed, just for the hell of it, really

@@OnlyEpicEmber BEGONE SCALPER! You will get one and one alone.

25 years from now, future Ashens will be reviewing it as a nostalgia episode. And he'll still have the same brown sofa.

Generally, things that are made to become collectible don't become collectible.

Right!? I was sort-of hoping he'd just scream "DO YOU SEE" for the remainder of the video. Or at the very least a hard cut to the credits and just upload a 30sec video

@Narcissist Its from Red Dragon

I just groan 😐

@@slik1977 No the quote is from Event Horizon hence the shouting of it, Red Dragon he just utters the words, Event Horizon at the end is where Sam Neill shouts it I.e. same way as Ashens.

@Nexy Event Horizon actually mate.

Once you download something it doesn't go away, and it's not like these games are getting any updates. If you download a game, as long as your hard drive doesn't spontaneously die, you have it forever.

Yes exactly. I totally agree. That's what worries me about cloud computing. I need to buy a new laptop, but there's nothing out there that allows me to fully own the software ON A DISK THAT COMES WITH THE MACHINE ...so I can use it forever, especially when I want to completely reinstall everything with MY CHOICES and not all the bloaty junk

@@octodionis it doesn't always work like that. Try completely wiping and reinstalling an OS and then get that and the game fully working again WITHOUT THE INTERNET. software now always requires online activation. it won't work without it. So if the server goes down, disappears or your version is no longer supported, you're screwed. For example; try activating a fresh install of Windows Vista that you use for all your work with all your bespoke software that won't work on Windows10 (so the 'free' upgrade won't do you any good). I hate Microsoft for the mountains of landfill it's creating with its zero support policies. They suck. No wonder Bill left and went in to pharmaceuticals instead.

Tudor Razvan you mean like how my Xbox one x decided to shit out it's hard drive with an e105 error? (That's a faulty HDD error code).

One thing. I like physical stuff, stuff I can touch. The satisfying clunk a cassette mechanism makes when a C-cassette is inserted. Tactile stuff, I suppose.

and a teleprompter to tell him when to sniffle

And here I thought it was black magic that helps him make the videos.......

@@homelessdespot1697 cthulu still helps upload them.

Don't forget the not-too-obvious hat-fishing, we baldies can recognize our own.

And we're watching the 17th take! What a sham, a fraud!

any sane person would use their phone regardless for games ,then u got MAME ,

Well, it is Evercade and not Evarcade.

@@MrBenvenuti it's called Bluetooth

girlsdrinkfeck I just prefer being able to get the cartridges and legally getting games. I don’t need arcade games I’m fine with what Evercade has.

@@girlsdrinkfeck The PSP actually was a good MAME/Neo Geo Emulator.

You'll want the analogue pocket then. That's supposed to come out end of the year.

@@siegfriedmeyke6631 I second this notion

But it DOES play actual cartridges, they are all official.

@@khululyp Official but not Original.

revo k101 does that pretty much if your going to the hassle to get something beholden to cartridges get something fpga based though cause going to the hassle of getting a cart system just to have to live with emulation isn't worth it

I feel like downloading a file is the same, except for stuff like steam and gamepass where they can actually take it away unless you find workarounds, which isn't possible on gamepass :(

The difference between piracy and archival preservation of media is the span of the decades.

@@MemeLordCthulhu gogs for use. Also cracking a game you own? perfectly legal

I think that means you're part of his Cult now

@@kevinm5940 That's how these things work

What are you talking about

@@MannyJazzcats ashens repeatedly says "do you see"

Lynx games won't be in 4:3

These days, manufactures have totally discontinued making 4*3 screens. They all probably just had to make the most of it to keep the costs down.

Also I wonder why all these emulation consoles have crappy low res screens when even the cheapest smartphone have a HD screen nowadays. I think manufacturers just think "old games have low resolution, who cares" ignoring the fact that, as the screen is not the original resolution those consoles had (how could it? they emulate many different consoles), all looks blurry. A higher resolution is neccesary to do pixel-perfect integer scaling.

@@Linkale_ Even then, a TV is at least 400-500px tall. These sorts of things really need at least a 720x480 screen

How close are you in teaching hamsters to play vidya?

Or the donkey kong land series instead of donkey kong country.

Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and Stunt Racer FX GameBoy versions with Super Gameboy color filters. "SEE?! It's not legally false advertising." 😂

good point I agree

Everything about the Evercade is extremely dumb.

Cool story quote boy

Why not just use a GBA?

I would rather stick with my PS Vita. Not because I was developer for it and I have dev kits to load anything I want on it. Just because I really like PS Vita.

Even if companies aren't defunct, I find it very unlikely that person(or a few people) who've actually produced those games back in the day are still working there and if they are working there I have some doubts that they'll get anything out of people buying those modern versions.

@@laerin7931 That's true. The game developers got paid for the work they did and that was that. Even if the license for the game continues to make money years up the road, none of it is going to anyone who worked on the game, only the license holder. Even if the company isn't defunct, I imagine few of the people who created the company are still there, either. In some cases the old company names are just resold as a license themselves.

Pretty much. I can make exception if that particular game is still owned by that particular company and I don't hate that company (Compile Heart still owns some old Compile game IPs, for example) but if they are douchebags like Nintendo or Konami, no, I am not doing that.

@@laerin7931 but ppl who make games don't get any of the money you spend to buy the game anyway. They get salaries Surely by your logic we shouldn't be buying the games then if you truly went by "do the people who made it get any money" You buy the game because you buy the game. For the same reason you didn't pirate it day 1 . Also buying the game shows interest as well as open the possibility of sequels or remakes or enhanced editions (and makes sure a company you like stays in business and continues to make money) i understand not buying a game you already own and i also kinda get this debate if the company is defunct, tho its not as clear cut as when its not readily avialable, but otherwise its just piracy. I mean i pirate too but i dont pretend im in the right

@@DimT670 They certainly get their salaries from the money that gets paid. It's just that it's future salaries. If the game doesn't sell, the studio gets shut down and those developers no longer get paid. After the game has recouped itself and helped the company keep running, it no longer contributes anything to the original creators. I'm also not saying that piracy is okay, but I find it extremely weird when people act like downloading a ROM is some morally repugnant act when the "legal" option is to buy second-hand cartridge from ebay. Neither option gives money to the people who have anything to do with making the game.

The only good thing is that most of the people who worked on the NES were fairly young, so at least in theory you could ask them

When will we get the full libraries for consoles instead of the same 300 of the tens of thousands of games out there

@@SlavTiger or you go to a nice site called nicoblog and you download all the roms and hack a psp

In fairness it's not just the same old games, they have a DIzzy collection, 2 Atari Lynx collections and a Xeno Crisis/Tanglewood cart all coming out in the next wave. Even in this initial lineup there are a lot of obscure games yo udon't generally get on the mini consoles etc. It may well be by necessity but I think one of the reasons I've played it so much over the past few weeks is to experiment with things I've never played before.

One, it's called a raspberry pi 0.

Totally agree, more crap for collectors to buy or have review copies sent to for their RU-vid channels.

Or you could just buy a RG350 and do exactly that and have all of the games on a couple of SD cards.

but i bet its the proprietary cartridge format which is allowing the cheap console production. my vita, with emulation can do everything that this unit can do.

I thought will this get hacked too.

Bit silly making this use "cartridges" when it's just a serial transfer like SD cards and not memory mapped to hardware like actual cartridges. Maybe if it actually had hardware...

@@twoseventhree Funny you should mention the Vita, because its expensive proprietary memory cards were exactly why they could sell the consoles for so cheap. Funnily enough the game cartridges are almost identical to standard SD cards in every way tho. I second this tho, hacked Vita = greatest portable console of all time

The SD card adapter that lets you turn this into just another Retroarch machine would be quite ace

"Maybe we should blame Michael Jackson for making the word "bad" sound so awesome. Or we should have never listened to Lucas about the Power Glove." - AVGN

I don't have any of these games or the original systems, not any more. I'm happy getting this to scratch the occassional itch. But nostalgia is a big thing and buying retro games on cartridges from Argos in 2020 is enticing.

@@stingersplashWhy? You can just load up your Android phone with emulators, and ROMS, and get a better emulation experience once you pair something like a MOGA gamepad(I can get the original version for $5 USD, and have a few for backups), plus no carts to worry about, and you can get all the games you want, along with the actual arcade versions for MAME

@@CommodoreFan64 because downloading, setting up, plugging in, configuring, and lugging all that shit around is a giant pain in the ass and you know it

Commodorefan64 playing old games on a smart device doesn't feel the same as playing it on a console regardless if the console itself is an emulator or the actual console. And a physical library of games look pretty on a shelf.

@@CommodoreFan64 if your answer is just to steal intellectual property and not support the companies involved then you are an asshole.

Yesh have would

Exactly. You're just paying for the privilege of doing something legally, when you could be doing it for free and actually choosing the damn games you want to play from a library of 1000s.

It’s a lot cheaper to just solder a flash chip to the pcb. But I’ll grant you that they’re likely to be using flash. Even the Nintendo switch carts use chips that are mostly nand flash.

Someone needs to open one up and see. :D

Apparently the actual emulators are on the cartridges and not the handheld itself to prevent people from just coming up with a flashcart.

@@JasperJanssen its not that simple to just solder a flash chip LOL you have to be extremely precise with the pins, the flash chip has to MATCH what the device can accept, it has to be the proper type etc and there has to be a place for the flash chip to sit in the first place... lmao

Ah yes the toxic smell off gassing new plastic 😂

I'm several months behind, but the same story. Do you still enjoy yours, or did the feeling pass?

@@Orpheusftw still enjoying ! what a great system !

Sega did that on Steam. Even you can get ROMs after buying and installing.

@@AsyrafFile I've never heard of it before, but if you can drag your roms out of it there certainly is a lot of potential. I'll have to check it out when i've got the cash.

This. So much this. I've thought of an arrangement like this for a long time. No requirement for support or anything, just "person X has purchased a continuous license for their private use of Y game". It's probably a pipe dream, but one can hope.

There's never going to be anything like that, because no one wants to navigate a copyright maze to sell a hundred copies, and then do that again for the next game, and the next... It's just not worth anyone's time.

There's a site called ROMstation that does something like that. Hell they still have AM2R up if you ever wanted to play that

I'll you why I think they don't 1. The developers are too lazy to write the emulators for the systems. 2. The 5200 needs a keypad for some games 3. There could be license issues because of their platform 4. There are a few games on the 7800 like Ball Blazer which use a custom sound chip in the cart, which is harder to emulate proper on some systems.

There are 7800 games on the Atari carts. You can see the Operation Wolf clone Alien Brigade on the first cart he loads up.

My guess is weird licensing things remember Atari has been broken up and sold countless times to different companies so who really owns what even the current Atari sold a bunch of random IP licenses. I know THQ Nordic got the Alone in the Dark IP from them.

They didn't send me one :(

He did mention that he bought it in the video.

Yessss. And payd good money to tell all the good things he said

I didn't get one 😒

The ones they sent out had loads of issues

Replaced with bush snr if I'm not mistaken?

I came back for the same reason! I'll definitely be getting one and the arcade carts to go with it.

I was actually just looking into that. I like the physical collection aspect considering how that's unfortunately becoming a thing of the past, but considering I can perfectly emulate PS2 games and below on my phone, it seems very niche in an already niche market

@wakenbaker-uk whoa, a gay joke, very original

hello i am a fellow exception

I definitely buy games where the publisher promises that there are no microtransactions up front. @_@

thats why GOG is my go to. Unless I missed something, it’s the entire game without any DRM whatsoever. Throw it on an external drive, store it for later - nice.

@@TomJacobW Steam will outlast your usb drive

Evercade aren't actually Blaze. Blaze went into liquidation and for some reason this group bought the assets.

Arcade games are to be released in 2021. Yes it would have been nice if they come out this year.

If it does, i feel like there might end up being a sizeable homebrew scene.

djaxisravenguard even if it doesn’t die the homebrew and modding scene should be pretty awesome.

Just it's physical appearance is compelling me to buy it.

Hmmm, not a great start. Honestly can't see this thing going anywhere... but the clearance bin.

People have so many avenues for playing old games these days I can't believe it's still profitable to make new devices.

shuntaro2408 - Joe has updated his video description to acknowledge that one of his quite major grumbles - keymapping - has been considerably improved with a firmware update, still doubt he would recommend it at all though.

@@10tonhamster Hmm I remember him being most disappointed with the emulation. I believe he had sound and picture issues

shuntaro2408 his description update says no sound issues either once he updated the firmware, so it’s quite an important update. With emulation differing with each cartridge it will vary quite a bit with each game.

@@10tonhamster there are still some emulations issues, nearly all centreing around Megadrive games. But we are not talking Atgames like stuff here. Little bits of sound stuttering in certain games. It's not as perfect as all the RU-vidrs have made out though. Neither is it as bad as Gamesack portrayed it to be.

Because Stu and Evercade are both from the UK?

Fortunately it's been very well recieved. We may well see a home computer collection down the line. I think they are trying to walk before they run and Dizzy doesn't have the cult following in the USA that he does in the UK.

Yeah, makes the logo look out of balance

I mean the President from Bad Dudes is Reagan who did a little treason.

Yeah, I believe that applies to the Western release in general. Fun fact: the good D-pad can be used as a drop-in replacement for the bad one (but not the inverse). The Japanese controller is still much better, but that narrows the gap a bit. (I've never seen anyone mention this, but I did it in 1997.)

You mean the thumb carving D-Pad Nintendo invented on the NES... in Japan?

​@@zgillet I don't see how that's relevant to the conversation considering that Sega's D-pad designs were considerably different from that of the NES. The "thumb-carving D-pad" being referred to here is the one found on the first American and European models of the Saturn that consisted of an awkward and uncomfortable mess of bowl-like structures on top of a raised bump; the Japanese variant is more or less just an updated version of the Genesis/Mega Drive D-pad.

@@VinchVolt Where do you think they got the idea? Or for that matter, all of their ideas? Sega always copied Nintendo. Hell the Dreamcast D-Pad DESTROYED my thumb.

@@zgillet I'm not really sure if you're attempting to shift blame onto Nintendo for Sega's mistakes or if you're trying to accuse Sega of never having any original ideas, but either way saying that Sega *always* copied Nintendo is hugely misleading. Nintendo did invent the D-pad as we know it, yes, but to say that Sega making their own, better version of the D-pad for the Genesis is plagiarism is somewhat ignorant of how technological development works. There is no Toyota without Ford, there is no Apple without IBM, and there is no bicycle without a wheel. Innovation requires not just coming up with brand new ideas, but also elaborating upon older, more thoroughly pre-established ones. There is nothing truly new under the sun, after all. Furthermore, while the Master System and Game Gear were indeed directly influenced by the NES and Game Boy, most of their other systems were meant to compete more with the TurboGrafx (which was a huge success in Japan despite flopping everywhere else and directly led to the creation of the SNES) and the PS1, both of whom were bigger sources of inspiration for Sega than any of Nintendo's systems (the PS2 doesn't factor into this though, as that was first announced after the Dreamcast had already released). Hell, the Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast all predate Nintendo's competing systems within the same respective generations by a considerable amount (1988 vs 1990, 1994 vs 1996, 1998 vs 2001). I like Nintendo and all, but to say that Sega were always copying them is giving too much credit to Nintendo.

You trust that e begging shill lol enjoy your trash evercade

it's hard to go down in quality when you're naturally funny + have a relatively simple style of content, god bless Ashens

The Evercade has been consistently sold out since launch so it's hardly accurate to say no one bought it.

@@obsoleteworlds But are they sold out because of people buying them up? Or are they out of stock because the units they had sold out so slowly that they haven't bothered to order any more? Amazon spain doesn't have any and I can assure you the market for these in Spain isn't all that hot.

@@arwlyx as I said they sold out at launch. Not sure what is unclear about that. You couldn't get one anywhere and new stock is only just arriving this month. I'm sure it would have come quicker in non-corona times but there is absolutely no denying that this sold far better than they were expecting. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Evercade but idea that no-one bought it is ridiculous. How damaging the failure to keep that momentum going has been by being unable to restock for months remains to be seen.

@@obsoleteworlds Out of stock doesn't mean it is selling a large amount though. It could have been sold out for the simple fact they didn't make that many of them.

@@voteDC overall sales figures aren't what is being debated here though. The point is that statements to the effect that it is "an obscure product that no-one bought" are simply not true. Neither are statements that it "sold slowly". Its received a ton of coverage and clearly been a huge success for Blaze. If anything they severely underestimated demand.

This. This console was doomed the moment they were going to push expensive carts to force you to pay for roms. If that wasn't the case, all the other glaring issues with the thing would have been somewhat more acceptable. Seriously, 9 carts listed for sale on amazon right now for $20 a pop. Nearly $200 if you want the whole set. And some of the carts have really weak libraries, making it not worth that even.

If that happens, I'll grab one. Otherwise, the limited games for fifteen quid a pop is just bollocks, especially given the competition.

Lol yeah, wait until this flops and gets cheap as fuck on clearance, somebody will create custom firmware to run other emulators and will become a pretty good retro handheld

Or you could get one of the many Chinese retro handhelds that are built to run from an SD card, have proper 4:3 IPS screens and don't cost 200 USD.

@@JanPospisilArt Except the majority of the chinese made retro handhelds are very low quality, only supports certain systems with whatever emulators they chose that could have massive emulation bugs and errors, and massively underpowered for what you might want to run. NVIDIA shield used to fill this niche, but then they killed that off not too long after and replaced it with a console based version. It's starting to get real depressing that modded second hand PSPs are still the king of portable emulation, and can emulate up to the PS1. I hope someone can prove me wrong otherwise, because I've been in need of a portable to tinker with that can handle up to PS1 with no issue (and for a fair price).

Woolworths indeed

In the US we lost our Woolworths a LONG time ago, really miss it.

For some reason in Mexico there still exists some Wollworths stores as Radioshack and Sears; I think they sold the name to the owners of the stores so they could cash a last buck.

@@DanaTheInsane u do know there is a big big world outside of the usa, Woolworth's died everywhere

@@exmaarmaca u need to stop thinking u struggle with it

Kind of. You're wearing down the cartridge more than the console, so you'll have to do it with every cartridge. Also possibility of scraping up the label side with the force needed to pull the cart out the first few times

Whoosh

@@tncorgi92 Not whooshed, but I thought I'd provide some useful info anyway.

If you're excited to play it might go in a bit easier.

They never even made the last game. And yeah, people did say they'd seen the sword hanging on the wall at Jacks house.

I wonder how many parents just went to the flea market and bought a 20dollar tai chi sword just to make little Jimmy think he actually won

@@FIXTREME I could imagine handing that sword to little Jimmy, who likely knew what the thing was supposed to look like, and Jimmy would act as if, instead of a Power Ranger for Christmas he got a Combat Force Ranger (almost as good, and his chest lights up!) in the package.

I read somewhere that almost every prize was just melted down.

the angry nerd talked about this before right?

It's sole raison d'être is to sucker in collectors with more money than sense and clueless people who don't understand what an emulator is, much less that they can download any game/rom they want from the Internet for free and run it on a wonderful system such as the RG350.