You know what they say, bundle it with Banjo, and they will come. That’s pretty much the headline draw of the Evercade Nexus: Blaze’s grand foray into the fully fledged world of early 3D retro handheld gaming, and, if I’m being real, the N64 collectathon is all some players need to pick one up. However, as a proud portable console parental figure who has watched the cartridge-based system grow up over the past few years, I’d say the platform has more to offer as it becomes an awkward teenager.

Daft analogies aside, the Evercade Nexus has the potential to become one of the best retro handhelds around, but it has some growing up to do. I mean that with love and support, as the portable console builds on what the OG handheld, Super Pocket, and EXP have already achieved. Turns out adding a pair of thumbsticks, a pretty cromulent 5.89-inch IPS 840 × 512 display with elevated brightness, and tricks like Bluetooth and multiplayer Wi-Fi can take a system to the next level, but that means transferring the same school as many other $200 brutes.

99 is an egregious price for the Nexus given its access to over 750 classic games and its overall contribution to physical gaming. The latter means I’m certainly willing to overlook some smaller caveats in the name of keeping true ownership in the hands of players via pretty fun collectable cartridges. The latest handheld also proves that Blaze is more than capable of venturing beyond the fifth generation of consoles and beyond, suggesting that the ecosystem is here to stay, but I’d avoid directly comparing this latest portable to its ROM-wielding rivals.

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