I like playing old-school retro games, but don’t always want to bother playing them on my big-screen TV or on a smaller monitor in my office. So for Christmas I asked for the Blaze Evercade Super Pocket Atari Edition.
This amazing little device is about the size of an original GameBoy. I got the “officially licensed” Atari Edition version of the Super Pocket with its red and black styling and 50 built-in Atari games. There was also a limited woodgrain version, but I think it was sold out and besides, I’m not a big fan of the woodgrain look.
The Super Pocket can use Evercade cartridges for even more games and I also got the DataEast Collection 1, primarily for BurgerTime.
The screen is pretty small at 2.5” so I do have to use this with my reading glasses, but it is a very sharp and bright IPS display and the small screen allows for a device that is light and easy to hold.
On the front is a thumbpad, a menu button and a set of four action buttons (X, Y, A, B). Below that are Select and Start buttons.
At the bottom of the Super Pocket are a 3.5mm headphone port, the on/off switch and the USB-C charging port. You can play up to 4 hours on a charge.
On the back are the volume rocker and four “shoulder” buttons (L1, L2, R1, R2), which are not used much with any Atari games.
Lastly, at the top is the cartridge slot. By default there is a blank “dummy” cartridge in the slot.
Usage
It is a little slow to power on. It take a few seconds to boot and always shows an annoying “photosensitive warning” each time. Once booted, the list of games is shown in alphabetical order.
Having headphone port is nice and the Lynx games often have stereo sound, but most of my headphones are wireless, so a Bluetooth option would have been appreciated.
Games
There are 50 built-in Atari games from a variety of systems including the 2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx and arcade. Alas, there are no Jaguar or ST games. There are no specific 8-bit computer games, either, but the 5200 makes that moot.
Here are the games:
2600: Adventure, Aquaventure, Dark Cavern, Gravitar, Haunted House, Radar Lock, Save Mary!, Solaris, Street Racer, Submarine Commander, Tempest, Video Pinball, Wizard, Yars’ Revenge.
5200: Bounty Bob Strikes Back!, Countermeasure, Final Legacy, Miner 2049er, Xari Arena.
7800: Alien Brigade, Asteroids, Centipede, Dark Chambers, Desert Falcon, Fatal Run, Food Fight, Motor Psycho, Ninja Golf.
Lynx: Basketbrawl, Checkered Flag, Dirty Larry: Renegade Cop, Kung Food, Robo-Squash, Scrapyard Dog, Super Asteroid/Missile Command, Turbo Sub, Warbirds.
Arcade: Asteroids, Berzerk, Canyon Bomber, Crystal Castles, Frenzy, Liberator, Lost Tomb, Millipede, Missile Command, Night Driver, Pong, Skydiver, Super Breakout.
Game Play
I have no yet played all the games as 50 is a lot and not all of them interest me. But a lot of them do!
I am especially fond of Asteroids, in all its incarnations. I’d never played the Lynx version of Super Asteroids before and it was quite good and colorful. I think most of the Lynx games, being designed for a portable system with a small screen translate the best to the Super Pocket.
Miner 2049er was one of my favorite 8-bit games and the 5200 version plays exactly the same. You can press the menu button in any game to access overall settings, but most important is the Controls setting which shows how the buttons work for each game. With something like Miner 2049er, which uses the keyboard (or numberpad) to activate the elevators on some levels, this is important. In this case, you can press R1 to display an on-screen numberpad.
Speaking of the settings, you can save and load any game from multiple slots, a wonderful feature. You can also tweak the display’s aspect ratio and scanline visibility for a more retro feel.
Cartridges
There are lot of Evercade cartridges that were made, some that are more available and affordable than others. I also got the Data East Collection 1 cartridge which has these games: Burgertime, Bad Dudes, Burnin’ Rubber, Two Crude Dudes, Cyber Punk Counterstrike, Fighter’s History, Karate Champ, Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics, Magical Drop II, Midnight Resistance and Side Pocket.
Those games all appear to be from the original Nintendo Entertainment System, which I don’t have much experience with. I do love Burgertime, although I wish this would have also included the arcade version, which I can at least play on my Atari VCS with Antstream. I had not really heard of any of the other games, but it is a good variety that I’m sure I will check out at some point.
I especially liked that the cartridge came with a nice little booklet describing each of the games, their controls along with some playing tips.
There are lots of other cartridge collections that you can find on Amazon and eBay with prices ranging from under $20 to over $100 depending on whether they are still being made. If you’re a Commodore 64 gamer, there are several reasonably priced C64 collections.
There are some other Atari collections, but they are rather pricey and also overlap somewhat with the included games, from what I could tell.
Conclusion
At just $60 the Super Pocket Atari Edition seems like a bargain. There are lot of great games that are included and the ability to expand it with cartridges is a bonus that will keep this fun for quite some time.
I love the easy USB-C charging, bright screen and overall convenience. The only missing feature for me is Bluetooth for the audio.
I’d love to hear what others think about the Super Pocket!
Wow…I got one of these for Christmas too. Would echo much of what you’ve written here. The evercade has taken a bit of a back seat to the Asus ROG Ally I also got for Christmas as it opens up a whole other world of both modern games and emulation as well.