I agree, anyone who is questioning the prices of the everdrives, you are paying for quality and constant support from krikzz himself. He even checks out the everdrives himself if you ever send it out due to any type of issues.
Everdrive GBA is finally a reality
- Thread starter garbanzox
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GBA flashcards are way more expensive than DS flashcards because of the hardware involved.
GBA games are expected to be loaded from high-bandwidth memory, so you can't just wedge an SD in there and hope it works.
Wait, they TRIED THAT and that's what that carwreck of the SuperCard SD/miniSD is - crap compatibility, slowdowns and you have to quick power-cycle for it to save.
So yeah, GBA flashcarts are expensive. Heck, why are you people complaining - these same things costed $300 in 2004!
The EZ-Flash IV is an exception since it's made in China and you know the Chinese can produce stuff for VERY cheap.
I'm gonna do an "EZ-Flash IV vs Everdrive GBA" mini-chapter in my review, and you'll be able to decide for yourself if you want to splurge the premium over the EZ4 or not.
GBA games are expected to be loaded from high-bandwidth memory, so you can't just wedge an SD in there and hope it works.
Wait, they TRIED THAT and that's what that carwreck of the SuperCard SD/miniSD is - crap compatibility, slowdowns and you have to quick power-cycle for it to save.
So yeah, GBA flashcarts are expensive. Heck, why are you people complaining - these same things costed $300 in 2004!
The EZ-Flash IV is an exception since it's made in China and you know the Chinese can produce stuff for VERY cheap.
I'm gonna do an "EZ-Flash IV vs Everdrive GBA" mini-chapter in my review, and you'll be able to decide for yourself if you want to splurge the premium over the EZ4 or not.
doctor 64 for nintendo 64? plus in some cheaper models you had to get a computer cd reader which was loads of money back in the day :/
any estimates for the review release? i am hyping, but don't rush it, rather wait and get a good read than wall of mess
and there have always been people that don't understand engineering costing. In this case I have not seen the PCB yet so I can not do a bill of materials (single layer PCB + FPGA or some other potent programmable chip + PSRAM/NOR in the 32 meg range + helper components + custom made case is not a LED with a resistor and a battery holder in an off the shelf case), and I don't know the size of the batch, but when people compare it to a different console with different requirements it does not make much sense. Equally we could probably debate the merits of sample testing vs panel testing vs every item testing and various degrees of that (I don't think these are going to get 30 hours of burn in testing each, however PCB inspection, maybe orientation testing and some flavour of unit test does add up in time. Equally we could contemplate the console in question -- everything else everdrive went into was pretty terrible in terms of what went, back in GBA land we have had the option to have thousands of hours of games and the selection covering basically all of the library play just fine and all usable by mere mortals for many years now, give or take a slight shortage the other year.
No doubt $100 USD is a lot of money to many people that frequent these forums (I would certainly be quite annoyed to lose that much), and a non trivial price jump from the very viable competition. So yes in GBA world it is a harder sell, however some of the logic on display was not great and thus could stand to be pulled up. Equially from what we have seen thus far it does seem to deliver upon what was advertised and that is more than the contemporaries, not much in my opinion but the differences are not in games that hold any interest for me or for me what would be minor extra conveniences, so there is that too.
Beyond that we have time and time again seen people buy the cheapest option, even when advised not to, and wonder why it does not work that well, I am not sure it is the case here for this cart and system but it is a very well established concept. There are plenty of times you can do cheaper and not have a bad experience, it seems flash carts and modding devices are not one of them though save for some cheap mod chips for the Wii (at least if you did not care so much about gamecube) and PS1.
No doubt $100 USD is a lot of money to many people that frequent these forums (I would certainly be quite annoyed to lose that much), and a non trivial price jump from the very viable competition. So yes in GBA world it is a harder sell, however some of the logic on display was not great and thus could stand to be pulled up. Equially from what we have seen thus far it does seem to deliver upon what was advertised and that is more than the contemporaries, not much in my opinion but the differences are not in games that hold any interest for me or for me what would be minor extra conveniences, so there is that too.
Beyond that we have time and time again seen people buy the cheapest option, even when advised not to, and wonder why it does not work that well, I am not sure it is the case here for this cart and system but it is a very well established concept. There are plenty of times you can do cheaper and not have a bad experience, it seems flash carts and modding devices are not one of them though save for some cheap mod chips for the Wii (at least if you did not care so much about gamecube) and PS1.
Lots of personal stuff going on, I'm trying to recoup some lost time by doing more compatibility testing while I can't sit at my PC writing.
Haven't got an ETA yet, but I'd like for it to be published ASAP.
I don't think it's fair to paint everyone complaning on price as just cheap and say, well GBA cards have always cost more.
I know they cost more, my wallet cried out when I bought my EZFA for £100+ for 32MB of storage and then again my G6L for £60 odd or so.
But the price doesn't sit well with me, because of size.
The cart is a larger size than a normal gba cart and sticks out, maybe not a big deal to some, but personally I've found all the carts that stick out, to be irritating on an sp. And why does it stick out, well judging from the pcb and the fact the m3 team stuffed a similar thing into a dslite sized card, it apparently sticks out soley because a single sided pcb was chosen (likely because of cost) at the expense of the size of the card.
That's fine, you want to make that compromise, that's ok, but then it should be reflected in the price. I'm not willing to pay a premium for what I see as a fairly large drawback. Even worse if you use it on a dslite.
I think that's a perfectly resonable position to take, but everyone who complains on price gets lumped in the same group "too cheap", because as with everything by a small dev, no one can criticise.
Last edited by Armadillo,
That's a perfectly legit point, but honestly I find that the price point is okay. It's quality hardware and the support is top-notch. YMMV, obviously.
Truthfully I thought I'd be bothered by the size of the flashcart too, instead it's pretty much not a problem in any case (maybe except the Micro) and I'm almost always playing on my GBA SP
The thing is that the current price is NOT premium (premium is what you'd pay for the Everdrive 64 v3, the SD2SNES or the Mega Everdrive v2, which are the premium versions of cheaper flashcards), you have to keep in mind that all the flashcards you quoted came from China with their ridiculously low production costs and were also built back when the GBA was super-popular, so they were produced in massive numbers and economies of scale yadda yadda yadda. Also the hardware needed was cheaper back then than now (you can read some posts about the EZ-Team restarting production only when they source the components at the right price), so you need to factor that in as well.
An Everdrive X7 is coming out, it seems, and I'm pretty sure that one will be a dual-sided PCB. Obviously expect it to come with a price premium
Me thinks it'll cost around 160-200$ like the other premium Flashcarts Krikzz builds. Is it worth it paying almost double the price just to not have it stick? I'll leave this up to the users' judgement
Honestly I thought I'd be bothered by the size of the flashcart too, instead it's pretty much not a problem in any case (maybe except the Micro) and I'm almost always playing on my GBA SP
Obviously I've not used the cart, but pictures put it the same size as drill dozer and other oversized carts, which I have and get annoyed by.
For a GBA cart, I'd argue it's premium. Compared to other carts, GBA games are relativly simple (I'm not saying building a cart is before anyone jumps on me), and outside extra hardware like solar sensor/rumble, there's not much to take into consideration on a per game basis.
There's no mappers like gb/gbc, there's no custom chips like snes, N64 apparently has something in some games (a couple of games are compatible with the v3, but not the 2.5). Those carts you mention, sd2snes supports most custom chips, the n64 v3 supports the few games that the 2.5 doesn't and mega everdrive has stuff like ram cart for cd games. Outside of that it's dev stuff like usb.
So for a system that is relative simple compared to the others, I'd make the arguement that $100 is a premium price.
An Everdrive X7 is coming out, it seems, and I'm pretty sure that one will be a dual-sided PCB. Obviously expect it to come with a price premium
I would, I wouldn't be happy about it, as I think a GBA cart being GBA sized should be in the "value" version, but if it's the only way to get a modern gba cart that can match features with my old ones (RTC), then I don't really have a choice.
I just don't like that anyone complaining about the price is instantly being put thrown in as being "too cheap" (for a lot of people, especially those coming from ds carts, it may be true), but not for everyone. Same deal with the size, it just seems a lot of users don't like any criticism on the cart/price, simply because it's krikzz, a small independent, rather than a faceless company. Same deal that goes on in the 3ds section (with GW taking stuff, but not crediting, but people are fine with it the otherway round). It doesn't make for good a discussion on the cart.
Until someone else makes a cart with a feature set similar to the Everdrive (particularly the "no ROM patching required" bit), then comparing prices is pointless. This cart is beyond anything that has ever been produced for the GBA, and the price reflects that.
Last edited by garbanzox,
No, but it does give its developer the freedom to set his price. And clearly there are plenty of people who see value in the product and are willing to pay $100 for it (including me).
If it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. Criticize it all you want. But we shouldn't base that criticism on a comparison of the Everdrive's price with existing carts that don't offer the same features.
If it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. Criticize it all you want. But we shouldn't base that criticism on a comparison of the Everdrive's price with existing carts that don't offer the same features.
Last edited by garbanzox,
If being a few Millimeters too big is the largest and only complaint about this product then I'm so happy I ordered one. I can think of many serious flaws with almost every single older cart....some devastating like how when you power up the Micro SD ez flash it writes the save to the sd card...which is fine, but if that write is interrupted by anything, your save gets corrupted. That is pretty much a deal breaker for me. I need a reliable, well built card that is going to last. If it loads up games in seconds...even better. If it has an RTC...awesome. if it sticks out just a tiny bit less than Boktai...wow do I ever not care. I played all three Boktai games on my SP and the cart size never bothered me once.
It does, and yeah, people are free to buy if they see the value, it doesn't however, give people the right to simply brush off complaints as people being cheap, which seems to happen whenever anyone criticises it.
Assuming you are talking about other gba carts, I never compared it's price to them, only pointed out I am no stranger to higher priced cards and have bought high priced cards in the past (unlike a lot who may be, due to popularity and price of ds carts).
My criticism comes soley from it being it being oversized, through what seems like a design choice (as far as we know at the moment), while still carrying a high price. I would much prefer a flush cart, even if it cost more & at $100 it's not something I can look past.
Clearly others can, but I don't think I'm being unfair to the cart.
Last edited by Armadillo,
It looks like it's about the size of a yoshi tilt n tumble gba cartridge so no problem with me. The only way i could possiby see the size as an "issue" is if using a gba micro but i figured most people would either use a gba sp or a front lit modded original gba.
Alright, review is pretty much done. I need to take a few more pics and have someone proof-read it. Ideally I'll have it up by Sunday.
awesome, cant wait to see what you think. Since there is no embargo...can you give us a 5 word review to hold us till sunday?
Not in at the moment, I'll ask Krikzz if he's working on it. I didn't think much of it since I almost never use cheats, but I suppose it can be a big deal for some users. I'll make a note of it in the review.
Hmm... Five words...
Good cart, read the review
Can't wait... I need to see the EZ-FLASH vs EVERDRIVE comparison to decide which one to buy
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