Originally planned for early November, European stock now has an estimated release between December 8th and 17th - with US and Canada shipments being pushed to January 14th, 2022. Blaze Entertainment’s managing director Andrew Byatt pointed to “increased pressure that has affected lorry freight, congestion at ports, and the shipping lines to get stock around the world” for the delays, with production of hardware having been completed in September. “Like many other companies, we have to rely on this infrastructure to get you your console. Over the past 3 months, this situation has become very challenging and despite the best planning, we have not been able to find any way to improve outcomes.” The delays also affect six cartridge lines - Intellivision, Bitmap Brothers, Technos Arcade, Data East Arcade, Gaelco Arcade and Atari Arcade - which are arriving together in the same shipment. Elsewhere, Evercade provided a tour of the system’s interface, which boasts a number of new features. There’s now a quick save feature, a variety of display modes (including pixel perfect scaling and adding scanlines) and the ability to organise games on the dashboard in a variety of ways - useful if you have two cartridges inserted at once. Last year, Digital Foundry’s John Linneman took a detailed look at the original handheld Evercade - and he came away impressed. “As a retro enthusiast, seeing the owners of classic properties compensated for their games while at the same time opening the door to a new kind of collecting seems like a really good idea to me,” John wrote. “In the case of the Evercade, the core hardware is well-made and very nicely priced, so I can definitely see the system finding an audience - and I hope that it does.”
