Hacking M3 or DS-X at twice the price?

[decept]

I'm going back and forth on which card to choose from and I thought I'd ask the opinion of you guys to help me with my decision.

I don't really care about homebew support at all, or even GBA games for that matter. My PSP fits the bill just fine in that regard.

All I care about is running DS games and running them well, including download play. The only other factor that I would like is the User Interface, I'm a sucker when it comes to a nice clean interface with pretty graphics.

Having said that, the DS-X seems to be ideal with my needs. It has high compatability with DS games including download play, nice clean interface and of course, simple to use. However, the only thing keeping it from being the hands down winner is the horrible price range

. I can't see myself pay twice as much as I would pay for a M3 along with a 1gig memory card which will give me twice the capacity of the DS-X.

I'm not even going to go into all the hardware/software problems the DS-X is having since I'm giving the development team the benefit of the doubt and believing that it was problems with the production factory and not shoddy coding.

However the M3/R4 are not without issues themselves. Their download play seems to be spotty, especially when it comes to the game I play the most: Mario Kart DS. Also, even though the GUI is skinnable the game listing interface looks archaic. I may just be looking at a DOS prompt if I didn't know any better (Hmmm... DOS skin??). Also, the compatability list isn't as complete as the DS-X so there's big question marks as to which games will actual work and/or save.

Now that my concerns are laid out, what has everyone's experience with these cards been? Which one is better, is the DS-X really worth twice as much for half the capacity? Or is good ol' reliable M3 the way to go?

Any info would be fantabulous.

Thanks.

 

[aslacker55]

I have a M3 simply, R4DS, SCDS 1, Ninjapass x9, and a DS-X. In my opinion the best one would be the R4DS/M3, its cheap, all the games I've tried have worked, and its not very picky with the micro sd card that you use. I also love my DS-X, but they have been having a lot of manufacturing issues( defective products), so would not recommend buying one right now. The SCDS 1 has a beautiful GUI and it also has good compatibility, but you have to get a good micro sd card( made in japan kingston or toshiba). And please don't buy a ninjapass x9, it really sucks at the moment.

 

[Monkey01]

I don't think you need to worry about the holes in the compatibility list of M3 Simply, pretty much like everything works on it, and if there is something that doesn't work, you would have heard of it, or it would be just a bad game and then it doesn't really mather that much.

The Download Play compatibility is a big difference however. The most popular games have some special sort of Download Play which doesn't work with M3 Simply and everything except for DS-X. Think about games like Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Worms, etcetra...
There are some nice games that work on M3 Simply too though, like Tetris, Bomberman and (unconfirmed) StarFox. (Check out Royal's list here)
Also there are a few games that don't work with download play at all on anything, like Snowboard Kids and Yoshi Touch and Go...

So what one to buy? I don't know, you could wait to see of any of the other companies finally find out how to improve the Download Play compatibility, but this may be a long wait. Or perhaps you should wait and see if DS-X's production is getting any better in the future, but if Download Play is really a major importance, ds-x is still the best when it works. And if it's not worth the money I think it's better to just buy R4/M3Simply...

 

[Sinkhead]

Vincent (the member of the R4 staff I have been in contact with regarding my review samples) says the tehnicians are working on a download play fix, and he's always been very honest to me before.

- Sam

 

[Monkey01]

Vincent (the member of the R4 staff I have been in contact with regarding my review samples) says the tehnicians are working on a download play fix, and he's always been very honest to me before.

- Sam

Working on it like: "we're trying to figure out why it doesn't work and how we can solve it", or working on it, like: "we know how to fix it, so we're working in building it in a firmware update".
Cause I do believe they're looking at it, but so are other companies, and they haven't succeed yet, so I don't expect it to be out quite soon for R4 as well if their in the same state as them...

 

[spas]

You have to consider how important download and play really is. If you want to show this to your friends and make them envious at the mass amount of games you have, then its important.

I don't class download and play as important as homebrew support personally. What are the chances of better homebrew support on the R4.

 

[kiruyama]

Its not the R4 has poor compatability with homebrew, it can play moonshell and DSorganize, its the devs aren't utilizing DLDI when they create their apps so that they can be compatible for all cards.

 

[cory1492]

Its not the R4 has poor compatability with homebrew, it can play moonshell and DSorganize, its the devs aren't utilizing DLDI when they create their apps so that they can be compatible for all cards.

Oh, you mean that DLDI thing that has only been around for a couple weeks for public use? I mean, don't expect it to be instantaneously picked up and included in every homebrew that was released in the last year... especially homebrew that uses GBFS instead of a MM card/FAT system (and won't be compatible with any Slot 1 card until/unless GBFS is use is reprogrammed).

It seems to me their ability to "patch anything" doesn't extend beyond commercial games.

 

[gbasho]

Hi decept, I know my postcount's low, so you can take this with a grain of salt~

Skip down to the very bottom if you want the 'short answer'^^;

Before I answer your q, lemme say that I too have a PSP, 3.03 OE-B and yeah... I don't have any want for GBA or homebrew on my DS either. I mean, exophase's gpsp emulator is great, best emulation and the savestates are awesome touch and I won't even get started on takka's mod. With the limited space of the DS-X or the relatively limited space of any of the micro-sd cards ('relative' because PSP will soon have 8GB duo, great capacity and will force the price of the 4GB down even closer to that of a 1GB micro), I'd rather keep my store of gba games on a memory stick duo than my sd micro; I need that space for ds games, that I er... own >.>

 

[decept]

Great response gbasho. Thanks for the insight, even though the R4 was my last choice of the three, it looks like that's the one I'm going to go with.

That is unless DS-X announces something that will blow everything else away to justify the extra money and put their custom chip to use. I highly doubt they will anytime soon though.

I may way just another week, or I may just buckle and order this weekend. We'll see.

If I do end up going with the R4 what is the best microSD card to use, since you're stating it matters somewhat?

 

[GexX2]

http://wiki.scorpei.com/index.php/R4_compa...h_Compatibility

 

[gbasho]

>> decent

while I don't know too much for the 2GB cards, I can say that as far as 1GB goes, I've heard lots of good things about the kingston (made in japan) and the a-data, but mostly kingston lol

what do i use? well, for my ninjapass x9, i use the kingston, since that one seems to play along the best with most (all?) slot-1 that can use it. with the R4DS, which can tolerate lesser quality/slower cards more easily than the ninjapass, i use the Transcend Micro SD that came with (bundle deal from modchipstore.com) my R4DS. It runs beautifully except for one really minor .5 second hiccup on one of the two Castlevania games; i think it's dawn of sorrow off the top of my head.

so basically, if you wanna go 2GB, like GexX2 said, that site is awesome for what works with the R4DS.

if you wanna go 1GB, i can personally recommend the kingston 1GB, along with the many others that do as well. but the transcend works alright, too

hope that helps!