Evercade VS Home Console Brings Retro Gaming Back To The TV

Retro gaming enthusiasts are probably already familiar with the Evercade, which is a handheld platform released last year that plays emulated, licensed games stored on cartridges. Today, Evercade announced a console follow-up to that handheld, introducing the Evercade VS. It sounds like the Evercade VS has a lot of the same functionality as the handheld Evercade, with the major difference being that the Evercade VS is meant to be played on a TV.

For people who already own the original Evercade, perhaps the biggest draw of the Evercade VS is the fact that it's compatible with existing Evercade cartridges. The VS itself is a dual-slot system, which means that you can load up two cartridges at once and play all of the games included on both without having to manually swap out the cartridge first – Evercade says that with that dual-cartridge system, the "playable game library" that's available at any given time tops out at 40.

The Evercade VS allows for up to 4-player local multiplayer, and while Evercade makes its own controllers (which look fairly solid in their own right), you don't necessarily need to use those. Since the controller ports on the Evercade VS are just standard USB ports, you can use USB controllers with the console. You can even pick up a USB cable for the original Evercade and use that as a controller with the Evercade VS.

The Evercade VS is able to output at 1080p and has a Quad Core 1.5Ghz processor. Evercade says that the VS will offer a new user interface, and since the console itself supports WiFi, you won't need to connect it to a computer to update its firmware or the games you own.

All in all, the Evercade VS sounds like a solid follow-up to the original Evercade, and it's coming at some point this year. We don't have a precise release date yet, but those who are interested in picking one up can register today at Evercade's website to be notified when consoles are available. We'll let you know when more is revealed about the Evercade VS, so stay tuned for that.