[mutant2]

We now own 5 of these carts. Said I would be buying more! And still - the issues in the OP review?... are missing from my carts! Now not only do the  R4i-SDHC team make a great cart - they have the awesome Save Dongle to allow us all have so much more gaming fun. 'Clones'?... I think not! Even bought some as Christmas presents for family & friends - lots of happy people out there.

I use a 16GB microSDHC card with mine and even the load time is excusite. I don't think you'll be getting that opportunity to do a review on this Firegrey... but it's nice to see you come back with the update fixes.

[PetMetroid]

I know these posts are old, but I'd just like to add some input about my card.
I actually just own the version down without the 3DS, because I don't have a 3DS. Like KazoWAR and Mark McDonut said, there's no reason for me to even have interest in a flash cart with a 3DS sticker added to it when I don't even own a 3DS... yet.
Anyway, the issues with the SD card reader are usually true, as they were for me. The fact that they come with one IS convenient as you may immediately set up your card and cart if you don't have a reader already, however these are cheap and mass produced, so sometimes they will cause file corruption just from crappy read and writing speeds. http://gbatemp.net/topic/323845-advise-against-corrupt-files/
I don't have problems with save files, but that team prolly fixed this already as a few people claimed, and the files do create themselves in lowercase letters.
The load times don't bother me; it usually takes around five seconds to load a game, and that's fine with me. After I've formated my card and launch the games and apps, it will take a few seconds to rebuild the database, but other than that, the list will show up in under a second.
While I'm talking about the menu, I will admit it is a little stupid how pointless the folder view is [EDIT:There is a reason, read on], but if you want to organize your files in a well mannered way, here's what I did:

I made four folders named "1-NDSGames", "2-Emulators", "3-HomebrewGames", and "4-HomebrewApps." This way the cartridge will list the files in order from each folder, so my DS games show first, then my emulators, followed by my homebrew games and apps last. If you go to the folder view (by pressing Y) it will simply take you to the first file of that folder in the main list, which from my discovery can be very convenient. Let's say you want to organize your games by category. Simply name folders like "Platform", "Adventure", etc. This may have been their intention when developing this cartridge; I think it's a great idea!

The homebrew works pretty well for me. There are only a few infamous homebrew games or apps that don't work, but with an alternate loader you can usually go around it. For me, I was really looking forward to using GeoWars, but I guess I'll just get the original Geometry Wars it's cloned from. I've been having issues with WiFi in my apps, but that just may be issues with my routers. http://gbatemp.net/t...fi-and-routers/
Overall, I couldn't be more satisfied after paying the cheapo price of five bucks and upgrading from my last cartridge (lost four years ago), the EZFlash IV (FOUR not five), which was awful for homebrew. Plus, I put more of my money into the 3-In-1 Expansion Pack which allows me to play GBA games, and will work as expansion ram for a few apps. With the combination of the two and a discounded 16GB PNY SD card, I couldn't be happier. If someone could tell me, "Oh yeah, the Acekard is way better for homebrew," I would buy one of them instead. Other than that, virtually every card nowadays (maybe with the exception of reEAlly bad clones) can play NDS games at least %98 perfectly.

Edited by PetMetroid, 04 April 2012 - 07:20 AM.

[DavidTruong]

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin freezes whenever I press start. It also sometimes freezes after following the first encounter with Behemoth into the text room. Tetris DS freezes when leaving wifi settings or leaving a wifi match. I can't even access the wifi settings in Pokemon Heart Gold, and battles against NPC trainers sometimes freeze at the beginning of the battle. Leaving the Pokemon Center also sometimes freezes my game.

This is definitely a bad clone, seeing as my original R4 never had any of these problems.

Edited by DavidTruong, 08 April 2012 - 01:49 AM.

[Clydefrosch]

I've been able to play portrait of ruin pretty nicely so far. no freeze, no nothing same with tetris and heart gold.
have you tried redownloading those games? cause it sounds awfully like a fractured download. (this also happens occasionally when you just move files back and forth between sd card and pc)

i have to disagree with most of this review too, cheats work great for me (theres a handfull of code names on the selection screen that dont get displayed right though, but the cheats all work as they should)
i have yet to have a save die on me
games so far all worked great, as does the build in backup function for savegames (so you can have up to 5 savegames for a single game).
that wifi thing to download stuff is kinda misleading, but im not using that anyway, so i dont really care.
moving through a huge list of roms also is pretty fast. its not much different from my old ds linker, so im either used to slow, or its not a big deal.
finding a rom is easy enough, as you can sort them by date, name and size if you want to.
all in all, its doing a pretty good job for me, and i was actually worried after i read this review the first time (as it was already on its way back then)


while i dont plan on writing one, i dont really understand why the original tester is the only one who could re-review this...
i mean, obviously, something seems to be off with the review, and a bad batch of cards early on would be the most realistic assumption.
just dont get why it makes a difference.


as for problems with this cart, obviously, its not flawless, but so far, the only game i dont get to work on this card is SaGa 2. it seems like its impossible to get through the AP, even with one of the ap patched translation patches (it will then randomly blackscreen)

the only real negative thing with this cart as far as i can see is this: its reacting really sensitive to being touched. i've had a few games freeze up when i accidentally touched the cart while i was playing. for some reason, my ds (lite) stops recognizing it as a cart at all after being touched (it shows no cart inserted in the startup screen) and it wont be recognized as long as its not removed from the cartslot first. but it works normally afterwards, as long as its not touched again. so its avoidable.

[PetMetroid]

Clydefrosch, on 13 April 2012 - 06:40 PM, said:

have you tried redownloading those games? cause it sounds awfully like a fractured download. (this also happens occasionally when you just move files back and forth between sd card and pc)

File corruption can be very common when flashing the DS, whether it be because of the hardware or the software. As far as software goes, that Wifi Engine is prolly crap, and as for hardware, don't use that T-flash reader it comes with because it is usually too cheap to work properly. The adaptor is convenient as a first time use, but frequent use will prolly just corrupt some files, like games in your situation. ALWAYS BACKUP!

Clydefrosch, on 13 April 2012 - 06:40 PM, said:

the only real negative thing with this cart as far as i can see is this: its reacting really sensitive to being touched. i've had a few games freeze up when i accidentally touched the cart while i was playing. for some reason, my ds (lite) stops recognizing it as a cart at all after being touched (it shows no cart inserted in the startup screen) and it wont be recognized as long as its not removed from the cartslot first. but it works normally afterwards, as long as its not touched again. so its avoidable.

I think I had this happen once in Moonshell while listening to music, and a few times after inserting the cart into the system, but it's no bother really. Speaking of Moonshell, I couldn't get the version which comes with the kernel to display in English, but I can't get the reset function to work on a fresh version of Moonshell even with the resetme file from the kernel's version.