With yet another classic games console on the way, the Evercade handheld device is doing things a bit differently than the competition. It’s releasing game collections on carts and, according to the latest announcement, the developers are inviting indie teams to bring new games to the device, too.
Both of Nintendo’s mini consoles, the PlayStation Mini and the upcoming micro console from Sega all have one thing in common: They’ve got a set number of games available to play. Yes, you can tweak that fact yourself but, out of the box, they are designed to just support their single collection of a couple dozen games.
The retro-focused Evercade, on the other hand, is a portable device that will support cartridges. In other words, its game library will be expandable depending on how many developers they’re able to bring on board. And while they’ve already got a bunch of old-school cartridges lined up, it looks like the Evercade aims to mix the old with the new when it finally launches.
According to a report from Nintendo Life, the team working on the Evercade is opening the door to indie developers to make games (or bring existing titles) to the pocket-sized console. There have been an insane number of indie games made with 8-bit and 16-bit graphics in recent years, so that seems like a pretty deep well to draw from. Nobody has come forward yet as saying they’re bringing their indie game to the console, but this more open direction for the Evercade was only announced this past week.
At present, about half a dozen collections have been announced as cartridges for the Evercade, including a pair of Atari collections, two Interplay collections, and games from Data Play and Namco. The Evercade will ship for $80 and each game collection will be sold on cartridges for $20. In other words, it’s a more expensive option than the other mini consoles, but the Evercadde is portable and, again, you can expand that library with more games. It also has the ability to connect via HDMI in case you want to play on the TV.
If some decent indie developers get together and start announcing collections of their own, the Evercade might become a bigger blip on the radar for the right audience.