Gaming The Ultimate GBA

[Shadow#1]

The original GBA is (supposedly) the best one to hold in your hands, but the lack of brightness makes it a joke, unless you have a mod that doesn't look like crap. I really like the GBA SP (the good edition) because it has good brightness and a nice design, but some people say it's uncomfortable to hold. I wouldn't suggest the Micro, because I love it just because of its portability, and I don't look for ultimate gaming experience when I'm abroad.
My recommendations are GBA SP (good edition), or GBA with good backlight mod.

It's not called "(good edition)" the proper word your looking for is AGS-101

 

[Takatoshi]

There is also the GB player option. In that case it becomes as good as your TV. Personally I would emulate it on the PC as other than tilt and solar sensors you are good to go, have great cheats, have savestates, have audio and visual filters, rapid fire....

I do have to mention for the DS there is no link cable option and there are a fair few GBA games that do really well for having link/multiplayer.

"I do not understand why EZ Flash does not use Flash memory like the newer GBA cartridges such that a battery is not required"
All GBA flash carts used SRAM for save memory, give or take the supercards and those are not exactly things to look up to for the GBA, and thus require save batteries. Many did use rechargeable batteries though and would thus give you a far longer lifetime.

Games which require hardware... give or take real time clock (no flash cart you will easily be able to find supports it, the m3 does but you are unlikely to find one these days) there are a handful of known ones. http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 lists them though not as you want it, however if you read it I did make it fairly obvious. It does also include links to a patch for emerald to patch the RTC it has (such a patch has been around for some time now).

for me: (this is also just a dstwo but its "ok", the ones below are much better, and the 3ds dpad is absolute trash)

option 2 (this option offers rts + rtc + cheats)
NDSL + m3 real + m3 gba expansion pak + 8GB microsd

Thanks to everyone for the replies and info!


Personally, I have a 9 year old ‘fat’ DS :3 albeit with a broken hinge I love playing on my DS, but its definitely not the best GBA device.

Playing on the PC lacks portability and the gamepad, which is the point of GBA. In general, playing on the PC isn't a very complete experience.

There is no rechargeable battery for GBA flash carts. They all use CR1220 batteries which are not rechargeable. Rechargeable batteries for GBA flash carts is a myth and has been debunked in one of the forums previously.

The point about link cable for multiplayer is very true. I agree that many games rely on the multiplayer feature. Is there no way for the DS Lite to make use of the GBA multiplayer functions? If not, is then GBA micro the best console?

Im abit reluctant about the gameboy SP cause the top screen tends to break off easily

Is the M3 perfect better or the M3 DS with GBA expansion (the picture above, that thin DS lite sized cartridge)? Also, why is the M3 so good? It is such an old cartridge, are you sure it can run the newer games? And why did they stop making it >< EZ flash is still available but M3 is not
(dang it i really want to get 1 for myself)

Finally, are there any other special cardtridges?

 

[FAST6191]

Playing on the PC lacks portability and the gamepad, which is the point of GBA. In general, playing on the PC isn't a very complete experience.

There is no rechargeable battery for GBA flash carts. They all use CR1220 batteries which are not rechargeable. Rechargeable batteries for GBA flash carts is a myth and has been debunked in one of the forums previously.

The point about link cable for multiplayer is very true. I agree that many games rely on the multiplayer feature. Is there no way for the DS Lite to make use of the GBA multiplayer functions? If not, is then GBA micro the best console?

Im abit reluctant about the gameboy SP cause the top screen tends to break off easily

Is the M3 perfect better or the M3 DS with GBA expansion (the picture above, that thin DS lite sized cartridge)? Also, why is the M3 so good? It is such an old cartridge, are you sure it can run the newer games? And why did they stop making it >< EZ flash is still available but M3 is not
(dang it i really want to get 1 for myself)

Finally, are there any other special cardtridges?

My laptop is pretty portable and many current consoles have nice USB or bluetooth game pads. Portability is not really a big thing for me though -- in the vast majority of cases I play my consoles within reach of a USB port or a mains socket. Equally with the GBA being the return of the 16 bit era for a lot of things many games there were ones I played (or played the prequels to) in front of a TV/in front of my PC screen originally.

No way to do link cable on the DS (not even some crazy soldering stuff from what I recall). Give me a few months and a few thousand dollars worth of gear and I might be able to make an expensive and hard to do mod that approximates it but it is not going to happen otherwise.
If you like the GB micro form factor and screen, and don't care about GB/GBC, then yeah it could be the best for someone.

"There is no rechargeable battery for GBA flash carts... Rechargeable batteries for GBA flash carts is a myth and has been debunked in one of the forums previously. "
Probably not on any ones you will find today but here is a picture of my launch EZ4's PCB (battery side)
http://s2.filetrip.net/p/46/256201-EZ4 old and new comp 2.JPG
It uses a panasonic VL2020 which very much is a rechargeable battery -- http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/coin-button-rechargeable-batteries/0407877/
The newer EZ4 (pictured above it) does not but hey.

SP top screens break? Since when? DS and DS lite hinges we see break and have to teach people how to repair all day long, the only ones we ever see for the SP are exceptionally well used ones or actual deliberate/accidental bending back.

Basically every GBA flash cart will run anything that fits on it, though you might need extra patches/a better save patcher than the teams provided originally -- GBA games have no real anti piracy (other than the nes classic/famicom mini which you should not be using when there are far superior emulators then there are a handful of dragon ball Z games that have it and not much else), no fancy special chips like the SNES, no odd quirks that trip up certain games and just a few games that have real time clock, a tilt sensor, a solar sensor or some kind of link device (think spyro skylanders, amiibo.... but for the GBA).
The GBA slot supercards, the team cyclops clone of the supercard and some of the very first GBA flash carts that were slightly tweaked GBC flash carts are the only real exceptions (they have low compatibility, slowdown, need for extensive patches....).

The M3 had 256Mbit of PSRAM (games were usually 128 or less but some went up to 256), has a real time clock onboard, has a reasonable loader with some fancy features and supports external memory.
Note do not buy a M3 professional for your GBA purposes. Similarly do not get an EZ4 lite compact or a supercard rumble.

It is old but so is the GBA and as well as there being no real issues facing GBA games there was nothing new that happened in the GBA world, as far as anti piracy and new save types, for a few years before the end of the GBA lifetime and quite some time before the M3.

The EZ4, which is the best GBA flash cart that you will easily be able to find at this point in time, also has external memory (these days it even does SDHC). However it has a slightly lesser loader (no real time saves/savestates, cheats are better served using trainers or GBAATM, soft reset is a bit iffy, sleep support is not much better) dropped real time clock (only really used in pokemon, boktai and a couple of other games that even fewer people care about), the main model you will find only has 128Mbit of PSRAM (the rarer EZ4 lite deluxe has 256) so if you want to play larger games it will need you to flash it to the EZ4's NOR section (slow to write but it stays there until you delete it unlike PSRAM).
The EZ4 will still be able to play basically everything though so people tend not to mind too much. The 256Mbit of PSRAM and the RTC make the M3 an objectively superior cart, how much this matters is up for debate.

No idea why the M3 team stopped making them, originally they were not designed for the GBA but for the DS (we used to run DS games from GBA slot carts) and just so happened to have GBA capabilities too. When DS slot flash carts appeared then people moved to those (they were easier to work, often cheaper and easier to maintain for flash cart teams), all the kids had long given up on the GBA as well and it is only somewhat recently that we have seen people get back into it in a big way, or at least getting back into it and not wanting to just use one of the readily available expansion packs for the DS/use original GBA hardware. To that end I guess it was not worth it financially and they stopped making them.

I did cover all the various games with extra hardware or anti piracy on that link, along with what can be done to run them if so. On the rare occasions I learn of anything new (usually some Japanese title, recently it was one called plaston gate), or if there is a new patch worth knowing about then I add it to that list.
http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 to save you scrolling back up.

 

[Takatoshi]

omg >< thank you so much for the detailed analysis!

 

[Takatoshi]

can the M3 DS Real with GBA Expansion pack run GBA roms? And is the M3 perfect superior to it? and in what sense?

 

[FAST6191]

There are three types of expansion pack that M3 issued -- the full fat GBA one, the ram (for some DS homebrew and the web browser) and rumble and the rumble pack. It sounds like you know this but I should mention it.

The GBA expansion pack plays GBA games, it is kind of what it was made for. If you use it with the M3 DS real then it will have features like savestates and real time clock, the libraries to do it all were not spread like the 3 in 1 ones so you will need to pair it with a m3 DS real to get the most out of it. The 3 in 1 will work happily on anything with a DLDI patch, and natively in the flash cart menu for several more things. You can use the 3 in 1 as a kind of standalone flash cart if you have a DS and DS slot flash cart to write it with (just one game at a time until you rewrite it) but I would not suggest it so much for the m3 expansion, not that I suggest it for the 3 in 1 either.

The m3 perfect is a standalone GBA slot flash cart. You patch games using a windows program so they save and copy them across, it can hold many games where expansion packs need a DS slot cart to manage them. The M3 perfects are rare as rocking horse shit these days (and if you can find one then most people will not let them go cheaply) and the main thing they do over the likes of the EZ4 is have real time clock and 256Mbit of PSRAM as standard. Real time clock games (pretty much just pokemon ruby, sapphire and emerald and a boktai game or two) all have patches that allow you to play the games such that the differences are not all that big, 256Mbit of PSRAM is a convenience thing and not a lot else; you can still play greater than 128 Mbit games, it just means you need to write them to the NOR section first and that takes a few minutes, but stays there until you delete it.

I would say you really are overthinking all this. About the only thing that might change is krikzz (the person behind the everdrive line of flash carts for old consoles -- https://gbatemp.net/threads/official-gbatemps-everdrive-month-announcement.368176/ ) teased them playing with a GBA, thread here https://gbatemp.net/threads/everdrive-gba.372028/
Nothing more is known at this point and where all the other flash carts covered stepped into a big gap in the market (good and reasonably cheap/well made flash carts for many old consoles were basically nonexistent) there is not much of one for the GBA.

 

[Takatoshi]

Im sorry >< but i love geeking at stuff like this. So far, M3 perfect is still perfect cept i cant get one. Ez flash 3 in1 expansion is the best i can get (it has a fat version for gba sp). But what is ez flash advance? I heard it has a real time clock?!

And which is the best console that still supports the multiplayer functions? I previously mentioned gba micro because i thought it was the newest model but im not sure if it is good

 

[FAST6191]

You will probably have a hard time finding a GBA sized 3 in 1 -- all the kids that like to make fake games and put ROM hacks and try to sell them, as well as apparently some people doing some kind of electronics (the memory they used was some nice memory or something) gobbled them all up.

EZ Flash Advance, aka EZFA, is nothing to do with the EZTeam that made the EZ4 and the 3 in 1. They were an older style of GBA flash cart, a style typically known as pure NOR. Where later carts used slowed NAND memory and dumped things into PSRAM or smaller NOR sections to run, the first GBA flash carts started out as NOR and then just got bigger and bigger NOR sections. I am not sure what they topped out at but 1024Mbit (128 megabytes) was the largest that any main line flash cart. Many old NOR flash carts got real time clock, however when basically no games used it and the issues with it became apparent (holding a save in SRAM takes very little, having a clock count up takes considerably more).
http://www.gameboy-advance.net/flash_linker/gba_flash_linker.htm
http://wiki.pocketheaven.com/index.php?title=Category:GBA_Flash_Cards
http://reinerziegler.de/GBA/gba.htm
and of course the reviews and old discussions on this site are all good places to read up on GBA flash carts.

In that everdrive thread we had a bit of discussion about what should be done if you were to design a GBA flash cart from scratch today, and the failings of current offerings, I mention that mainly as you say the m3 perfect is "perfect".

Best is somewhat subjective, assuming you do not count the GB player ( http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/nintendogamecube/gameboyplayer_multi.jsp ) that is.

I quite like the GBA SP myself, though I have never played with the backlit model. Others tell me the GBA SP is a hand killer and would only consider the original GBA model, or would if it had a backlit screen (there are mods available, including some newer ones made in the last year or so).
I should note the GB micro/GBM has a different shaped link cable. Cables were made but they might be even harder to find as nobody really got into the GBM (the DS was already around at this point).

It is a bit like asking best keyboard or screen really -- there are definitely wrong answers but there are also many right ones as well.

Also no worries if you are just wanting to learn about the GBA, for a second there I probably thought this was heading towards one of those "this is why we do not say theoretically" in an answer and was silently cursing myself.

 

[Takatoshi]

Hm i see so flash advance probably has trouble supporting newer games? yeah the fat ez flash 3 in 1 is very difficult to find but i have a site that is still selling it. Too bad i can't find M3, not even for $200. Thanks for showing me the everdrive, it looks promising! I really like it. And OMG that site: http://reinerziegler.de/GBA/gba.htm has blueprints of cardtridges! So cool! Would love to DIY my own flash cart. But no idea how to manufacture it >< what tools and machinery i even need?

 

[omgcat]

still have my AGS-101, replaced the battery with one i got off ebay that lasts about 9 hours on a charge.

 

[FAST6191]

If you stuck with the official software it might have trouble. Really though the GBA is pretty simple as far as things that frustrate flash carts go and there were a lot of scene and third party tools to work around things -- the NES has mappers, the SNES has special chips, the GB/GBC has mbcs, the N64 was not without issue..... but the GBA has nothing like that and its troubles are real time clock, tilt sensor, solar sensor, external legendz and plaston gate device, some anti piracy that has largely been sorted for a small handful of games and then it is really just save types that get in the way and most of those are easily solved. Other than the supercard, clones like the team cyclops effort and the early stuff that all have slow and nasty memory which have trouble, everything else really is "if it fits and you have access to an IPS patching tool then it plays".

Making your own GBA flash cart? I do have to mention most of those are sub even a 3 in 1 in terms of what they do (size wise, probably no multirom, iffy saving support and the like). To make one it is probably fairly standard electronics building tools, most people would not make their own PCB for this but use one of those shops that will take plans and send you back a board (and if you are in Singapore then there are loads in China, Hong Kong and the like -- I can have them shipped out to me in fairly short order and I imagine it is even easier for you). This is not to say it is not doable by end users ( http://www.eevblog.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff being examples of people with extensive capabilities in this area) but you probably want to be a fan of electrical engineering to head down that path. Here is something broadly similar happening in the early days of the DS http://natrium42.com/blog/?m=200503
I did consider making an open source GBA flash cart when the supplies of them dried up the other year but then the EZTeam made new runs of the EZ4 so that became less necessary. I would still like to as I reckon a flash cart designed using modern chips, the GBA being dead/no need for much future proofing and modern thinking could do very well, however as just mentioned there are very few issues in making the games run so we are down to edge cases like GBA-gamecube linkup, GBA slot reading from DS games and the like.

 

[Takatoshi]

yeah, it would be great to see a GBA flashcart made with modern chips. And hopefully without a need for a battery if that is possible.
I personally got an EZ flash IV recently and it works quite well for most games, but im quite disappointed to find out it takes so long to load the games from the menu. I also do not know how to patch roms for soft reset to return to the menu. Every time i try to set the reset key the client crashes, and i cannot find any forums that talked about a fix for this problem. Also, I have yet to replace the internal battery with a rechargeable one, as i didnt know they existed.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah I am not sure what causes the crash when editing those settings.
If you go to c:\windows\temp\ there is a file called ez4para.ini that you can edit. It should be fairly obvious what you want to change/edit.

As for loading games you will probably not find a faster flash cart (they are all much the same and more or less it is the GBA itself that holds things back), unless you get one of those all NOR ones like an old EZ2 or the EZFA you were on about earlier but they are very small compared to a modern SDHC microSD.

 

[ShadowOne333]

The perfect GBA for me:

• GameBoy Advance (Original) Indigo colour design.
• Backlit Screen AGS-101 mod.
• Lithium Rechargeable battery mod.
• Wireless Built-in mod for trading without the GBA Link cable.
• EZ Flash for GBA.

That, people, is the perfect handheld machine.

 

[Takatoshi]

Hm i set the reset code to A, B, L, R but it doesnt work. I can only change the code using the .ini file, but i dont think its applied when i try to patch the gba files for some reason. I tried the code and it did not reset to menu.

 

[zerofalcon]

GBA SP NES Edition + backlit screen + ez-flash iv

 

[stomp_442]

But it's still in great shape for it's age. I just hope I can still find a battery for it when the time comes to replace it.

You can still get GBA SP battery from Nintendo.

https://store.nintendo.com/ng3/browse/productDetailColorSizePicker.jsp?productId=prod10423

 

[endoverend]

I think the Gameboy Micro with an EZ-Flash 4 with SDHC is the best GBA experience out there. This thing is portable and sleek as hell, and it has 5 brightness levels on its backlight.

 

[Jayro]

I think the Gameboy Micro with an EZ-Flash 4 with SDHC is the best GBA experience out there. This thing is portable and sleek as hell, and it has 5 brightness levels on its backlight.

The battery life of the micro is poor at best, and the colors are VERY washed out. I really didn't enjoy it compared to my EZ-Flash 4 on my GBA SP.

 

[endoverend]

The battery life of the micro is poor at best, and the colors are VERY washed out. I really didn't enjoy it compared to my EZ-Flash 4 on my GBA SP.

I don't think they're washed out. In fact, the image tends to be a lot sharper on the smaller screen. I never found the battery life to be poor, lasting at least 6 hours on full brightness with the stock battery. I can't stand the way the SP feels in my hands, unfortunately, and it only has two backlight settings.
Of course, these are all opinions based on personal experiences, so don't mind me