With the rising costs associated with retro gaming many are turning to flash carts. These carts allow the flashing (writing to the cart) of unaltered ROMs allowing them to be played on original hardware. Igor Golubovskiy better known as Kirkzz has created a line of flash carts called Everdrives whose console spectrum covers the NES all the way up to the N64. Igor's creations are praised for their reliability and ability to work with console libraries. I recently purchased a variant of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive called the Mega Everdrive X5 and put it through it's paces.





The Mega Everdrive, the Sega Genesis/ Mega Everdrive version of the flashcart, has had a few different variants. The X3 is the entry level variant.  It features quick flash times supports Genesis, Master System, & 32X games, and can utilize Game Genie and Pro Action Replay cheats. While it has a robust feature set it does leave room for improvement. For one the cart wasn't able to pause Master System games due to the Master System's pause button being located on the console itself. Another issue is that in order for the cart to save a game the user must press the reset button before powering off the Genesis. The Mega Everdrive X5 fixes these issues and in my opinion hits the sweet spot between price and feature set.


The X5 improves on the X3 by adding a SMS pause button to the cartridge allow you to pause Master System Games. It also has a built in Mega Key that allows for playing ROMS from a different region. This is great for those users who want to play Japanese or European games on their Genesis. The biggest improvement on the X5 is its ability to act as a Sega CD Backup RAM cartridge. The internal save space on a Sega CD is pitifully small and isn't enough room to finish expansive games such as Shining Force CD. With the X5 a user won't need to worry about running out of space as the 1Mbit (128 KB; 2045 blocks) backup space provided by the EverDrive is plenty.


The Mega Everdrive line runs off a MicroSD card and an 8GB card will be enough space to fit the entire Genesis, 32X, and SMS libraries with room for Sega CD saves. Their usefulness isn't limited to running commercial ROMS as they can also run hardware diagnostics, homebrew, hacks, and translations. I've already sunk hours in to playing the English translation of Monster World IV. During the testing of my Everdrive X5 I played several SMS, 32X and Genesis games and didn't encounter any anomalies. The claims of 99% compatibility (Virtua Racing won't run) appear to be true. For anyone that wants to expand their Genesis experience I highly recommend grabbing an Everdrive from Stone Age Gamer or Krikzz.

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