Hardware Is there a GB/GBC flash card in a GBA cart shell?

[MikaDubbz]

Yeah, as the title asks, is there a GB/GBC flashcart that is in a GBA cart-sized shell? I know GBA flashcards can play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but it doesn't do so natively, instead via emulation, which means things like the screen size can't be adjusted to full size or stretched like a GB or GBC typically could when played on a GBA. I know there are GBC flashcards, but every one I've seen are typical Game Boy game sized carts, so naturally when played in a GBA you have a big part of the cart jutting out of whatever GBA model or GBA Player, and it'd be nice if that wasn't there, just for aesthetics purposes.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Doesn't exist as far as i know. The level shifters needed by GBC flashcarts alone take so much PCB space, that it's very difficult to cram all of it in such small space. And considering you give up half of the (already small) market just to deliver a form factor not working in GB/C's is a bad buisiness decision. Even if you include 2 shells that is quite a cost increase. These are probably the reasons why no one made this yet.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Doesn't exist as far as i know. The level shifters needed by GBC flashcarts alone take so much PCB space, that it's very difficult to cram all of it in such small space. And considering you give up half of the (already small) market just to deliver a form factor not working in GB/C's is a bad buisiness decision. Even if you include 2 shells that is quite a cost increase. These are probably the reasons why no one made this yet.

Shame, it seems like an idea that might have some decent merit these days as I seem to come across more GBA mods than ever anymore. Seems like the system is receiving an extra lease on life among retro gaming enthusiasts.

 

[ghjfdtg]

If you look at existing GBC flashcart designs you will always find 1 or 2 chips directly above the contact area. These are the level shifters. Most electronics uses 3.3 or even 1.8V these days. 5V tolerance is getting increasingly rare. The exception are probably 1 ROM flashcarts where you replace the ROM with some old flash that happens to be close enough in pinout and voltage.

 

[tech3475]

Doesn't exist as far as i know. The level shifters needed by GBC flashcarts alone take so much PCB space, that it's very difficult to cram all of it in such small space. And considering you give up half of the (already small) market just to deliver a form factor not working in GB/C's is a bad buisiness decision. Even if you include 2 shells that is quite a cost increase. These are probably the reasons why no one made this yet.

Another potential business reason is customer confusion, since the carts will still resemble GBA games.

Even though the cart would be physical unable to fit e.g. a DS, I wouldn’t be surprised if people think the product is ‘faulty’ or worse do a gut swap with an actual GBA game case and possibly damage something.

 

[FAST6191]

GB player might be harder but you could probably make something like one of those cheat devices or multi cart adapters that fold round the back of the device (for the DS but what I mean https://technabob.com/blog/2009/07/11/blaze-3-in-1-selector-nintendo-ds-lite/ , also http://www.gameboy-advance.net/flash_card/gb_bridge.htm but that is for a very rare GBA flash cart and the device is even rarer). Would then mean the thing is round the back but if it hovering in the air is your problem then no longer.

Would not even be a hard thing to make -- you are literally throwing wires from one place to another, not even a passive is needed. If you wanted to then you could throw a pinout at the top to do things like read save data, stick an oscilloscope/debugger on there or inject things. Could even get more fancy and include a battery pack, speakers or something like that and make it a whole shell/controller thing if you were getting fancy with a 3d printer/CNC.

 

[RubyOtaku]

Inside Gadgets have them

 

[MikaDubbz]

Inside Gadgets have them

I assume you mean this and that certainly is the closest thing to what I'm looking for, right idea for sure. But that looks like you can only flash an individual rom to it at a time, and it lacks RTC support which is a bummer for gen 2 of Pokemon. Ideally I'd like to find one that welcomes micro sd cards to fit many GB/GBC roms at once. But it doesn't look like that specifically exists at this time. Still that device there is definitely the right kind of idea. Shows that the concept is certainly feasible I think.

 

[britain4]

I always thought a 2 in 1 cart for GBA and GB/GBC games with a physical switch on to change modes would be an awesome idea... probably not technologically feasible though even in a full GB size cart

 

[Jayro]

I assume you mean this and that certainly is the closest thing to what I'm looking for, right idea for sure. But that looks like you can only flash an individual rom to it at a time, and it lacks RTC support which is a bummer for gen 2 of Pokemon. Ideally I'd like to find one that welcomes micro sd cards to fit many GB/GBC roms at once. But it doesn't look like that specifically exists at this time. Still that device there is definitely the right kind of idea. Shows that the concept is certainly feasible I think.

I recently build a 6 ROM (Gen 1 & 2 games) into a single GBA ROM that runs from a repro cartridge and has flash saving (No more battery bullshit to deal with). It just doesn't have RTC. If RTC is the only bummer, then this is a good alternate route. All 6 Gameboy games on 1 GBA cart and all the games save separately just fine. Requires a 16MB repro game. AliExpress has 32MB ones for $5 each (Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.)