Evercade Nexus Goes on Sale With Analogue Sticks, a 5.89-Inch Screen and Banjo-Kazooie in the Box

The Evercade Nexus went on sale on 30 October, priced at £169.99, $199.99 or €199.99, with a cartridge holding Rare's Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie in the box. Blaze Entertainment, the Letchworth company behind Evercade, announced the launch that day and listed Amazon, Funstock, Best Buy and GameStop among the retailers carrying it across Europe and the US. Its larger body makes room for dual analogue sticks, and Blaze sells it as the best way to play the 32-bit and 64-bit games now arriving on Evercade cartridges.

What is in the box, and what it costs

The standard Nexus is black, with a customisable RGB light-up logo. The box holds the console, the Banjo-Kazooie Double Pack cartridge, a USB-C to USB-A charging cable and a quick start guide. There is no mains adaptor; Blaze's specification asks for a 5V 2A charger. An official hard shell EVA carry case with room for six cartridges and a screen protector kit are sold separately.

Two limited versions were sold through Funstock alone. The Nexus 64 Edition, limited to 2,000 units at £189.99, $229.99 or €229.99, uses a colour scheme Blaze describes as inspired by the 3D consoles of the 1990s; Evercade's product page lists it as sold out. The Limited Edition Evercade Nexus DOOM Edition, limited to 3,000 units worldwide at £199.99, €239.99 or $249.99, adds a DOOM-themed console, a big-box copy of The DOOM Collection cartridge, a themed hard case, a DOOM comic, a keyring, a double-sided poster and a numbered certificate. Blaze dated it for 30 October as well.

The hardware

Blaze's full specification for the Nexus:

• - Screen: 5.89-inch IPS, 840×512, with more than 500 nits of brightness. Blaze calls it the biggest screen ever fitted to an Evercade.
• - Controls: two analogue sticks, a D-pad, face buttons, rear bumpers and triggers, and a textured grip on the back.
• - Processor and memory: a quad-core 1.5GHz chip and 512MB of RAM.
• - Battery: 5,000mAh, rated for more than five hours, charged over USB-C.
• - Audio: front-facing dual stereo speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack and wireless headphone support.
• - Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 6 on 5GHz and 2.4GHz, used for console updates.
• - Size: 215mm by 111mm by 34mm, weighing 410g.

The main new feature, by Blaze's account, is EverSync, a local multiplayer mode. One Nexus shares the game in its cartridge slot wirelessly with a second Nexus, and both players then play the same game on their own screens. The link runs directly between the two consoles, with no Wi-Fi or internet connection, and only the host needs to own the cartridge. Blaze's specification states that a second Nexus is required.

Several features carry over from earlier Evercade machines: TATE mode for vertical screen orientation in arcade games, display ratio and scanline options, the Evercade library that tracks cartridge ownership, and wireless updates that bring the monthly Indie Heroes Game of the Month.

The Nexus has no TV output of any kind. Evercade's own FAQ answers the question directly: "No, the Evercade Nexus does not have a TV or HDMI out or streaming connection." Blaze points players who want a television to its VS and VS-R home consoles.

Banjo-Kazooie on a cartridge, rebuilt rather than emulated

Most Evercade cartridges run their games through emulation, and Blaze lists 8, 16, 32 and 64-bit consoles, handhelds, THEC64 and Amiga computers, and arcade boards among the systems it emulates. The Banjo pack is different. Blaze describes the two games as "native versions designed specifically for the platform", developed in partnership with Rare.

According to Blaze, both games get widescreen support, an overhauled camera with twin-stick control, and two control schemes, "Replay" and "Retro", so that they also work on Evercade machines with no analogue stick. The cartridge adds save states, a music player with previously unreleased music from the games, and a cheat menu. It is Home Console Cartridge #53, and Blaze lists it as compatible with the Evercade VS-R, Nexus, EXP-R and Alpha and the HyperMegaTech! Super Pocket, with support for the original handheld, the EXP and the VS as well. Blaze's own product page still says the Nexus, or a VS, VS-R or Alpha with the wireless controller, is the best way to play it.

DOOM gets the same treatment. The DOOM Collection, cartridge #11 in the blue home computer range but made in a red cartridge, carries DOOM and DOOM II "ported from their PC versions as a native experience for Evercade", along with TNT: Evilution, The Plutonia Experiment, the Master Levels for DOOM II, No Rest for the Living, SIGIL and SIGIL II, and a new DOOM: Deathmatch Pack. It costs £24.99, $29.99 or €29.99 and also launched on 30 October.

Where Banjo has been before

Banjo-Kazooie first came out for the Nintendo 64 in North America on 29 June 1998, and Banjo-Tooie followed on 20 November 2000. After Microsoft bought Rare in 2002, both games were ported by 4J Studios to Xbox Live Arcade on the Xbox 360, on 26 November 2008 and 29 April 2009, and both were later included in Rare Replay for the Xbox One in 2015. Banjo-Kazooie reached Nintendo's Switch Online service on 20 January 2022, its first re-release on a Nintendo console. Readers who want the original are covered by the site's Banjo-Kazooie review.

This is not Banjo-Kazooie's first Blaze release either. The HyperMegaTech! Super Pocket Rare Edition, announced in February for a June release, has 14 built-in games with Banjo-Kazooie at the top of the list, "enhanced and optimised with additional control options for play on Super Pocket", in Blaze's words.

How it compares with earlier Evercades

The original Evercade handheld went on sale on 22 May 2020 with 10 cartridges and 122 games between them. It had a 4.3-inch, 480×272 screen, a 2,000mAh battery and a mini-HDMI output for televisions. The current small handheld, the EXP-R, also has a 4.3-inch screen, at 800×480. By Blaze's count the library now stands at more than 80 cartridges and over 700 games, and every one of them works in the Nexus, although Evercade's product page notes that some may need a firmware update.

Against that history, the Nexus is larger in almost every respect: a screen about one and a half inches bigger on the diagonal, two and a half times the battery capacity of the first model, and a pair of analogue sticks. It is also the first Evercade handheld to drop the TV output.

Blaze's launch release quotes review scores from GamesRadar+ (4.5 out of 5), The Mirror (4 out of 5), VGC (4 out of 5) and Retro Dodo (9 out of 10). Andrew Byatt, Blaze's chief executive, said in the release: "The Evercade Nexus has arrived, marking a huge moment for us and an exciting new chapter for Evercade."

What is not yet known

Blaze has not said which 64-bit games will follow Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, or whether other 64-bit releases will be native ports like these two or emulated. Evercade's product page says new cartridges arrive every two to three months, and Byatt's launch statement ends with "there's plenty more to come", without naming anything. Blaze has also not said whether EverSync will reach any other Evercade hardware; for now its specification ties it to a second Nexus.

One small inconsistency in Blaze's own material: the boilerplate at the foot of its August press releases describes the Nexus screen as 5.3 inches, while every specification sheet, including the one in the launch release, gives 5.89 inches.