In its latest blog post, Evercade has detailed some of the exciting new features and improvements that are arriving for the Evercade VS and Evercade EXP with its December update.
Among these are a heavily requested Turbo Fire feature, the ability to save high scores without save states, emulation tweaks such as gamma correction on 32-bit 3D titles, and improvements to SRAM and save games.
In case you're unaware, Turbo Fire is a feature that was often incorporated into third-party controllers for retro machines. It essentially allows you to hold down a single button to simulate rapidly pressing the fire button.
According to the blog post, the feature has now been incorporated in beta form for Evercade VS and Evercade EXP machines and is currently mapped by default to Y on Evercade controllers and handhelds, or Y and X in certain cases where there is a secondary shot. As Evercade writes, these inputs are not currently remappable.
This feature is currently in beta and has already been implemented into 17 games so far, including the following titles:
- Battle Lane Vol. 5 (Technos Arcade 1)
- Breakthru (Data East Arcade 1)
- Darwin 4078 (Data East Arcade 1)
- P-47: The Phantom Fighter (Jaleco Arcade 1)
- Saint Dragon (Jaleco Arcade 1)
- Battle Chopper (Irem Arcade 1)
- In the Hunt (Irem Arcade 1)
- R-Type (Irem Arcade 1)
- Alcon (Toaplan Arcade 1)
- Flying Shark (Toaplan Arcade 1)
- Tiger-Heli (Toaplan Arcade 1)
- Truxton (Toaplan Arcade 1)
- Zero Wing (Toaplan Arcade 1)
- Fireshark (Toaplan Arcade 2)
- Hellfire (Toaplan Arcade 2)
- Twin Cobra (Toaplan Arcade 2)
- Twin Hawk (Toaplan Arcade 2)
Besides Turbo Fire, the latest update also introduces a neat way of saving high scores directly to the cartridge without using save states. Currently, 10 cartridges (plus Evercade EXP's built-in Capcom titles) are supported with this feature, including Technos Arcade 1, Data East Arcade 1, Gaelco Arcade 1, Atari Arcade 1, Jaleco Arcade 1, Gaelco Arcade 2, IREM Arcade 1, Toaplan Arcade 1, Toaplan Arcade 2, and Piko Interactive Arcade 1. Again, this feature is currently considered to be in beta, and will likely be improved as time goes on.
In addition to the above, Evercade also listed various emulation improvements to both machines, including gamma correction for 32-bit 3D titles, which can appear darker on modern displays; as well as alluded to enhancements to how SRAM and virtual memory card saves work on the devices.
If you want to enjoy the benefits of these new features, you'll need to update your system. You can read the full blog post here for more information or check out the patch notes.