Hacking to buy a g6?

[lucasgbatemp]

Ok, so my girlfriend is interested in getting a DS and wants me to look into flashcards. she just wants it for playing retail games, so factors such as homebrew compatibility and abillity to play movies and crap doesnt come into the decision. I've been reading that the G6 has the highest compatibility, is there a downside to this cart? the extra space for less $$$$ with the SD and CF based cards doesnt really appeal if the game compatibility doesnt at least match up with the g6.

also, does anyone know what the specs for max size of a retail DS game is? are they limited to 1Gbit in size?

lucas

 

[teh_raf3]

I think you'd better go with the M3 SD or something, you can buy SD cards from 128mb to +2gb (bytes, not bits) so you can put multiple roms on one SD card.

Just check out the tutorials and reviews here on the site.

 

[lucasgbatemp]

the extra space for less $$$$ with the SD and CF based cards doesnt really appeal if the game compatibility doesnt at least match up with the g6.

I think you'd better go with the M3 SD or something, you can buy SD cards from 128mb to +2gb (bytes, not bits) so you can put multiple roms on one SD card.

are you saying that the M3 has equal compatibility to the G6? cause as i thought i made rather clear i dont give a rats ass about space if the retail rom compatibilty is inferior. I'd love to find out that the M3 had equal or better compatibility but every chart ive seen comparing them has favour the G6 by a lot.

 

[Opium]

As I understand it the M3 has nearly exactly the same compatibility as the G6. You just need to fiddle with a few rom options. They're both made by the same company so they're pretty much identical except one costs a hell of a lot less.

 

[Hanafuda]

lucasgbatemp,

great minds really do think alike!

I'm facing the same choice, and while I'm not decided yet, like you I'm not willing to compromise game performance for additional capacity. But it is worth noting that owners of the M3 and EZ4, which both use removeable flashcard media, are generally not dissatisfied on this issue.

 

[meangreenie]

I'd rather have hunderds of roms on my card even if I had to fiddle with a couple to get them working properly.

As I understand it the M3 has as good as it gets DS compatability and almost perfect gba compatability with just a few roms that need a fiddle with the settings and/or a patch/fix.

 

[yuwing]

how is the battery life on the G6?

 

[Hanafuda]

I'd rather have hunderds of roms on my card even if I had to fiddle with a couple to get them working properly.

As I understand it the M3 has as good as it gets DS compatability and almost perfect gba compatability with just a few roms that need a fiddle with the settings and/or a patch/fix.

"hunderds" of roms is a bit unrealistic, unless youre just planning to have the fattest pocketNES file ever. The 4Gbit G6 is equivalent to 512mbytes. The max currently possible on an M3 is 2gbytes, or 4 times as much. The cost for this is not that far apart, since a 2 gbyte miniSD will be in the $75 range. If you are talking equivalent storage capacity, an M3 with a 512mbyte card would work out to be about 40-50 bucks cheaper than the 4gbit G6 when shipping and/or tax is considered. Whether the instant loading, no slowdowns, and no fuss of the G6 is worth that much extra is up to the individual, but the idea that the G6 is "crippled" because of low capacity is incorrect.

 

[fuctfuct]

I'm in the same boat. Trying to decide between M3, EZ4 or G6 .. . . . .. .

I care ALOT more about roms running EXACTLY like they do on the original cart then how many roms i can fit on a cart at any given time. I am willing to scarifice money and space to do so. It seems everyones definition of running perfect is different. Lots of them see minor glitches/slowdowns as nothing to worry about and to THEM that is "running perfect". Some people have even said they thought some games where running fine on their SD cards until they saw them running on a G6. Another thing you have to worry about is if your SD card works well with your SD cart. It seems the speed of your SD card isn't as important as the way you cart interacts with it. That's easy to see when you look at the M3 wikki media compatibility chart. So making a decision on which SD card to get for Supercard or EZ4 is hard since there is no such list for them.

It really looks like I'm gonna have to fork over the $$$ for a 2gb g6

 

[Xboxed]

"hunderds" of roms is a bit unrealistic, unless youre just planning to have the fattest pocketNES file ever.

Yes, actually. I got 3 pocketnes file dividing the roms alphabetically. Also GG, SMS and GB B/W packs separatly. Those plus 30+ DS Games and 10 GBA ones...actually pumps my count at least to the hundreds on my M3 CF with 2 GB card.

I recommend the M3 over the G6 not only for space matters, it's cheaper on the long run.

Peace

 

[pizzicatoiv]

I have never been happy with my G6 since I got it.

I've had problems with the buggy software. Sometimes it crashes on me randomly and corrupts my entire card, I often have had to reformat the card through their nonsense proprietary utility (which seems to do who knows what, because the cart appears to be in FAT format)

The same system is absolutely ridiculous. It creates three save files, .1, .2, and .3. Plus, short filenames are used and it doesnt name files based on header information. So lets say you have the three castlevania GBA games on your cart... well, depending on how you add them to the cart they'll correspond to different castle~1.1 files. There's no reason they cant read rom headers.

The button, what is with the button? I've never, ever had to use it, yet I apparently almost always accidentally had it pressed down and it killed my battery. Nonsense.

Their software is not often updated, and they have a "contact us" page from which I have requested many reasonable features such as drag and drop, I never received a response from them.

Different versions of the loader back up roms and .sav files differently. I lost GBA saves I've had for years because I updated them with new .1 files which the new loader could not even read.

I have not experienced it with the newest version of the GBA loader, but I also haven't seen it in the update log, but on the previous version of the GBA loader it used a graphical interface where there were thumbnails for each rom, except that some rom files would make the entire rest of the screen unreadable garbage data, making the interface unusable.

The GBA loading time is ridiculous. I have an old EZFA and it can load files immediately, I dont understand why it takes 10 seconds to load a 32Mb file.

I cannot recommend a G6. I have fought with it to get it to work, I've had it since the first shipment from kicktrading. I cannot recommend the M3 simply because it has anything to do with this ridiculous and clunky product.

I am currently looking at replacing my G6 with an EZ4.

 

[Hanafuda]

"hunderds" of roms is a bit unrealistic, unless youre just planning to have the fattest pocketNES file ever.

Yes, actually. I got 3 pocketnes file dividing the roms alphabetically. Also GG, SMS and GB B/W packs separatly. Those plus 30+ DS Games and 10 GBA ones...actually pumps my count at least to the hundreds on my M3 CF with 2 GB card.

I recommend the M3 over the G6 not only for space matters, it's cheaper on the long run.

Peace

if you actually play them all, regularly and in rotation, then good for you. I've got all that on my PC's HDD and more, and for the most part the files just sit there. I typically only play 2 games at any one time, plus one racer for some action. For PocketNES, I just sample games on my PC using VirtuaNES and find the gems, because a lot of the NES catalog was unoriginal crap. The last pocketNES pack I made had 16 games in it, but they're damned good ones.

Quality, not quantity, young grasshopper.

 

[Hanafuda]

pizzicatoiv, are you using the 3.24 client?? Cuz G6 went to instant save just like the M3 some time ago. Also if your PC is recognizing the cart as a plug-n-play USB device, can't you just let Windows format it as FAT16?

As for short filenames, I'm just guessing but I think my solution would be to give the file my own choice of 8.3 filename before the G6 client burns it to the cart. For example, perhaps I would name Castlevania : Circle of the Moon into "CAS-COTM.gba" so the G6 wouldn't rename my file.

As for files and saves produced by one loader being incompatible with files and saves from another loader version, I don't think that's unusual.

Finally, it seems you are using the G6 for GBA quite a bit. I will give you some advice a G6 owner on the M3 forum gave me recently -

You shouldn't be using G6 with gba cause it's worthless.
If you want to buy a flashcard for just in terms of playing gba then you are better off with another card. G6 has NDS as it's primary choice which it handles perfectly. Yes, the complicated save system has been resolved for quite some time and supports autosaving now.

I've also heard that trying to use real-time save, software rest, and other "cheats" on GBA games on the G6 is a recipe for nightmares. Stick to unpatched roms.

 

[Xboxed]

"hunderds" of roms is a bit unrealistic, unless youre just planning to have the fattest pocketNES file ever.

Yes, actually. I got 3 pocketnes file dividing the roms alphabetically. Also GG, SMS and GB B/W packs separatly. Those plus 30+ DS Games and 10 GBA ones...actually pumps my count at least to the hundreds on my M3 CF with 2 GB card.

I recommend the M3 over the G6 not only for space matters, it's cheaper on the long run.

Peace

if you actually play them all, regularly and in rotation, then good for you. I've got all that on my PC's HDD and more, and for the most part the files just sit there. I typically only play 2 games at any one time, plus one racer for some action. For PocketNES, I just sample games on my PC using VirtuaNES and find the gems, because a lot of the NES catalog was unoriginal crap. The last pocketNES pack I made had 16 games in it, but they're damned good ones.

Quality, not quantity, young grasshopper.

Actually, I do. LOL.

Sometimes after some DS games playing (which I use mostly for Multiplayer sessions) I pop GBA mode and start playing some random NES or GG game....just for the fun of it. Trying to finish it and that´s it. Im most of a random player. Right now Im playing Metroid, Back to the future II & III, Yo! Noid and Jackal on a regular basis. Sometimes I got some time free and BAM! A retro game come to my mind and I want to play it....and thats where my M3 come into action. And I know the quality over quantity deal, but my M3 is full of quality games that I just love to play!!!!

A matter of preferences, I think.

Peace

 

[Hanafuda]

I dig.

 

[fuctfuct]

pizzicatoiv, are you using the 3.24 client?? Cuz G6 went to instant save just like the M3 some time ago.

How does it save now? .. This card is almost imposible to find good info on. All the reviews only talk about the old saving and it looks REALLY stupid...

QUOTEThis only applies for Nintendo DS save games!

When you save your game progress in any DS Game, the DS will write that to
its memory. When launching a new rom and saving, it will overwrite the previous
save, so normally you can never save more then 2 games at once. However,
thanks to the G6, you can backup each save file in the form of slots.

Each game has 2 basic save slots on the menu, where you can backup the data to after you're done playing. After you are done playing a game, save your progress like you normally would, and turn off your DS. Now restart your DS and select the last game you played. Don't launch it yet! Instead, press SELECT and a little backup menu should show up. Now select "Backup to slot 1", or take Slot 2 if you want mutliple saves and you can now launch another rom! Easy right? Always remember to correctly backup your save games so you don't lose hours of gameplay!

....

...

 

[matt1freek]

i'm not sure how theyve fixed it but with the newer version i havent had to backup saves and i currently have 4 diff games on my card switching between them has not erased a save yet

tho the original setup was a total pain in the ass.. cost me 20 hours of mario & luigi >_

 

[fuctfuct]

Good news! The save thing was one of the only things holding me back from buying it.. That and the review here saying how bad it is with GBA. Has GBA suport been fixed ?

 

[matt1freek]

i wouldnt know i've never tried putting a gba game on it.. since my f2a ultra and flash advance xtreme handle those fine.. but ill toss one on theyre for the sake of knowing... let you know in a sec
ok tested it out and based on my observation.. it takes 10 seconds per 128mbit to boot so for a 256= 20 sec
so no i suppose they hadnt fixed that.

 

[fuctfuct]

i wouldnt know i've never tried putting a gba game on it.. since my f2a ultra and flash advance xtreme handle those fine.. but ill toss one on theyre for the sake of knowing... let you know in a sec
ok tested it out and based on my observation.. it takes 10 seconds per 128mbit to boot so for a 256= 20 sec
so no i suppose they hadnt fixed that.

Thanks for testing.

Im not really worryed about load time (unless they are REALLY long). Im more worried about game compatibility and them working %100 with no slowdowns. Also how is the GBA saving?