Feature: The many ways to join the Evercade club

Evercade has been a brilliant little part of my gaming life over the last three years, with a great and growing range of cartridges for a real-world collection that stands out from the digital morass. Those chunky colour-coded boxes, and the smart and diverse set of hardware that makes them accessible at all price points add to the collectibility. Here's a quick recap for anyone who has missed out and wants to get into retro gaming done proper.

Super Pocket From £50  

The Evercade Super Pocket (confusingly under the HyperMegaTech brand) compact portable range arrived last October. Currently available in two models, they come with either a Capcom or Taito digital collection pre-installed, but feature the Evercade cartridge slot so you can play any other collections. Th Super Pocket range is booming with the news of a smart Atari wood-effect retro LE, Atari stock modl in black and red, and Technos models on the way for October. 

The best-looking limited edition clear case models are sold out, but you can find the standard models on Amazon and FunStock's own site. 

Evercade, Evercade EXP, Evercade EXP-R £99-£130

The now-discontinued original Evercade hardware with the Nintendo colour scheme looks amazing and feels great in the hand. You can find it on eBay or elsewhere for around £60 second-hand. The more recent models are sleeker and stylish, and have a higher-spec screen, but lack that retro vibe. Whichever model you go for, they are highly portable and a great way to enjoy Evercade cartridges on the go. 

The new charcoal EXP-R model is £99 and arrives at the end of July with the Tomb Raider trilogy GigaCart while the white EXP has the Capcom digital collection preinstalled and an Irem arcade cart as the pack-in. Note the EXP-R lacks the mini HDMI-out that the previous two models had, so is purely for portable gaming.   

Evercade VS and VS-R £89

The original white VS machine encouraged multiplayer arcade mayhem with four controller support, and can take two Evercade carts at once, opening up some free mystery game joy. Now discontinued, you can find white VS models via the usual second-hand outlets. The replacement is the new charcoal VS-R, also coming at the end of July. 

The extra controllers are £20 each and with a huge range of simultaneous multiplayer games across the 50+ Evercade carts, the VS range represents the best way to enjoy retro games on a big screen with friends and family. 

Evercade Alpha £199-£249

The newest addition to the Evercade family, arriving in November, the Alpha bar-top arcade models put the Evercade collection up on an 8-inch screen with proper arcade controls for that true gloomy coinslot-feeding vibe. Two models, Street Fighter and Mega Man launch this year, with the standard version and an LE from Funstock providing higher-fidelity Sanwa arcade controllers and other goodies

The brawler model features give different Street Fighter arcade games across the eras, plus Puzzle Fighter II for light relief. You can plug in an extra controller for multiplayer, and your Evercade carts fit in neatly next to the coin slot. The Mega Man version provides a similar festival of twitch arcade action with the pixel platform hero. 

In summary, from £50-£250 you can jump into the world of Evercade, a million-selling collection of great retro arcade, console and computer games that continues to grow thanks to a great fan base and smart choices by the Evercade/Blaze team. 

You might also want to read:

5 What-the-hell Evercade games that really grab

20 favourite Evercade games from the launch lineup