Two posts this close together? I guess that one reader I have is eating good. Or they will be when they check back here in a couple months for their quarterly visit.
Alright, so you know my thing these days – preservation and conservation of retro hardware and software. You wanna know more about my thoughts and feelings on that topic just read back over the last couple years (that’s only like 5 posts total AT MOST.) The Mega EverDrive is another piece of tech I just picked up toward that end.
Rom carts aren’t rare or new, but this one is a fucking gem. There is a noticeable level of craftsmanship and quality of life that sets it miles above the others I’ve tried in the past.
First and foremost – it’s the fucking software on this cart. The interface, the sheer ease of use, and the functionality. Everything is just exactly where it needs to be and makes sense and is easily accessible and just fucking works the way it should. All you really want to do with these devices is load a game and play it, and goddamn does Krikzz fucking deliver there. You turn on the console and BAM there’s your list of folders and the roms inside them and you just select and play. As easy as that! Who’d have thought technology and software could be user friendly and functional in 2025? Not fucking me that’s for goddamn. Everything fucking SUCKS here in this dystopian nightmare. Except for Krikzz products apparently.
In comparison, I have a Super UFO Pro for the SNES – had it for years. It was the first rom cart I bought, and while functionally it does a lot of the same things, it is a bitch to use. With the UFO Pro 8 the rom names don’t display fully so it can be difficult to even see what you’re loading, there’s basically no English language documentation available, the main menu all consists of very vague icons so you don’t even really know what option you’re selecting. One good thing about the Super UFO Pro 8 though is the ability to back up your game saves directly from the cart onto your SD card and then flash them back onto the cart. You plug your cartridges into it directly, Sonic & Knuckles style. Using this to back up your saves and flash them back to the original game carts is an excellent feature for the sake of making battery changes in the cartridges without losing your saves. That’s the reason I bought the Super UFO Pro 8 in the first place. I mean don’t get me wrong it functions fine but it’s just awkward and requires jumping through some hoops which is a barrier. I never find myself wanting to use it because it’s more convenient to grab an actual cartridge of a real game. One day I’ll finally use it to painstakingly back up all my SNES save files and replace all the cartridge batteries and flash the saves back on, and then never use the thing again.
But the EverDrive is an absolute dream start to finish. It works so smoothly. Hell it even lets you save and load states at will just like if you were emulating. And when your available time and patience is limited, like mine is as a bullshit job-having adult, save states can come in handy. Generally speaking I don’t like to use them and avoid them, but have you tried playing Super Fantasy Zone on the Mega Drive? Fucking HAVE YOU? I don’t understand how that shit is possible even when straight up cheating. Oh, and the Mega EverDrive’s also entirely region free, so you can play roms from the US, Europe, and Japan with no problem, regardless of what region console you have. You can of course also run any translation roms, rom hacks, betas, homebrews, et cetera. This thing opened up a universe of games that I would probably never have touched otherwise.
The EverDrive does have some cons, though, at least for my personal situation. I hadn’t mentioned yet that the Mega EverDrive Pro contains the necessary hardware to run Sega CD games on your Mega Drive, without actually needing to have a Sega CD attached – but if you DO have a Sega CD attached, it won’t let you run the games. So if you’re like me and you have your abomination of Sega consoles and attachments all combined, you have to remove the Sega CD in order to play the Sega CD roms via the EverDrive. I can’t speak to the technical reasons that the Sega CD needs to be detached for the EverDrive to run Sega CD roms – presumably something about it conflicts between the console and the cartridge, so by replicating the hardware it’s doubling something up. If you attempt to run a Sega CD game via the EverDrive when the Sega CD console is attached, you get an error message stating that the Sega CD is interfering with the operation and needs to be removed.
On the other side of that coin though, is that the device can run 32x roms, but only if the 32x IS attached, because the cartridge does NOT contain the necessary hardware to run 32x roms by itself. That’s fine and makes sense, BUT there’s another conflict here – the Sega CD had a handful of games that were enhanced by also having the 32x attached. You would think that by detaching the Sega CD but also attaching the 32x to allow for 32x roms to be played, you’d be able to play those Sega CD-32x combo games, but no. Removing the Sega CD allows the Sega CD to start up, but then having the 32x attached creates a new conflict.
So to summarize that, Mega EverDrive can run:
– Genesis games (any console configuration)
– Sega CD games (only if Sega CD console IS NOT attached to the Genesis)
– 32x games (only if the 32x console IS attached to the Genesis)
Mega EverDrive CANNOT run:
– Sega CD games enhanced by 32x (various hardware conflicts that result in error messages in any configuration)
Of course that’s a really specific situation for a tiny handful of games, but still, it’s a little disappointing that it isn’t quite complete in that sense.
The faffing around with the attachments is also an enormous pain in the ass given that they were truly inconvenient devices in the first place. Each device has its own separate power cable, and the 32x has its own visual cables as well and has a patch cable back to the Genesis. So adding and removing them is just not something you want to do ever. That being said, I’ve basically accepted that I need to leave my Sega CD permanently detached in order to play any Sega CD games, and basically never attach my 32x because why would I want to play any 32x games anyway, I guess.
Anyway. The cons I talked about regarding the console attachments are less a fault of the EverDrive than they are a massive failing of Sega in the 90s with their bizarre tactic to go all-in on expensive, awkward peripherals instead of just focusing their efforts and resources on the Saturn. The fact that Krikzz was able to retroactively create a cartridge device that gets this level of additional functionality out of this old hardware in any configuration is a triumph. I’m an immediate and massive fan of Krikzz and will soon be buying the FXPak Pro, which is his SNES equivalent of the EverDrive.