(box contents rattle)
- You hear that?
I think it is
Kind of Retro Time.
This is the Evercade EXP, experience, whatever.
Basically, what it is, it's a emulation handheld
that takes cartridges.
The box is very plain, there's nothing else to it.
There's a little bit of RGB here
but I don't know if that indicates anything.
Oh, okay.
So, it's a box within a box kind of thing.
It comes with
the TOAPLAN arcade kit.
This is a cartridge of TOAPLAN arcade games.
That's one of the things that the Evercade EXP
or Evercade lineup is actually really good for
is a lot of these games, basically, like arcade games
don't really get re-releases very often
but, they do on the Evercade.
You get a little key chain here
it's the shape of a cartridge.
What's on the other side?
Ha! Insert cartridge.
Yeah. I don't know if you wanna insert this one
but, maybe it fits.
If it does, that'd be cool.
You get a carrying case, so you got a little old spot
for the handheld itself
and for some games, yeah
they got little pockets in here, sub pockets
you get a little cleaning cloth.
Evercade
EXP
So, you got Evercade EXP
the console itself
TATE
what that basically means is: vertical.
And, that's one of the party tricks of the Evercade EXP
is that you can actually hold it this way
and play vertical shooters
I'm looking forward to trying that out.
Wow. Unlike the outer box, this box is just
crammed with
all kinds of stuff.
You got some Street Fighter on this side
you got some Mega Man and 1942, on the other side.
I guess this is a Capcom bundle?
Yeah, games from Capcom and IREM.
Okay, so I guess this might be like a
collector's edition pack or something.
I'm not entirely sure.
This is what you would get normally if you buy it.
Yeah, A fair number of decent Capcom games in here.
We've got Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting
all the MegaMan.
Wait, MegaMan and MegaMan 2 and Mega Man X?
Interesting selection.
Let's get this guy out of the box
and see what it looks like. Ah, yeah.
Now, the original Evercade really looked plasticky
and this does too, but it looks a lot more premium.
It reminds me of how the DS light looked and felt
when they first announced it.
Whereas the original Evercade had the red accents
and it all kind of looked kind of "Meeeh".
D-Pad, I mean it's okay, it's serviceable.
Doesn't really feel all that definitive
like it kind of moves pretty freely.
Maybe that'll be good for fighting games?
The buttons though. The face buttons?
Actually, they are okay.
There's more snap to the Y button up here
than there is to the A button, down here.
This feels a little bit more mushy
whereas this is a little bit snappier.
It's not a huge difference, but you you'll notice it.
Now, these...
these are also a little bit mushy, but it's probably fine.
It is a little awkward to hold like this, though
just saying, there
there used to be like a little indent or something
on the back here, but it's just flat.
So holding it like this, you're just like
I mean it's like holding your phone
by this little part of it down here.
It's not an amazing experience, but hey, you can do it.
On the bottom here, we've got a USB type C
and a headphone output jack.
Don't know what this button is for.
This is obviously the volume controls
and I don't know what this is, either.
Some kinda light?
Oh, it's, it's marked with a T.
So presumably, this is the mode to switch over to TATE
like, vertical.
So, like if your game is like this
and, you know, you want to do full screen
you'd hit the T and then you do that.
And, of course you've got the great big honking
cartridge slot on the back there.
And, I think the reason it's that big
I mean, it doesn't have to be
they actually have full compatibility
at least as far as I can tell
from the marketing materials
with the original Evercade cartridges
which, I think they now have like 30 or more
all of which have
well, most of which have more than five games on them.
A lot of them, actually, have like more than eight.
Also, you have a little mini HDMI port up there
if you want to plug it in your TV.
I'm not sure if that's something that you'd really
want to do, but it's there.
Shoulders are, they're fine.
It probably wouldn't be too bad.
I mean these are kind of older games
so, you're not going to be using these triggers
on the left and right so often, but you know
it's something to take note of.
Yeah, here we go. So...
Right, this is the IREM arcade cartridge.
Presumably, the Capcom games are just built into this thing.
So, I was correct. That T is the TATE mode button.
And that light...
when it's red, it's charging
when it's blinking green, it's booting up
and when it's blinking red, it's time to charge.
I appreciate this.
This is actually, nicely laid out.
So, this is a really nice touch.
I like this.
Maybe it's just the nostalgia in me
liking old instruction manuals you can flip through
on the toilet. I don't know.
Let's pop a game out and see what that looks like.
Okay. You also get an instruction manual with this
much the same, it's a different form factor.
So, why cartridges?
I mean, aside from the fact that it's
like, honestly
pretty satisfying to just do that...
Uh-oh.
Okay. It's a little tight
on the current gen console. I'll say that.
That was a little harder than I would've expected.
It's, it's a pretty tight fit to get it into the slot
and, I'm not sure if that's by design or if it's just
because this is brand new and it needs some time to wear in.
There's more to it than just getting the games.
Plus, all of these are fully licensed
so, it's not a piracy console or anything like that.
Speaking of which...
That's not even like, half of them.
Like, they've got 30 of these now.
We've got IntelliVision, we've got Atari.
These are new games, I think
These are Evercade exclusives. How about that?
The Atari Lynx collection, Jaleco.
And of course we've got, I say, of course
I don't think I've ever heard of Gaelco.
How about we turn it on and see how it plays.
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(gameplay sounds)
Speakers don't sound amazing.
So, the first thing we get is our cartridge
which is the IREM arcade collection.
Then, we can go over to our built-in games.
There's hidden games.
We can unlock games.
I would prefer that they were already unlocked.
Presumably, this is maybe the downloadable section?
I don't know. It says coming soon.
And, what I presume, are the settings.
Okay, so display.
Okay, cool. We have aspect ratios
so we have the original ratio
we have Pixel Perfect, which will be an interview scale.
It'll give you black borders most of the time
but that way you won't have any weird scaling artifacts
like blur or misshapen pixels.
And, full screen is if you are a monster
and you like to play your 4:3 games in 16:9.
I'm not sure why this...Oh right, because of TATE mode.
Okay.
Dynamic rate control?
I guess it has adaptive sync.
I'm not sure why you'd have that off.
Oh wait, maybe that's not what that is.
Maybe what that is, is speeding up or slowing
down the game to sync to the refresh rate of the display.
Maybe that's why it's off by default.
I don't think that this has any settings information
in that little quick start guide.
So, I'd have to check the online manual
And secret. Okay.
It's got code entry screen
I guess for unlocking games, maybe.
Again, it's cute, but I'm pretty sure
that I would prefer to just have these features unlocked.
Let's see how MegaMan 2 looks.
They've got all the play controls and stuff here, too.
That doesn't sound right to me.
No, it's not because of the volume.
It's like...
Bit crushed, which is strange because it's 8 bit.
But yeah, that...
that's not clipping, that's...
that's just gritty.
I'm not sure why that is
but, I guess it doesn't really matter, if the game plays OK.
Oh man, that sounds crunchy.
Now that's, that's unpleasant, I'm sorry.
I don't know how the headphone output sounds
or how the HDMI output sounds
but, these speakers don't sound very good with this.
Oh, that's the menu key.
Well, while we're here quick save, we can
I think, maybe customize the controls?
No, we just have the controls. Okay.
It'll be nice if you had control customization, as well.
I can see myself hitting the Menu button a lot
instead of hitting Start.
These buttons are lower than the menu button.
I'm gonna turn this down.
Uuuhhh...
Did I not hit A?
Does A not jump?
No, it doesn't. Oh, oh, okay.
It's B.
Oh, I don't like this.
I like, I like this layout, like
pressing X per shoot and A to jump.
I don't think I can do that.
No, I can't change the controls.
Oh, that's...
I don't like this.
Mmm...
A couple frames of lag.
Well, I mean, it feels pretty responsive but I don't...
I'm not happy with the NES emulation.
Let's try a vertical game.
OK, so I can TATE-mode that's I guess...
Select for credits?
Yeah.
Just dump coins in there.
Uuuhhh...
This also sounds a little crunchy.
TATE mode rips really well, though.
It is a little, like I have to brace my hand
in a different way.
What I'm doing is, I'm holding my hand like that
so that I'm actually like supporting
the higher part of the console
and then I'm like kind of tweaking my thumbs down.
It's like kind of, it's not super comfortable, but it works.
So, when you're in TATE mode
even these on-screen controls up here use
these lower buttons.
Ah! I, I keep thinking the confirm is on the right
because that's kind of how it is in, well
on the NES, and also in like, most Japanese controllers.
What's a more modern title here?
I mean Breath of Fire, like Super Nintendo.
Yeah, let's run MegaMan X and see how that works.
I'm, I'm not looking forward to how this sounds
based on what I've heard so far.
That's actually not bad.
The stereo is pretty good, too.
Yeah, the sound doesn't sound bad.
The graphics, I mean...
That doesn't look terrible to me
but, it's kind of small, so it's difficult to see
if there are any major errors.
It looks like the stretch might be making some
inconsistent pixels here, on these status bars.
Yeah, it's not something I can see at this
angle to show the camera
but if I were to look at it straight on
I think I would notice.
You can kind of tell in X's health bar up here.
I'm not sure if that looks off or not.
It's a small screen.
Otherwise, it seems to play pretty okay
for the Super Nintendo games.
It seems like it's just the NES games
that it kind of sucks for.
The emulator is just bad.
The audio sounds like it's being mixed at
11 Kilohertz or something
which is not enough.
1.5 gigahertz. Presumably, it's just an ARM of some kind
with 4 GB of system memory.
You could get by with, like maybe, 1 GB or 512 MB depending
on the complexity of the operating system.
So, presumably it's because of all the
artwork and stuff that they had to preload here.
I think that CPU is definitely fast enough to do accurate
NES and super NES emulation.
So, I'm not sure why it's like that.
Maybe it can be fixed in a firmware update?
Obviously, this is software based so it's not
like it's going to be fixed in that way.
I guess, that's one of the advantages
to having this platform is that, you know
when you buy these games, a future revision of the console
could actually make them play better
or give you more features to make the
gameplay experience better.
It's tough to really fully analyze the gameplay experience
because I don't know if it's going to be the same
throughout the lifespan of this console
but those NES games
they just sound bad.
At $149 for the console, and about $20 or $25 for
each of those.
It's not a bad value, it's just...
I feel like there are better ways to play these games.
It's tough.
I want to like this, but the quality of the emulation
at least on the NES side was just unbearable.
I don't know, maybe that's just the Capcom thing.
Maybe, each of these games has its own encapsulated emulator
and, this is just running it.
I don't know what the architecture of the system looks like.
If you're gonna carry this around with you, I mean
assuming you have the official carrying case
you got this, and you've got room for
two games in here.
I guess, make sure that you choose the games you wanna play.
It's a little inconvenient to carry around
you know, your library, right?
This would be better, I think, for
the home console version of the Evercade, the Versus.
As nice as the cartridges are
a downloadable experience would probably be a lot nicer
and, I don't see a spot for an SD card or anything like that
so, I don't know how much storage is even on here.
They need to improve the emulation.
The console itself feels pretty solid.
I mean, it is a little chunky
but that's okay, because it's makes it easier to hold
unless you're holding it like this, in which case...
But at least you have the option, right?
So yeah, it seems like the software is
letting it down mostly and the software ecosystem as well.
It's the biggest strength and its biggest weakness, I think.
Why is it getting warm?
I mean, it doesn't seem like it is really doing much.
Like right now, it doesn't seem like it's doing much
but it's still warm.
It feels like they've got a lot of work to do.
They've got a lot of work to do on the software ecosystem
and, they've got a lot of work to do on, you know, just
making sure that the experience is okay now.
They say you can get 4 to 5 hours
of battery life on this.
That's enough I guess.
I mean, it's not going to be similar
to the old school Game Boy or anything like that.
I mean, it's comparable to a Switch
assuming that's correct.
I mean, we've been playing this whole time
and it hasn't ticked down at all.
It was already at three bars on the battery.
As it is right now, I would recommend it only
if you really want
these cartridges.
And, that's really the bottom line.
There are better handhelds to have
and, if you have a game collection already
you can dump your own games.
And, there's no piracy required for following Short Circuit.
We have plenty of other things like this, and not like this.
There's retro time. There's not retro time.
What time is it now?
You decide.