Is a Knockoff Mega Everdrive Worth the Money?

An E-v-e-r drive MD, as listed on Wish.com, $38

Over the summer I ordered something on Wish. (My wife reminds me that this is often a bad idea.) However, I had read some good things about flash carts, and I decided to order a Chinese knockoff Everdrive MD. Why not order the name-brand? Well, the Chinese E-v-e-r drive MD cartridge (seriously, that's how it's listed) was only $38. An actual Everdrive MD will run you $54 plus the price of an SD card, roughly $65 when all is said and done. The E-v-e-r drive MD was $38, plus about 5 dollars for shipping ($43 total). Plus, it came equipped with a 16 gigabyte SD card pre-installed with all of the necessary software.

Now, if you've ever ordered anything from Wish.com, you know that it takes for-freaking-ever for anything to arrive from there. I mean, it's being shipped all the way from China, so I guess that's to be expected. Therefore, I had some time on my hands as I awaited my new little toy. I spent that time getting together roms of all of the cartridges in my Genesis collection, plus roms of any other Genesis or Master System game I owned on a compilation disk or mini-system. I had to gather the roms, then extract each because the E-v-e-r drive MD can only use .gen, .md, .smd, or .bin files. This took me a while, but by the time my new flash cart showed up, I was ready to install my games. I won't tell you how much time this process took, but trust me, it was a while!

It turns out that I wasted all that time. The Mega Driver (the name printed on the actual cartridge when it arrived) had all of those games pre-installed, plus game hacks. I even had access to a good many unreleased games in the public domain. The only thing the Mega Driver doesn't do is load Sega CD images, which is a minor complaint seeing that even the actual Mega Everdrive x7 won't do that, and that thing runs for $183.

So why would anyone buy a brand-name Everdrive? Speed. The Chinese Mega Driver (aka E-v-e-r drive MD, among other aliases) takes a few seconds to load a new game into memory. Also, it won't run either Virtua Racing or Mega Man: The Wily Wars. (Then again, neither will a brand-name Mega Everdrive.) According to Krikzz.com, another drawback of a clone is that it will only rewrite the flash memory 100,000 times. I'm not sure where they got that number, but I'd guess they pulled it out of thin air. What they're trying to express is that their device uses more durable components, and that's probably true. Still, I'll probably be long dead before I change the game in my knockoff Mega Driver 100,000 times.

 Another cool thing about the clone I bought is that it allows me to region-switch the bios on my Sega CD, just like the Mega Exerdrive x7. This enables me to play Japanese and European Sega CD games which were unreleased in the USA, like Night Striker, Ninja Warriors, and Sengoku Denshou.

Night Striker

So, was it a good purchase? Heck yeah! For one, it saves wear and tear on my real Genesis carts. Add to that the ability to add homebrew and unreleased game roms, and the Mega Driver/E-v-e-r drive MD was a great purchase. The thing is, you only notice the speed difference when changing games. I've been playing an Sword of Vermillion lately, which means keeping the same game in memory, so it boots right up with no loading time. Let me show you in a handy pro/con comparison...

Pros:
-Pre-loaded with a ton of games
-Cheap
-Allows you to change Sega CD bios
-Allows you to use Game Genie codes

Con:
-It may take a few seconds to change which game you have loaded
-A few of the pre-loaded games don't run (like Mega Man: The Wily Wars)
-Durability (?)

My recommendation is that if you want to buy an Everdrive for your Sega Genesis, go with a clone. Unless you're one of those people whose head will explode if he has to wait a few seconds for something to load, it's a perfect solution for gamers and collectors alike.