Rather than hammering away at three different blogs, complicating life and splitting my audience, I think the time is right for one family of portable gaming blog.  So please direct your attention to the new Portable Gaming Roundup site ... everything you need for indie Switch games, retro on the Evercade and the best place for Vita fans. 

The launch of the Evercade VS console came with a monthly stream of indie titles as one of the bonuses for the big-screen version of the little console. For people sticking to the handheld Evercade, those games, plus a few more goodies, will soon be available for us in physical form on the Indie Heroes 2 collection.  Packing in a dozen retro-modern titles, there's bags of pixel fun in the follow up to the impressive  Indie Heroes 1 collection, that offered many hours of fun with the likes of Flea and Alien Cat 2. The new collection goes up for pre-order this week, arriving in January, the line-up includes these games from the Game of the Month VS promo: Tapeworm Disco Puzzle - Lowtek Games  Nessy The Robot - Daniel T. Gaming  Reknum Souls Adventure - Nape Games  The Cowlitz Gamers’ Adventure Trilogy - Łukasz Kur and M-Tee  Anguna: Scourge of the Goblin King - Bite The Chili Productions Eyra: The Crow Maiden - Second Dimension  Lunar Journey - Greenboy Games  Yeah Yeah Beebiss II

Mentioned earlier in the week at the German Amiga convention #Amiga37, Evercade has confirmed it is working with the platform holder of the legendary 16-bit system. Specifically "Evercade Cartridge Collections will highlight publishers and franchises who made games for Amiga systems." Rolling out in 2023 and beyond this is another great source of games for the Evercade, with so many legendary titles, and hopefully some of the new indies that still arrive on the Commodore system. It will fit neatly in the new blue scheme of the C64 collection , and I wonder if there will be any room on them for some of the great demo scene creations?  No games are mentioned, but it is great thinking of all the Psygnosis, Thalamus, Team 17 and many others. Sure, lots of Amiga original games are already available on Evercade via other systems' emulation notably via the Bitmap Brothers  and Gremlin Graphics collections, but there are hundreds of gems that could make it over.  Given the long-r

There's already plenty of buzz around the new and improved Evercade EXP  handheld model (latest boxart added below), but we can always do with a little extra, right? So, to keep interest ticking over, the company just dropped a list of bonus content that's coming out exclusively for the EXP model to get us all upgrading this winter, as if the improved hardware isn't enough. The video just streamed, hopefully will be available on catch up very shortly.  Update , preorders are now up , various countries and stores listed. In the UK, Funstock and Game are taking orders, finally up on Amazon UK .  Update to the update : The delivery date has moved from November 24th to 15th December, making a great Christmas present!  The great news is, The Evercade EXP comes with The Capcom Collection built in with 18 arcade games including Street Fighter 2, the 194x series, Mega Man (console games), Commando, Final Fight and many more, all built-in. Hopefully there will be a cart release for

The Blaze team keep pulling clever tricks out the bag for Evercade, and in celebration of the first native release, Cathedral, we talk to Decemberborn Interactive’s Eric Lavesson about the effort required to cram a game built for modern consoles into the modest Evercade platform.  Update, cart now available for pre-order on Amazon ! From a player perspective, retro game development must be a fantastic challenge, trying to build a title that appeals to modern tastes into the smallest of digital, audio and palette footprints. Let’s see what Decemberborn has to say (many thanks to Eric for his time) about the proverbial pint-pot trick it pulled off with Cathedral on Evercade?  So, firstly why bring Cathedral to the Evercade?  When we got the opportunity to do this, we just couldn’t turn it down. Honestly, just the fact that we were going to be the first natively ported game was enough to convince us that we wanted to do this. It was a bit daunting at first, since we were kind of treading

Having focused on consoles and more recently arcade releases, there has been an obvious gap in the Evercade roster, especially as it has dealt with the likes of CodeMasters, the Bitmap Brothers and other names from the home computer era.  Starting to fill that gap is the first in a new line of cartridges for Evercade systems. Impossible Mission and Summer Games lead the way, with plenty of new games to discover in a 14-game collection. Imagine, no loading times or mangled cassette tapes, no slowly-appearing screens, actually that's kind of sad.  Picked out with tasteful blue packaging, this new series starts with THE C64 Collection 1. with officially licensed games from Retro Games Ltd. Just the 14, which is a bit feeble given the teeny storage they consume, but still plenty to be getting on with, and thousands of Spectrum, Amstrad and likely 16-bit system games to follow (Defender of the Crown, Dungeon Master and Oids, please!).  The line-up includes: Alleykat Battle Valley Gatewa

Evercade 11 ( Tanglewood and Xeno Crisis ) is one of my most-played carts despite having just the two retro-modern games on it. Here's hoping for a similar result with console cart 27, offering an 8-bit Edition (aka the new NES version) of Alwa’s Awakening from Elden Pixels and a completely native port of 2019's Cathedral from Decemberborn. Check out the interview with  Decemberborn’s Eric Lavesson about Cathedral , the first Evercade native title Perhaps this should be called the Swedish Collection as both developers hail from there. Elden Pixels' Alwa's Awakening has long been popular with the indie crowd and Cathedral (currently out on PS4 and Switch) goes the whole hog with an Evercade native edition from the eager folk at Decemberborn.      From the blub, "As Zoe, you will adventure to set free the land of Alwa, overcoming enemies and puzzles whilst upgrading your magic staff and its abilities. The world is a “metroidvania” style interconnected map with the ab

After the great news yesterday from the Evercade team, a couple of questions remained to be answered. The simple and relatively boring one, was "why the more modern, mature design for the Evercade EXP ?" To which the answer is the team wanted something with less toy-like appeal, more for the broader gaming/gadget audience - which is fair enough.  The second, and way more fun question, is what could be on Toaplan Arcade Collection 2? as mentioned in the trailer , and scheduled presumably for early 2023. I'm sure contracts have been signed and deals agreed with Tatsujin, who hold the rights to most Toaplan IPs, but its still fun to imagine what could be coming.  With the Toaplan Arcade Collection 1 featuring Flying Shark, Alcon (Slap Fight), Tiger-Heli, Truxton and Zero Wing, Guardian, Snow Bros and puzzler Teki-Paki, there's still a long list of games from the Japanese marque waiting to be exploited.   Obvious candidates include sequels Twin Cobra, the follow-up to Ti

 As if R-Type in the Irem collection isn't enough, Blaze announced a bit of a double-whammy with Toaplan Arcade Collection 1. It contains one of my favourite shooters, Slap Fight (Alcon as it was known in Japan).  Slap Fight might not be the most glamorous shmup, but it set the path for so many other shooters and was a fixture in my local dingy record store alongside Double Dragon, so is something I have strong teenage memories of, trying to remember where all the upgrade stars were.  Another great game from that era is Flying Shark, pretty much Raiden with more wings, along with Tiger-Heli, Truxton (aka Tatsujin), the awesome Zero Wing, along with early side-scrolling beat 'em up Guardian, Snow Bros and puzzler Teki Taki. All of which could make this one of the best Evercade carts yet! Truxton was badged as playing in the new Evercade EXP's Tate vertical mode , all that's missing from my wish list request is Kung Fu Master, but there could well be another collection

The original Evercade handheld is starting to show its age recently, with some noticeable crawl in a few of the arcade titles. To keep pace with the big-screen Evercade VS and its beefier processor, and the more recent titles they're putting in collections, Blaze is retiring the original show pony and replacing it with a sleeker, more powerful, quad-trigger EXP model.  The while general model goes up for pre-order in September, arriving Winter for £129 with the Irem Arcade 1 collection . It has a more mature design and look compared to the original model, presumably that was a little too toy-like for some. Features include:  A 4.3” high resolution 800×480 IPS screen with glass cover Improved 1.5GHz processor and 4GB RAM  USB- C charging 720p Mini HDMI Output Tate-mode for vertical games WiFi for updates and more secret features Or, there's a limited edition black model that can be pre-ordered from tomorrow with both new arcade carts (Irem and Taoplan) for £179. The only sad th

 If there's one game that says 80's shooter, it is R-Type, or maybe Raiden, but probably R-Type! The sheer size and alien-ness of those enemies made the art of endless magazine covers and became a fixture in gamers' imaginations ever since.  And that epic shooter is coming Evercade's way as part of a top notch collection of titles in Irem Arcade 1. Along with 1982's Moon Patrol with the genius vertical and horizontal weapons, there's classy-looking submarine shooter In the Hunt and Battle Chopper with its in-level upgrade shop gimmick. Add to that the swish of Lightning Swords and early American Football game 10 Yard Fight - an epic collection.  All the games are 1 or 2 players, so good for the Evercade VS, and this epic cart will be available for pre-order in September, arriving Winter (hoping for no more chip-shortage enforced delays!). 

Back in the summer of 2020, I put together a list of my 20 favourite Evercade games from the busy launch period. After that breathless rush through the early releases, 2021 was slowed down by COVID and releases are still getting delayed in 2022 thanks to semiconductor shortages.  Even so, there's been enough of those lovely little carts dropping through my letterbox for another list of my most-loved titles among the post-launch carts. So, as Evercade celebrates its second birthday , here are my favourites from the recent releases.  Tanglewood (cart 11) Evercade's first nod to modern games crammed Xeno Crisis and Tanglewood onto one cart, and both are brilliant. But the charm of Tanglewood wins out (and the fact I've played Xeno to death on Vita, PS4 and Switch). A gorgeous solo-dev effort by Matt Philips for the Mega Drive, it is packed with pixel beauty and atmosphere with a twinkle-eyed devious puzzle adventure for the foxy Nymn to explore and overcome as a little creat