Blaze Entertainment have just announced the updated versions of their Evercade EXP and VS consoles with the newly unveiled EXP-R and VS-R consoles.
The makers of the excellent Evercade EXP and the Evercade VS shared the announcement in a video on their official YouTube channel this afternoon. The new machines both sport an updated livery featuring a charcoal grey and vibrant turquoise colour scheme.
The new hardware sees the Evercade brand experience a refresh as part of the company’s 2024 plans. Evercade’s updated home console, the VS-R will retail for £89.99/$99.99/€109.99 and include one controller and a pack-in Giga Cart, making use of Evercade’s expanded cartridge technology. Blaze Entertainment plan to reveal the bundled cartridge later this month.
In exciting news for TATE fans, the VS-R will support vertical games for the first time, providing users have a suitable screen that supports TATE gameplay.
For handheld fans, the Evercade EXP-R now retails at £99.99/$99.99/€99.99 and will ship with the same aforementioned unannounced Giga Cart.
The EXP-R remains fundamentally the same as the existing EXP console albeit with new textured rear grips to provide “extra comfort during longer play sessions”.
There are unfortunately a couple of notable omissions from the EXP-R when compared to its older counterpart. Firstly, Blaze Entertainment have removed the Mini-HDMI out port, presumably as method to reduce production costs, and the previously included bundle of 18 pre-installed Capcom titles will not make an appearance on the EXP-R.
Finally, Blaze Entertainment unveiled a new vertical grip, the Evercade TATE grip, for the Evercade EXP-R. The grip retails at £17.99/$19.99/€19.99 and comes in grey or white, allowing users of the original EXP to match the grip with their existing system if they so choose.
Pre-orders open for both the Evercade EXP-R and the Evercade VS-R on the 30th April 2024.
2024 – The Year Of Evercade
Evercade built anticipation prior to the announcement of the new hardware with a tantilising roadmap the company shared last month, teasing a string of upcoming reveals from the company.
Evercade’s 2024 roadmap kicked off with new collections for PIKO and Sunsoft, with both of those titles now revealed as the PIKO Collection 2 and Sunsoft Collection 2, respectively.
Yesterday saw Evercade announce the Giga Cart, a new, larger capacity cartridge set to bring forth collections of more recent retro games. Shortly after the reveal, Amazon leaked the first of the two Giga carts Evercade plans for 2024, by publishing the pre-order page for the Blaze Evercade Tom Raider Collection.
Unintentional announcements aside, Evercade have built an enviable momentum at the start of 2024 which is an exciting prospect for retro gamers with an EXP in hand.
