Duke Nukem and more heads to Evercade
Blaze Entertainment recently excited Evercade owners with six new cartridge packs that will be heading to its systems by the year’s end. Utilising a Nintendo-style Direct structure, Evercade Showcase Vol 1 proved a big success for Blaze, with its head of marketing Sean Cleaver telling us, “It went very well, and beyond our expectations! It’s great to give our fans and interested onlookers new announcements, and seeing the interest and response is very humbling.”
The 18-minute show kicked off with Delphine Software Cinamatique Collection 1 which includes the Amiga versions of Another World, Future Wars: Time Travellers, Operation Stealth and the Mega Drive version of Flashback. Interestingly, two of the games are mouse-based so we were keen to know how Blaze will adapt them. “Original hardware did use a mouse but also had the alternative of standard hot keys in case there was no mouse or a fault,” Sean explains. “So it may take a moment to adjust to a d-pad and the accuracy needed but it won’t affect the playing of the games. They will work fine with the Evercade’s d-pad and face buttons. None of these games present anything time-sensitive in the gameplay to warrant a faster input, however, for an authenticfeeling experience, we are looking at mouse support for Evercade VS users in a future update.”
The next collection announced, Piko Arcade 1, is full of obscure arcade games, many of which originated in Korea. We’re particularly excited about this one as we feel one of Evercade’s strengths is with these quirkier collections. The included games are Dragon Master, Master’s Fury, Fancy World: Earth Of Crisis, The Legend Of Silk Road, Burglar X, Ultimate Tennis, Magic Purple, Steel Force and Diver Boy and they cover everything from platformers to one-on-one fighters and scrolling beat-’em-ups.
Equally interesting is the Sydney Hunter Collection, a pack of four games that includes three adventures with the eponymous title star, Sydney Hunter And The Sacred Tribe, Sydney Hunter And The Shrines Of Peril, Sydney Hunter And The Caverns Of Death and a brand-new maze game called Jester. “This is a great collection of modern retro games from CollectorVision,” Sean tells us. “Normally available as new games for original hardware, as a physical release, we’re delighted to bring a great selection of them on one physical cartridge for only £17.99/$19.99 and give Evercade fans the chance to enjoy some very fun platform-based adventures!”
The fourth collection Blaze announced, like Coll
