Retro gaming machine Evercade VS delayed until December

Late for (old) school

The upcoming retro console Evercade VS has been delayed several months, manufacturer Blaze Entertainment has confirmed.

Citing “the current global issues with shipping”, Blaze has pushed the release of the Evercade VS – a home console with built-in multiplayer features, plus backwards compatibility with game cartridges released for the original handheld Evercade – to “a window between December 8th and 17th, 2021” for customers based in the UK or Europe.

Sadly, North American fans will be waiting a bit longer. Blaze says “the shipping issue is a bit more severe” for the US and Canada, which “means the release date has been pushed back to January 14th, 2022”.

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The exception to the North American delays will be the “Founder Edition”, which will be distributed by UK-based retailer Funstock “to all destinations worldwide, by the 8th of December 2021”.

Upcoming game cartridges will be similarly delayed as they are shipping to retailers along with console stock. This will affect collections 21, an assortment of Intellivision games; 22, bundling together several Bitmap Brothers titles; and four Arcade collections spotlighting classic developers Technos, Data East, Gaelco, and Atari.

In a statement, managing director, Andrew Byatt, says that physical stock has been manufactured and the delays are purely on the delivery front.

“We have been unable to give you any updates until this point because of the huge instability in global freight and the uncertainty this created,” Byatt wrote. “We also did not want to give multiple updates with half-information to you.”

In the interim, Blaze has also released an update for the Evercade VS user interface, showing players how games will be displayed on the system. The console will feature an improved save game function with screenshots and the ability to delete saves, a quick save feature and the capacity to load the last save to launch directly.

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The interface also features new display modes including a “Pixel Perfect” aspect ratio, background bezels, and scanline filters, all of which can be changed at will during play.

The system will offer online updates, enabling “additional controller mapping, themes and background music”. Meanwhile, games will have more detailed information on each title’s original release and its control scheme, all directly accessible from the UI.

Elsewhere, it appears Sony has ambitions of mobile gaming success, having seemingly hired former Apple Arcade content boss Nicola Sebastiani as the new “vice predident, head of mobile” at PlayStation Studios.

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