You can now buy Evercade's Visco Arcade 1 and 2 cartridges

Blaze Entertainment has released the Visco Arcade 1 and 2 physical cartridges for the Evercade ecosystem. The two collections, first announced in June, are available at retail today for $24.99 each.

Visco started in 1982 under founder Tetsuo Akiyama and eventually became a prolific third-party developer for SNK's Neo Geo MVS hardware in the 1990s. The split between the two new Evercade cartridges roughly follows the studio's timeline.

Shoot 'em ups and early racers

Visco Arcade 1 (Cartridge #23) focuses on the late 1980s and early 1990s. The eight-game tracklist includes the 1992 shoot 'em up Andro Dunos, the original 1991 top-down racer Drift Out, Ashura Blaster, Asuka & Asuka, Earth Joker: U.N. Defense Force, Galmedes, Maze of Flott, and the arcade soccer title Goal! Goal! Goal!.

Visco Arcade 2 (Cartridge #24) moves into the company's Neo Geo era. This is where the heavy hitters are. It packs in the 1996 fighting game Breakers, which remains a staple at retro tournaments thanks to its fluid combo system. It also includes the hack-and-slash action game Ganryu and the isometric rally racer Neo Drift Out: New Technology. Neo Drift Out is notoriously fast and unforgiving, demanding precise memorization to clear its short stages.

The rest of the second cartridge includes Drift Out '94: The Hard Order, Bang Bead, Captain Tomaday, Bang Bang Busters, and Battle Flip Shot. I think Battle Flip Shot is the hidden gem of this entire lineup. It plays like a competitive mix of Pong and a fighting game, and it really shines if you have a way to play local multiplayer.

Hardware compatibility across the board

The Evercade ecosystem has grown over the years, but these cartridges work across the entire hardware lineup. You can plug them into the original 2020 Evercade handheld, the newer EXP and EXP-R portable systems, or the VS and VS-R home consoles for television play. They are also fully compatible with the upcoming Evercade Alpha tabletop arcade cabinets and the budget-friendly Super Pocket handhelds from HyperMegaTech.

Like all Evercade releases, both collections come in plastic clamshell cases with full-color printed manuals. The platform relies entirely on licensed physical media, so you won't find a digital storefront here.

These two releases join a growing list of dedicated arcade publisher cartridges for the system. Blaze has previously released similar multi-game collections for Toaplan, Data East, Taito, and Irem. Visco's catalog rarely gets the same attention as SNK's first-party Neo Geo output, so having 16 of their arcade boards consolidated onto two $25 cartridges makes it much easier to actually play them today.