Well, that didn’t take long. Saw a discount on an Evercade EXP-R and bought it. I figured that, with the discount, it was about the same price as the original Evercade if you subtract the price of the included cart.

As I expected I’m slightly underwhelmed by the handheld. The unit is bigger than the original one, and that’s not a good thing.
I find the original one much nicer to look at, nicer to hold and I like the buttons better. But maybe that will change over time. I like the clear lettering on the ABXY buttons better than the hard to read letters on the new device. That’s especially important to me, as I’m always very confused about the button layout.
The screen is slightly better, but it’s not as big a difference as I thought. I don’t care much about viewing angles on a device like this. And although it has a higher resolution, it doesn’t make text a lot better to read. That mostly depends on the fonts used in the games. The color balance seems different, black is now dark brown, but maybe that’s how it supposed to be. Overall the colors look better. The UI is smaller, which is not a good thing for me.

That the screen isn’t much bigger is such a missed opportunity (it’s maybe a tiny bit bigger). Especially with the glass/plastic panel that overlays the screen. I would have liked to see that panel being the whole of the screen. But, that would probably be too costly, and would require a bigger and heavier battery. And the handheld already feels heavier than the original one, although I don’t know if that’s the case.

A final annoyance is the button placement of some of the buttons. I like to hold the device with my pinky fingers along the bottom of the device, which has let to accidental button presses of the tate mode button. And I also don’t hold it with my index fingers on the triggers, but underneath them, on the back of the device. But then those fingers rest on the edge of the triggers. Not very comfortable. Hopefully a thing I will get used to.

I’ve already played a bit of Tomb Raider 1. Never played a Tomb Raider before in my life. That’s so funny. A lot of people probably assume that everyone who confesses to be a gamer, has played games like Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Super Smash Brothers, GTA 3 or the Uncharted games. But I never have (okay, I’ve played the first Uncharted game about three years ago and I’m correcting never having played Final Fantasy.) Playing through any of the Tomb Raider games is definitely a goal of 2025.