Use an EverDrive to Save Your Collectible Retro Video Game Cartridges
, by Av Kandola, 2 min reading time
Retro video game collecting has exploded in popularity in recent years as the bulk of the video game generation hit middle age and their nostalgia for the video games of their youth grows. It’s become a big business and the prices for original game cartridges from some of these early game systems can skyrocket to the near-ridiculous. It’s no wonder then that game collectors would want to protect their highly collectible originals and not subject them to the rigors of actually playing them but as game PLAYERS, what is a body to do? How do you keep your original video game cartridges in their best condition while still being able to play them on their original consoles? Enter the EverDrive.
If you’re a retro video game collector and you haven’t heard of the EverDrive (i.e. a flash cartridge) then you’re in for a real treat here. These impressive bits of modern engineering disguised in old school game cartridge shells contain on-board flash memory and code to allow access to a whole library of game ROMs stored either in the on-board flash memory or on a separate SD card plugged into the EverDrive, all via an on-screen menu driven interface. The user can simply choose what game ROM or ROMs they want to flash to the EverDrive or SD card (collectors would choose to load the ROMS of the games they have in their collection), plug the EverDrive into the console, select a game via the menu and play it as if that specific original game cartridge were plugged into the console, thus saving one’s collectible (and likely expensive) original cartridge from the abuses of playing! It’s a HUGE boom for collectors and EverDrive manufacturer Krikzz alike!
There a host of advantages to using EverDrive flash cartridges beyond protecting your collectible carts though. Using an EverDrive, you now have access to a huge wealth of obscure, foreign, and homebrew titles that can all be played on the original game console with just a few simple clicks. Hacks, mods, and even whole new interfaces are all out there, waiting to be flashed onto an EverDrive!
These innovative bundles of gaming engineering can open up your video game consoles to a whole world of fun while saving your pristine original cartridges in their collectible condition.