Which card to get! It is so confusing for new users. Here is a quick rundown of the different cards we offer and their features. Please note that these are as accurate as we can be at time of writing. DS flash cards are upgradable, so their features can change at any time! (updated 07/04/2008)
Attribute |
R4DS |
AceKard 2 |
M3DS Real |
CycloDS Evo |
| Ability to Play 100% of ROMs | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Ability to Play Homebrew | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| High Capacity MicroSD support | No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Failure rate from latest batch | 0.2% |
5% |
0.6% |
0.4% |
| Spring loaded MicoSD slot | No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| Download and Play support | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Highly Active support forums | No |
No |
No |
Yes |
| Built in Action Reply in firmware (Cheats) | No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Free 'Rumble' expansion | No |
No |
Yes |
No |
| Slow motion in game | No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
| Real Time Save | No |
No |
No |
Yes |
Explanation of attributes:
Ability to Play 100% of ROMs - As long as you use the best microSD cards, this is true. Sometimes new ROMs will have bugs, a firmware upgrade usually fixes this.
Ability to Play Homebrew - Homebrew for the DS - Check it out.
High Capacity MicroSD support - The ability to use HC microSD cards. HC microSD cards start at 4GB and the technology can reach around 32GB we have been told. We offer 4GB and 8GB on our website. The more space the better hey? This is a hardware feature, so it is not possible to upgrade via firmware to support the cards.
Failure rate from latest batch - Pretty self explanatory . CycloDS evos had a horror run when they first came out with massive failure rate, which almost made us not stock the item. However their hardware issues have been solved now :)
Spring loaded MicoSD slot - The most popular cards in 2007 where the M3 Simply and R4DS. Both had these crappy spring that would break after a couple of months. The R4DS has a new shell, and the M3 Simply has been discontinued. The M3 Real and AceKard 2 have a spring but it is off a different style. The failure rate of these springs is close to nothing.
Download and Play support - If you want to play games against other people that don't have the game, you need this feature.
Highly Active support forums - CycloDS evolution forums are great. The creators are English speaking! M3 Real have forums somewhere, but not not used as much, same with R4. A good place to talk about your Ds flash card is gbatamp.net
Built in Action Reply - Action Reply is the ability to load 'cheats' into the game. CycloDS evo, M3 real and AceKard 2 have cheat databases built into the firmware, so its extremely easy to get them working. R4DS supports it, but you will need to load cheats in manually.
Free 'Rumble' expansion - Not a biggy, but the M3 Real comes with a free (free as in you cant get the pack without it, so don't ask!) Rumble pack. There are a couple of DS games that the rumble feature (DS shakes a little during play). Have a look at the list. The M3 Real also comes with a GBA expansion pack (if you buy the GBA expansion option). It allows you to play GBA ROMs, and the slot can also be patched to act as extra RAM to boot the DS's Opera browser. These 2 features (Rumble and GBA) are ONLY compatible with DS Lites.
Slot Motion - Flash cards that support this allow you to slow the game down to half the speed, a quarter etc. You can turn it on and off
Real Time Save (RTS) - Real Time save allows you to save the game state at any time - so you no longer need to wait until there is a save point in the game! You will then be able to resume the save game at that point any time you want.
Please be careful when reading reviews on the net about our products. Read an old review and it will say that R4 is the best, when as you can see, it is the most basic, boring, and not priced right at the moment.
Did we miss anything? Has the feature list for the cart been updated? If so, please let us know.
