Before we get on to new carts, we do need to advise you about another cartridge collection that will become a legacy title in 2023.
Already discontinued and no longer in production is the original Evercade Handheld. Blaze Entertainment is no longer manufacturing this product so if you see it on sale at a retailer, that’s going to be the last stock they have of the console and its included cartridges.
There will be a final firmware update soon for the original Handheld, as promised, that will bring some essential bug fixes.
Joining the original handheld in the “Legacy” line will be Piko Interactive Collection 1 (Cart 09), which will no longer be produced as of February 2023. There is plenty of stock still on sale at retailers however ,so for those of you that haven’t already picked up that fan favourite, you still can.
The list of all Legacy products at present are:
Namco Museum Collection 1 (02)
Namco Museum Colllection 2 (06)
Piko Interactive Collection 1 (09)
Technos Collection 1 (10)
The Oliver Twins Collection (12)
Evercade Handheld Starter Pack
Evercade Handheld Premium Pack
https://evercade.co.uk/a-look-ahead-at-evercade-2023/
Both Namco carts do NOT work with the VS system (due to licensing reasons, the carts essentially were licensed for handheld only and even then, for the UK market only (hence one reason for the insane rates on Amazon USA), the Oliver Twins Collection was a deal with Codemasters where the profits went only to a charity, and my guess for Technos and Piko is that they realized that their games are more profitable to rerelease on modern platforms (Piko alone has a sizable release list (mostly digitally) on the Switch and Steam, including games that were on the Evercade cart (Tinhead for instance).
Kinda sad that Piko 1 is discontinued, as it is easily one of my favorite of the entire Evercade library (as bad/mediocre as the games are, they are a diverse selection and have some that are hard to find/obtain - see Tinhead).
Thoughts?