This week has given us the disappointing news that the Evercade EXP has been delayed until December, but it's not all bad news – the company's next pair of cartridges have just arrived on our doorstep, and they're a pair of smashers.
The Alwa's Awakening and Cathedral cartridge is quite a significant release because these two titles aren't emulated, as is the case with every other Evercade release – they've been built from the ground up to run natively on the Evercade hardware. Lest we forget, Cathedral launched on modern systems and Steam not so long ago – so this is a very welcome development in the world of Evercade. Both titles look and play wonderfully on the Evercade hardware.
Could we see other modern 'faux retro' games come natively to the platform? Fingers crossed that's the case. It is, however, worth pointing out that because they're not emulated, neither game has support for the Evercade's famous (and often life-saving) save state system – but that's a minor complaint.
The other cartridge is The C64 Collection 1, which, as the title suggests, delivers a selection of 8-bit Commodore 64 classics – and the first home computer releases we've seen on the Evercade so far; previous collections have all been based on console titles. Solid-gold smash hits like Impossible Mission, Summer Games, Stormlord and Subterranea offer hours of gameplay – although we'd argue that even these titles are only going to appeal to hardcore C64 fans.
Still, it's nice to see Evercade's library expanding in new and exciting directions; Amiga games are on the way too, which is an arguably more exciting prospect than C64 titles.
Let us know if you've got this pair on order by posting a comment below.