The Astyanax, a 1989 arcade platform game by Jaleco, has been released as the December 2025 Evercade Highlight of the Month.

The narrative of this month’s game has been described by Blaze Entertainment as follows: “Roche has received a divine revelation: he is destined to battle the evil demons and restore peace to the world. In order to accomplish this quest, he has been presented with the legendary Fire Axe, with which he can strike down his enemies and make use of magical spells. His mission will take him across six distinct stages: a forest, a cave, a lake, an elevator, a castle and a mysterious final stage where the true evil mastermind is revealed.”

The Evercade Highlight of the Month program gives owners of Evercade VS, Evercade EXP and Evercade Alpha consoles the chance to play a game from a previously released Evercade cartridge, simply by updating their machine’s system software, with the game remaining playable until the system software is updated again.

The December 2025 Evercade highlight of the Month, The Astyanax, is now live, replacing November 2025’s Evercade highlight of the Month, which was Mr. Gimmick, as we previously reported.

The Astyanax was featured on Evercade on the Jaleco Arcade 1 cartridge, which was released back in July 2022.

The arcade version of The Astyanax isn’t the only version of the game to have received an Evercade release, with the NES version also appearing on the Jaleco Collection 1 cartridge.