A Brand-New Retro Handheld Just Launched — Evercade Nexus Is OUT NOW With Banjo-Kazooie in the Box

Physical media just got a new champion. Blaze Entertainment has launched the Evercade Nexus, the newest handheld in the Evercade line, and it’s available right now at Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Funstock, and other Evercade retailers across the US and Europe — with Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie packed in the box.

The Nexus is the biggest swing Evercade has taken at hardware. It sports a 5.89-inch screen — the largest ever on an Evercade — rated at over 500 nits of brightness, in a new, larger black form factor with a customizable RGB light-up logo. The headline upgrade is dual analogue sticks, added specifically so 64-bit and 32-bit era games play the way they were meant to. That matters for a library built on franchises like Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem, Legacy of Kain, and DOOM. Under the hood: a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, WiFi 6 for updates, a 5,000mAh battery rated for 5+ hours, USB-C charging, and a weight of 410g.

At the center of the machine, as always, is the cartridge slot. Evercade’s whole pitch is physical ownership: officially licensed cartridges, each with a full-color manual, no downloads and no waiting. Since the platform launched in 2020, more than 80 cartridges and 700+ games have been released, spanning publishers including Capcom, Bandai Namco, Atari, Team17, SNK, Codemasters, and Crystal Dynamics. The Nexus box includes the console, the Banjo-Kazooie Double Pack cartridge, a USB-C cable, and a quick start guide.

There’s one genuinely new trick: EverSync. Two Nexus owners can wirelessly share a game from one console to another — no WiFi or internet connection required — so both players play the same game at the same time, each on their own screen, from a single cartridge. Returning features include TATE mode for vertical arcade games, display ratio and scanline options, the Evercade library tracker for your cartridge collection, and the Indie Heroes Game of the Month delivered via wireless updates. Accessories, including an official hard-shell carry case holding six cartridges and a screen protector kit, are sold separately.

Price: $199.99 / £169.99 / €199.99.

For more retro and handheld gaming coverage, check out Dizzy Is BACK! The Oliver Twins Just Announced a 3-Game Mega Drive Cartridge for 2027! and New Nintendo Switch Games This Week: Minecraft for Switch 2 Tops the eShop Drop — Week of October 29.

And the early verdicts are glowing — in the launch announcement, Blaze quotes GamesRadar+ at 4.5/5 calling it Blaze’s best handheld yet, VGC at 4/5, Retro Dodo at 9/10, and Tom’s Guide calling it potentially “the perfect retro gaming device.”

In an era of delistings, license expirations, and download-only storefronts, a $200 handheld built entirely around cartridges you own forever is a genuinely different bet. The Nexus is out now if you want to make it.

Source: Blaze Entertainment announcement via GamesPress.

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