News

Evercade Alpha review – the ultimate Christmas gift for retro gamers


Two Evercade Alpha units: Street Fighter and Mega Man editions

Now that’s a retro Christmas present to covet (Evercade)

If you’re serious about your retro gaming, then this feature-packed new cross between a console and an arcade cabinet is well worth hinting to Father Christmas about.

Playing arcade games authentically at home can be an extremely costly pursuit, for those looking to indulge their 90s nostalgia. As well as needing the space for an arcade cabinet – and a bounty of available tinkering and maintenance time – deep pockets are an absolute requirement. Beyond the investment of the cabinet itself, individual arcade games can now prove surprisingly expensive.

Most come on slabs of circuit board called arcade PCBs, which are neatly slotted into a cabinet somewhat similar to how cartridge-based consoles function. It is all too easy to spend way into four figures on a single PCB, which is a significant sum for just one game.

The rewards for all that effort are tremendous though. Games run exactly as their makers intended, with magnificent performance and crisp, vibrant visuals brought to life by the warm glow of a traditional CRT ‘tube’ monitor. Playing standing at a proper arcade cab is an unrivalled gaming experience, no matter how well the same games might be emulated on a console or PC.

Unfortunately, it’s a luxury few of us can afford in our homes. That’s where the new Evercade Alpha comes in: an alternative route to the joy that is personal arcade gaming. It takes the compact form of a bartop arcade cabinet, meaning it is designed to sit on a counter or similar – although the Alpha’s natural habitat might be the coffee table or gaming collectibles shelving.

For your money, you get a very well-made device that adopts the style of the ‘woody’ cabinets popular in the West through the 1980s and 1990s. Half-a-dozen games come pre-installed and there’s the potential to play hundreds of additional titles, which we’ll get into below. The Alpha is robust, feature rich, and fronted by an arcade-authentic button and stick arrangement, as well as an 8-inch IPS (in-plane switching – a type of LCD screen) that is much more comparable to your flatscreen TV than an original tube.

The control inputs feel very much up to real arcade standards, even if the button positioning will suit some personal preferences better than others. And that screen does a surprisingly good job in terms of delivering punchy, bright visuals that move elegantly. You’ll never beat a tube for displaying and playing older games, but the Alpha’s IPS takes a thoroughly respectable shot at it.

Its 4:3 ratio is a perfect fit for classic games – although with no ability to rotate the monitor, titles that were originally released for vertical screens are letterboxed, taking up just the central portion of the screen. On that note, all of the included games are horizontally orientated. Onboard stereo speakers, meanwhile, are far from audiophile quality but provide decent sonic punch and clarity.

The whole thing looks wonderful too and is rich in details that will delight …read more

Source:: Metro

      

(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *