For the last few years, Blaze Entertainment have been consistently providing their Evercade fans with a free game each month to try, with each title being from an upcoming Indie Heroes cartridge. Now, Blaze have switched this around a bit; instead of a new indie game of the month, the game will be one from the Evercade’s now impressive back catalogue. Though it’s possible you’ll already own the game in question, at least you can have it on your hardware for a month without having to dig out the cartridge.

What Evercade Hardware do I Need to Access the Highlight of the Month feature on the Evercade?

The Highlight of the Month feature is available to Evercade fans who own the Evercade VS, Evercade EXP or the Evercade Alpha.

As was the case with Game of the Month, downloading a new Highlight of the Month will erase the previous game, and your saves with it, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t simply skip an update and the latest game if you wanted to keep your currently downloaded title and its progress.

What is Midnight Resistance, the Evercade Highlight of the Month for March 2025?

Midnight Resistance is a classic, highly acclaimed, run and gun title from Data East; initially an arcade game with an unusual control scheme (the joystick could be rotated to determine the direction your weapon fired in), it was ported to a very wide range of 8-bit and 16-bit console and computer platforms.

Though the arcade original is available on the Evercade (on Data East Arcade 2), the Highlight of the Month version is the 16-bit port of Midnight Resistance, which can also be found on the Data East Collection 1 cartridge.

How do I download the Evercade Highlight of the Month?

On your console – either Evercade Alpha, VS or EXP – go to the Settings menu, then select the System option.

Then choose Check for Updates; this should trigger the system update which will contain your Highlight of the Month (as well as other firmware updates or fixes too).

Note that if you’re attempting this on an Evercade EXP, you’ll need to have at least 50% battery or have the console plugged in and charging.

Do also note that your system may shut down and restart automatically, sometimes multiple times, during this process.

Have faith and patience – and just wait for it to go through these steps without interrupting the process as it does this.

Where will I find my Evercade Highlight of the Month?

On the Evercade EXP, you’ll find your Highlight of the Month in the EXP menu, selected on the left hand side of the screen.

The VS is slightly different, though it’s in essentially the same place – the icon is a star, rather than the EXP option on the handheld.

In any case, if you have an Evercade VS, an Evercade EXP, an Evercade Alpha – or even several different iterations of Evercade hardware – what are you waiting for? Go and download the Evercade Highlight of the Month right now. You can thank me later!

You can purchase the 16-bit console version of Midnight Resistance as part of the Data East Collection 1, but if you want to try the original game, make sure to pick up Data East Arcade 2!