Hacking Are 3DS flashcarts worth it at this time?

[Ichigo1000]

Sky 3DS is great, but that can be blocked at any point with a new FW release, it may be blocked with next update, it may be never blocked. We dont know.. no one knows except Nintendo. Gateway will always work with emunand, even if there is new firmware released there is a chance of it getting cracked open to be used with emunand. But once Sky3ds is blocked its blocked for good.

Personally yes I think 70$ is a great price for either. When DS carts first came out most were about 120$, r4 didnt come out until a few years after first flash carts for DS, at thta point prices were going down and I believe r4 was around 40$ at launch. And we're talking about a real one.. not a clone.. you could always get a cheap clone that sucked for 15-20$

Over time prices will always go down. So if you are good with waiting another 2 or 3 years, you will be able to get a 3DS flashcart for 20$ or so... but at that point 3DS will be at the end of its lifetime (if not past it) there are rumors of new handheld from nintendo in 2016 at which point 3DS will be 5 years old.

Yeah, I had a genuine original r4 card when I was like 8, because I lost my DS lite along with 8-9 retail games at a restaurant -.- Those were the memories lel. May I ask you if you know when was the Original R4 Card was released?

 

[Ichigo1000]

Any flashcart can be blocked by Nintendo. Back in the 4.x firmwares Nintendo blocked a lot of flashcarts. By the time 5.0 firmware was released they all got blocked except for the SCDS2 and it's clones. I don't' use cheats so I don't care about that. Gateway plays pirated games just like sky, and gateway also does homebrew which sky doesn't. I had gateway before homebrew got started, if I had the choice now I would buy neither and just do homebrew for now and wait for a backup loader. For a while the gateway got kind of boring because of no homebrew to play with and just the same pirated games, now there is plenty of homebrew. Back in the beginning Gateway didn't do anything new, they used what was out there, but they also brought a lot to the scene, sky brings nothing to the scene except playing pirated games. If that's what you're after then go for it, but remember sky can be blocked just like any other flashcart. Once it gets blocked don't expect any support from the manufacturer. Gateway does homebrew so that will live on as long as there is a homebrew scene.

Ah. I don't really care much about homebrew, since I never really got experience/know what it is. This might change my mind though. But just games is okay, and cheats are a plus, when I want to screw around. Oh yeah, for Emunand, are you allowed to remove it, say, if you don't use Gateway anymore? Does Nintendo care about it if you sent for warranty repair? It would be good to know just in case.

 

[stomp_442]

Ah. I don't really care much about homebrew, since I never really got experience/know what it is. This might change my mind though. But just games is okay, and cheats are a plus, when I want to screw around. Oh yeah, for Emunand, are you allowed to remove it, say, if you don't use Gateway anymore? Does Nintendo care about it if you sent for warranty repair? It would be good to know just in case.

emunand is only stored on the sd card, it doesn't really get installed to the 3DS. When you load the gateway cart, if it finds an emunand on the sd card then it will automatically load the emunand. The only thing I install to my 3DS is the profile exploit, that gets install with a DSi compatible flashcart, and if I happen to play a DS game, DSi ware, or a DS flashcart, the exploit gets removed so I got to re-install it again.

 

[mechagouki]

R4 didnt come out until after a bunch of other carts were already out for original DS, and it was a budget cart (always), it managed to keep the price down because it didnt include any on board memory (used SD card instead). I believe they started at around 30 to 40$ when they came out back in the day.

This is inaccurate, the original R4 was the first Slot 1 cart available, and initially sold for around $100, It was rapidly cloned and prices dropped fast, though few of the clones duplicated the quality or stability of the original. Before R4 the only way to play pirated games on a DS was by using a Slot 2 (GBA) card like an EZ-Flash, G6 Flash etc. along with a Slot 1 "Passcard", That setup could easily run you $150+ and limited you to using either slow removable memory cards like MMC or Mini SD, or having faster but non-expandable onboard memory (my G6 Flash had just 512MB of onboard storage and cost me $120 (used, with Passcard III).

By comparison, the two currently available 3DS cards are bargain priced. Function wise they are a little labour intensive, and yes they are prone to being blocked by OFW update, but if you don't want to buy your games legally, you really have no option.

 

[Ichigo1000]

This is inaccurate, the original R4 was the first Slot 1 cart available, and initially sold for around $100, It was rapidly cloned and prices dropped fast, though few of the clones duplicated the quality or stability of the original. Before R4 the only way to play pirated games on a DS was by using a Slot 2 (GBA) card like an EZ-Flash, G6 Flash etc. along with a Slot 1 "Passcard", That setup could easily run you $150+ and limited you to using either slow removable memory cards like MMC or Mini SD, or having faster but non-expandable onboard memory (my G6 Flash had just 512MB of onboard storage and cost me $120 (used, with Passcard III).

By comparison, the two currently available 3DS cards are bargain priced. Function wise they are a little labour intensive, and yes they are prone to being blocked by OFW update, but if you don't want to buy your games legally, you really have no option.

Do you know when was R4 Cards first released? Weird.. Lots of people say its initial price was 40 dollars though.

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

I personaly use my gateway to have a cfw wich allows me to use unsigned CIAs(like self created ones from my game cardriges and homebrew). Also Emunand was an importand feature for me, before it was possible to "spoof the firmware" to access the e-shop from older firmwares.
Also I like the idea that the Gateway team has the posibility to work fulltime on 3DS stuff and exploiting. This makes it a lot easier for them to find exploits and create a stable experience.

 

[FAST6191]

Should you get a 3ds flash cart. The three main reasons to pause would be to consider the 3ds library (I hold the 3ds library to be abysmal with not a lot you can not get anywhere else, and probably in just as good a form there), whether 3ds homebrew is worth it (the GBA and DS did genuinely represent among the leading portable platforms of the day, today we have the likes of android which ruined any chance of that being repeated*) and if there is a 3ds custom firmware or otherwise really cheap flash cart around the corner. Other reasons would be Gateway, the leading option for a custom firmware based cart that runs custom games and what have you,

A custom firmware could be done and may even happen. There is a decided lack of cohesion among the 3ds hacking community though, to say nothing of the anti piracy bent among some of the more prominent/more capable of delivering, so I am not expecting much of note to happen soon. You can get some stuff done but the ease of use is not quite that of a 3ds flash cart.
A cheaper 3ds flash cart... earlier on in the gateway lifetime there was an article on the bill of materials that did the rounds. I have issues with other parts of the article but the BOM was somewhere in the ballpark anyway. Equally the components that make it up could probably be simplified a bit, and some interesting things were being done on the sky3ds when I looked at the PCB there.
There does not seem to be much in the way of competition on the 3ds to drive prices down.

*towards the end of the DS we saw many a homebrew dev migrate to IOS, since then we have seen android take over there. Equally many of my favourite devs from the commercial side of things on the GBA and DS seem to be focusing heavily on andrios. http://gbatemp.net/threads/links-to-various-gbatemp-features-over-the-years.352851/ showcases many games I like from the GBA and DS, when doing the articles I would often do a "where are they now" and time and time again. I should note though I do not play Nintendo handhelds for Nintendo games (give or take advance wars and starfy, the former of which is rather absent on the 3ds thus far and kind of dead in Japan, the last DS entry never made it out there and only appeared in Japan on the 3ds as a downloadable game, so nobody is expecting all that much). Back on homebrew I imagine it will probably end up with SNES emulator on par with the PSP ones (which is to say playable by most people for most games) but when others are looking beyond the 16 bit era and even contemplating the gamecube then yeah.

This is inaccurate, the original R4 was the first Slot 1 cart available, and initially sold for around $100, It was rapidly cloned and prices dropped fast, though few of the clones duplicated the quality or stability of the original. Before R4 the only way to play pirated games on a DS was by using a Slot 2 (GBA) card like an EZ-Flash, G6 Flash etc. along with a Slot 1 "Passcard", That setup could easily run you $150+ and limited you to using either slow removable memory cards like MMC or Mini SD, or having faster but non-expandable onboard memory (my G6 Flash had just 512MB of onboard storage and cost me $120 (used, with Passcard III).

I fear you are misremembering the way things went. The first DS slot cart was ninjaDS ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/ninja-ds-review.36881/ ), the R4 was not even the first of the big boys to join the game (r4 was oem M3 so I will count them as one of the big boys). It was however the easiest to use and at sold a reasonable price point, if ease of use = downloading updates every other day rather than updating your save list but enough of my griping there, so it came to dominate the market. Equally the G6 was expensive but if you paid that kind of money for a removable memory card you went wrong somewhere (up to and including purchasing some of the earlier neoflash gear).

Also some of the DS flash carts went cheap probably more because people were supporting others which made the older ones without support look bad and vendors took the "something is better than a complete loss" approach to business. For years the R4 was a running joke on lack of support, it was only after woodr4 got released that things swung back around.

 

[mechagouki]

I fear you are misremembering the way things went. The first DS slot cart was ninjaDS ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/ninja-ds-review.36881/ ), the R4 was not even the first of the big boys to join the game (r4 was oem M3 so I will count them as one of the big boys). It was however the easiest to use and at sold a reasonable price point, if ease of use = downloading updates every other day rather than updating your save list but enough of my griping there, so it came to dominate the market. Equally the G6 was expensive but if you paid that kind of money for a removable memory card you went wrong somewhere (up to and including purchasing some of the earlier neoflash gear).

Also some of the DS flash carts went cheap probably more because people were supporting others which made the older ones without support look bad and vendors took the "something is better than a complete loss" approach to business. For years the R4 was a running joke on lack of support, it was only after woodr4 got released that things swung back around.

You're right, I had forgotten the ninjaDS, probably because it's various failings ensured that it was rapidly made obsolete by the flood of fully internal microSD based Slot 1 cards. I would still argue that the original R4 provided (at launch) one of the most user friendly and functional backup solutions on any console, I believe it boasted 99% rom compatibility for a while before game developers started to put AP code in games.

I don't know about the UK but $150 was very much the going rate in Canada for a G6 kit when I bought mine (2007), I remember the neoflash kits being considerably more, this link to an old gameboy-advance.net page has the 512MB kit going for $164 USD, which would have been close to $200 CAD 8 years ago:

http://www.gameboy-advance.net/nintendo_ds/neo-flash/neoflash-review.htm

 

[thorasgar]

Are 3DS flashcarts worth it? Nope. Only as a hobby and because they can do things a retail cart cannot, they are a major time suck. From a cost benefit viewpoint if I were to have spent the time I do on this forum out earning money I could easily buy every game ever made for the 3DS.

I can't speak for everyone here but we do this because it is fun and we enjoy it, not because it makes economic sense.

 

[Pluupy]

I don't have a 3DS flashcart because the methods of using the devices and files are really confusing to me. So I just buy the games to save me the headache.

Kinda sad that I won't poke into flashcarts like DS. I kinda liked the excitement of waiting for a patch on a game post-rom release.

 

[DSpider]

I don't have a 3DS flashcart because the methods of using the devices and files are really confusing to me.

Yeah... Pushing a button (Sky3DS) to change the rom. Confusing stuff...

 

[thorasgar]

I don't have a 3DS flashcart because the methods of using the devices and files are really confusing to me. So I just buy the games to save me the headache.

Kinda sad that I won't poke into flashcarts like DS. I kinda liked the excitement of waiting for a patch on a game post-rom release.

So you post in the flashcart sub, why?

 

[tony_2018]

Should i wait for newer flashcarts to come out? I'm not sure if flashcarts are worth it right now considering its price like sky3ds and gateway. Will 3ds flashcarts ever drop in price? How much was the starting price of the original r4 for the ds lite/original?

Should i wait for newer flashcarts to come out?
What are you expecting the new cards features will be compared to what we have now?

Will 3ds flashcarts ever drop in price?
sometimes but not anytime soon.

How much was the starting price of the original r4 for the ds lite/original?
the pricing on the r4 is cheap but it does not play 3ds backups. The problem with there god damn feature list is they keep saying its 3ds compatible and that throws off alot of newbies. R4 DOES NOT HAVE A CARD THAT PLAYS 3DS BACKUPS

 

[wheato]

Yeah... Pushing a button (Sky3DS) to change the rom. Confusing stuff...

It's true. I once went to push the blue button, and...

 

[AliTheAce]

Sky 3DS is great, but that can be blocked at any point with a new FW release, it may be blocked with next update, it may be never blocked. We dont know.. no one knows except Nintendo. Gateway will always work with emunand, even if there is new firmware released there is a chance of it getting cracked open to be used with emunand. But once Sky3ds is blocked its blocked for good.

Personally yes I think 70$ is a great price for either. When DS carts first came out most were about 120$, r4 didnt come out until a few years after first flash carts for DS, at thta point prices were going down and I believe r4 was around 40$ at launch. And we're talking about a real one.. not a clone.. you could always get a cheap clone that sucked for 15-20$

Over time prices will always go down. So if you are good with waiting another 2 or 3 years, you will be able to get a 3DS flashcart for 20$ or so... but at that point 3DS will be at the end of its lifetime (if not past it) there are rumors of new handheld from nintendo in 2016 at which point 3DS will be 5 years old.

The 3DS is nowhere near the end of it's lifespan. The New 3DS came out this year, and Nintendo will continue to support it until around 2018-ish. The DS had a 7-year lifespan, the 3DS could certainly also live that long

 

[TVL]

This is inaccurate, the original R4 was the first Slot 1 cart available, and initially sold for around $100, It was rapidly cloned and prices dropped fast, though few of the clones duplicated the quality or stability of the original. Before R4 the only way to play pirated games on a DS was by using a Slot 2 (GBA) card like an EZ-Flash, G6 Flash etc. along with a Slot 1 "Passcard", That setup could easily run you $150+ and limited you to using either slow removable memory cards like MMC or Mini SD, or having faster but non-expandable onboard memory (my G6 Flash had just 512MB of onboard storage and cost me $120 (used, with Passcard III).

By comparison, the two currently available 3DS cards are bargain priced. Function wise they are a little labour intensive, and yes they are prone to being blocked by OFW update, but if you don't want to buy your games legally, you really have no option.

That's also inaccurate. The first slot 1-solution was DS Xtreme. R4 cost me ~400 SEK the day it released, that's about 50 bucks. And it might have been a little bit more expensive here than in the US, things usually are.

 

[DSpider]

R4 DOES NOT HAVE A CARD THAT PLAYS 3DS BACKUPS

That's not true. Here you go: http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/R4i_Gold_3DS_Deluxe

"This cart is a clone: Yes (Gateway 3DS)."

 

[Arkansaw]

gw is definitely worth it for the cia and cross region and dumping support etc.....and homebrew too

 

[Ericzander]

I put wayy too much time into this. Should answer the question though.

 

[FAST6191]

Is the "Don't bother" part supposed to link to something else, or are you expecting a useful CFW?