Review: Krikzz’ Master Everdrive X7 for Sega Master System

I have about a dozen Everdrives to cover, so let’s not dilly-dally. Let’s just jump straight into this first one for the Sega Master System. The Master Everdrive X7 was my most anticipated as it’s the oldest console that I still didn’t have a flash cart for. Let’s talk about it!

Disclaimer: a free product was provided by the manufacturer for this review

Description:

Ever dream of having your whole library of Master System games in a single cartridge? The Master EverDrive X7 allows you to load your personally backed-up games from a microSD card, put the SD card into the Master EverDrive X7, put the Master EverDrive X7 into a Master System and have your list of games at your finger tips.

Features:

• Max ROM size: 4MByte
• Max SAVE RAM size: 32KByte
• Save States function and In-Game menu function*
• Instant loading
• SMS and SG-1000 games are supported
• Low power consumption
• High quality 4-layers PCB
• Soft reset to menu
• Micro SD cards are supported
• OS supports up to 1000 files per folder

*Due the hardware specifics, in-game menu and save state function does not work with Japanese Mark-III and Genesis/MegaDrive with Power Base Converter

Unboxing:

Pros:

• Homebrew. I’m going to start with something that I never really touch on, homebrew. This is usually because of the fact that I don’t play too many homebrew games at all. However, I know that a fair amount of you do, especially hacked games or ports. So I wanted to give this the time and respect that it deserves by putting it very first on the list. Now, the official manual states that homebrew is not officially supported, so anything that doesn’t work likely will never work. I also am only testing five pieces of homebrew, so your results may vary, but I used homebrew made this year to best compatibility.
  Let’s go through them in alphabetical order, I’ll list the game and whether or not it worked. First off is a game called “Alter Ego” and it WORKED. The second item is a demo of the red and white checkered 3D ball from the Amiga simply called “Amigo Demo”, this WORKED. The third piece of software is a port of Bomb Jack and it WORKED. The fourth one is a game called “Crazy Pinball” and it WORKED. The fifth and final game is called “Find the Wordy Gems” and it too WORKED. For every piece of homebrew built to work on the SMS, click here.
  I wanted to know also if I could use mods to make Sega Game Gear games work on the Sega Master System since they use the same technology. I did find a quick and simple video showing someone taking their Game Gear ROM and patching it using an IPS patcher to make it work on an Everdrive. It’s great to know that it’s working, albeit not in any official manner. For those wondering, here’s the 5 minute video showing how easy it is.
  Now that you know everything I’ve discovered in my testing, don’t make your entire decision on buying this just based on the fact that I got some homebrew to work. There’s still so very much more to consider with regards to compatibility.

• More Compatibility. Now we can delve into other compatibility topicsOr , but this time ones that are marketed as working on the Master Everdrive X7. Krikzz and company mentions how it covers all of the earlier Sega consoles from the SG-1000 to the Sega Mark III as long as you’re using this in the Sega Master System itself. This means that you have an official count of 1,100(is) compatible games all on your single console. What really works about that is that the OS on the Master Everdrive supports up to 1,000 files per folder. That means that the 900 or so games for Sega Master System can fit in one whole folder and the SG-1000 games can fit in a separate folder. No need to break them into lots of little folders, unless you want to.
  With regards on which consoles you can run the Master Everdrive X7, it’s only officially the Sega Master System. If you use a power base convertor to run on Genesis, it works for Master System games only. If you use the adapter for the Game Gear, it also only plays Master System games.
  If you’re wondering about clone systems, they do have an official statement on the matter; “We do our best to ensure that our devices are compatible with various console clones and modified systems, but we cannot guarantee compatibility with all of them, especially modern clones released after our device.” In other words, don’t buy this for your clone system unless someone has confirmed it works on theirs. And even then, it doesn’t mean a future OS update to the clone system or the Master Everdrive won’t break compatibility.

• Build Quality. As you’ve come to expect with these products, the build quality is effectively OEM quality. If you found this cartridge in a retro game store amongst the others, you’d think it was official. The plastic has that smooth, glossy Master System cartridge feel to it. It feels just as sturdy, and since it’s basically 40 years newer, it’s bound to last for decades to come. But that’s the rub with getting new cartridges, they may even outlast the device they were designed for (first world problems)! Even more humorously, the cartridge looks so much newer in my old, scratched up Master System.
  Heading to the inside of the cartridge, you’ll see that it is, as always, a multilayered PCB. This is practically something that I take for granted at this point when it comes to Everdrives. Heck, it’s even mentions the 4 layered PCB in their official marketing, so you know you’re getting high quality. Looking at other elements of it, there is also a battery added to it, to account for the games that support saving. The interesting part to me is how it looks like a Sega Game Gear cartridge PCB (you can see it in the transparent cartridge pictured below). Upon looking at a picture of one, I see that they are effectively the same. I’m sure that you could NOT jam this PCB into a Game Gear and find success, but the technology itself is generally the same. It’s just fun to see in the real world the effects of Sega reusing their older hardware to make a newer handheld. Anyway, overall, this is a high quality, tough as nails build. It’s also simple to open up and swap the battery should you ever need to.

• Ease. To set it up for use, it’s incredibly easy. That’s one of the delights about Krikzz’s products is that they traditionally have almost no barrier to entry. In this instance, you do the following. First, get on a computer and download the newest OS file from this website. Extract the folder to a place on your computer that you’ll know where it is and then insert your microSD card into your PC. Once it’s inserted, make sure you format it to Fat16 or Fat32. Finally, drag and drop the extracted folder on to your microSD card as well as any game ROMs ending in .SMS or .SG extension. Go ahead and eject the microSD card and insert it into your Master Everdrive and then put the cartridge into your system. Once you turn it on, it will update your system to the firmware of the OS you just placed on the card. That’s it! It may tell you to restart or power cycle the console, but that part is totally normal. The next time you turn on the Master System, you’ll be in the main OS and ready to do what you will!

• OS. Which is a perfect segue into this section, all about the OS and what it can do. Once you boot it up, you’ll be greeted with the list of whatever is on the root of your microSD card. If this is folders, then you’ll have to enter the folder with the game that you want to play. If it’s just a list of games on the root, then you’ll see those. Once you do see the list of games, you can simply use the D-Pad to navigate to the precise game and press the 1 button to execute it. If you’ve went too far and want to go back a screen, then press the 2 button. If you want to go all of the way into the Main Menu of the cartridge for extras, keep pressing 2 until you reach it. If you just turned on the console, you can reach the Main Menu immediately by pressing the 2 button first.
  Now that you’re in the main menu, you can do a few things. I typically don’t use the extra settings, I’ll usually just stick with the respective Everdrive’s default options. However, there are a few things here that I do find interesting.
  First off, you can boot the last game that you loaded automatically, just by pressing the 1 button on the “Start Last Game” option. You can turn the in game menu off, which is actually really intelligent. Because there are so few buttons on the SMS controller, pressing three buttons together in a certain game may screw up gameplay or make it impossible to enter the in game menu without hurting an element of your game. Another Main Menu option is the ability to look at a sizeable list of your most recently played games and then choose one to load. And then there’s a function where you can let it choose a Random Game for you from your entire Master Everdrive.
  You can view your device info as well, it looks over a few elements: Cart: Shows Cartridge Version Information, OS Version: Shows the Operating System Version currently loaded, FPGA ver: Shows the FPGA’s version, SysType: Shows the region of the Master System Console, Asm Date: Cart’s day and year of assembly, Asm Time: Cart’s time of assembly. There is an option to run diagnostics where the hardware will be tested with reading and writing from ROM/RAM/SD Card. And finally, in the Main Menu, you can also view the “About” section which has some arbitrary, additional information about the cart.

• Loading. We just spoke a lot about loading games, which is yet another great segue into another topic. Let’s discuss game loading through the Master Everdrive X7. First, we’ll talk about the loading options that you have and then we’ll discuss the loading speeds. So to start, when you select the game that you want, you have three options upon choosing it. You can of course, select the game and start playing it. You could alternatively just select the game, this loads it into memory and you can always just boot it from the “Start Last Game” option we mentioned. Lastly, you can simply choose to view the information of the ROM. I’ve never seen a purpose to that, but there must be one, so someone will be glad to know it’s included. Now, with loading times, you’ll be happy to know that most of your games will load instantly. For those wondering how fast “instantly” is, I would say one to two seconds. The largest ROM I tested was Sonic Blast and it took about three seconds. Again, if you load a game you’re playing from beginning to end, you can always just boot the console and jump into it by going into the Main Menu and choosing 1 on “Start Last Game” so you don’t have to go searching for it each time. Best of all it will automatically load without having to load it into memory first.

• In Game Menu. To enter the In Game Menu, it’s super simple. By default it’s simply of combining three buttons wherever you are in game. You’ll press Up on the D-Pad as well as the 1 and 2 buttons. Once you do, you’ll be greeted with the menu. And while it’s not a complex menu, it indeed has powerful options in it for such an elderly console! You can choose to exit the game and go back to the main menu. There is an option to save and it will create a snapshot of your very location in game and all of your progress. And of course, you can also load a snapshot. There is only one per game, so just know that you’ll be overwriting your previous save if you choose to save willy-nilly. An interesting fourth use for this In Game Menu is a pause function. This is because it locks the ROM in place while the menu is up. So no need to get up and go to your console anymore just to pause the game. You can also use the In Game Menu as a reset function. If you choose to leave the game, then when you’re back at the main menu, just choose to “Start Last Game” and you’ll begin again. I have always loathed having to get up from my seat and go over to the TV just to reset or pause a game. It would be even easier if Krikzz put a “Reset” option in the In Game Menu. *fingers crossed*

• Cost. I’d like to end on the part that may be a sticking point to people, which is the cost. However, I think that it’s a good thing and I’d like to quickly explain why. First off, you have extremely gorgeously designed PCB’s that are built to last. They’re built by such a small team that you’re going to have support from them and/or the community. This is in contrast to buying a random AliExpress flashcart, either it works or it doesn’t. I also appreciate that there are updates so if someone finds a glaring issue, it can be remedied via an OS update. And as we discussed before, it’s so damn easy to update the cartridge. Krikzz has also iterated on the hardware multiple times through the years, before releasing the X7 model and it’s simply the best to date. All of the AliExpress carts are clones of clones, so they’re definitely running out of date hardware, incapable of playing quite as much. Who knows how long they’re going to last overall comparatively. Then you think about how much money this is saving you overall from having to no longer buy the SG-1000, the SC-3000, the SF-7000, and the Game Gear, just to play the games. You’ll be even more lucky that the Master Everdrive even exists.
  So–at a cost of just $134 dollars, you’re making your life easy for the rest of your life. You’re supporting a team that isn’t cloning, they’re creating. They’re going to keep iterating and making new cartridges as long as you keep buying their products. And best of all, you’re supporting a team from Ukraine, so why not have your cake and eat it too?

Cons:

• Box? The only downside that I would say overall is that this doesn’t have a clamshell included. I assume it’s because maybe this console isn’t so widely used and/or maybe people don’t have too many favorite games that they couldn’t just find and buy. However, when I collect flash cartridges, I still like to have a protective box for them. But luckily, Stone Age Gamer has that covered! So buy your Everdrive from the link below and then go to the second link for a protective box. It has a custom cover, manual, and stickers that all match your Master Everdrive X7! If you don’t personally need a box and such, but you want a manual, Stone Age Gamer has you covered. It hasn’t been updated since the initial release, but it’s still better than ZILCH.

Final Thoughts:

I think that if all that you’re wanting to play is base Sega Master System games then there are more affordable options out there on AliExpress. But if you’re wanting something more feature rich, that is also future proof, then this is your best option. I mean honestly, this thing can run some homebrew, SG-1000 up to Sega Mark III games, run Game Gear conversions, making the whole count almost 1,400 games.

Purchase Link:

Master Everdrive x7

BitBox for Master Everdrive