Hardware GBA flash cart that supprts GBA/GBC/GB

[GoodAtBeingNoob]

Hello.

As the title implies I am looking for a GBA sized flash cart that supports every gameboy console (Gameboy, Gameboy color and Gameboy advance) and it also needs to have a sd card slot as I want to have EVERY gameboy game in existence.
I'd also like to have close to infinite saves.
Also I'd rather not spend a whole lot of money but I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[daxtsu]

One doesn't exist, because that's not really possible. The GBA and GBC/GB have different voltages going to their cart slots (and when the GBA is in "GBC mode" it uses a different voltage as well), so a cart designed for "GBA mode" wouldn't really work in "GB(C) mode", nor would a cart designed for the GBA work on a GB(C) console. You'll have to make a compromise by either:

A) Getting two flashcarts, one for GBC and one for GBA.
or
B) Getting a good GBA flashcart which can run Goomba Color (a GBC emulator which runs on the GBA, but it has compatibility issues with some games like Pokémon Crystal).

 

[GoodAtBeingNoob]

One doesn't exist, because that's not really possible. The GBA and GBC/GB have different voltages going to their cart slots (and when the GBA is in "GBC mode" it uses a different voltage as well), so a cart designed for "GBA mode" wouldn't really work in "GB(C) mode", nor would a cart designed for the GBA work on a GB(C) console. You'll have to make a compromise by either:

A) Getting two flashcarts, one for GBC and one for GBA.
or
B) Getting a good GBA flashcart which can run Goomba Color (a GBC emulator which runs on the GBA, but it has compatibility issues with some games like Pokémon Crystal).

ah ok, So do you have any suggestions for GBA,GBC and GB flash carts? (all having sd card ports of course)

 

[wicksand420]

super card has goomba color built in and also can play ds games, but can only support a 2gb sd

 

[FAST6191]

The GBA supercards are also probably the worst choice of GBA flash cart. Find one on the street and it will allow you to do serious damage to the GBA library, can't really suggest it beyond that though.

Right now your main choices for GBA flash carts are

EZFlash 3 in 1. Used mainly with a DS flash cart. Cheaper than the others. Does not have SD card slots and relies on a DS cart to manage it. I don't know if any DS flash carts support SDXC offhand but you should have some space left over on a 32 gig card if you stick the GBA set on it (not sure what the extracted and trimmed size actually is). Personally I never got the desire to have a full set to go walkabout with but to each their own I guess -- the GBA has a fantastic library that will take you years to go get through at a vaguely sensible pace but why you would want to also have every region's copy of a trash anime tie in game I am less sure about.
EZ4. Prior to the everdrive it was the main GBA flash cart available. In recent times it added SDHC support and auto patching of games (which some seem to really like despite it being trivial to patch things).
Everdrive. There is the X5 model ( http://gbatemp.net/review/everdrive-gba-x5.489/ ) and the X7 set to drop any day now. They are more expensive than the others, however they are also slightly more featured. You can play just about every game with one, just like you can with basically any other flash cart which is not a supercard (or a clone of it). If you are not familiar with the everdrive peeps then basically where all the other consoles were messing around with old designs for flash carts the everdrive came in and designed things from the ground up using modern chips. As a result they now basically own the entire older console flash cart market (or at least all the big sega and Nintendo cartridge consoles and handhelds that were not the GBA). They also did it for the GBA a bit later but the GBA is pretty easy when all is said and done (no real major trip ups like NES mappers, GB/GBC memory bank controllers and SNES special chips) so everybody that wanted such a thing could play whatever they like as it would have be in an original cartridge, and had been doing so for many many years (I have a list of trouble games I link in these situations http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 , everything else http://www.advanscene.com/ worked fine really and most of those trouble things could be fixed).

"infinite saves"
Do you mean you want to be able to rename saves endlessly or just that everything needs to be able to save? The former was sort of a feature on some carts (not sure if the current EZ4 loaders have it but the older ones did) but it was buggy. The latter only really applies to old style NOR flash carts where you had limited SRAM and thus with large Flash using saves and smaller ROMS you might have been able to filly up the SRAM while the NOR still had space, I am surprised you found anything about that really.

As was mentioned the GB/GBC and GBA are different beasts. There was an older series of flash carts with an adapter but today it is GB/GBC flash cart or emulate it via something like goomba color (though if you are going for the 3 in 1 and a DS then the DS has nice GBC emulators too). The everdrive company makes a GB/GBC flash cart if you are going that way.

 

[GoodAtBeingNoob]

The GBA supercards are also probably the worst choice of GBA flash cart. Find one on the street and it will allow you to do serious damage to the GBA library, can't really suggest it beyond that though.

Right now your main choices for GBA flash carts are

EZFlash 3 in 1. Used mainly with a DS flash cart. Cheaper than the others. Does not have SD card slots and relies on a DS cart to manage it. I don't know if any DS flash carts support SDXC offhand but you should have some space left over on a 32 gig card if you stick the GBA set on it (not sure what the extracted and trimmed size actually is). Personally I never got the desire to have a full set to go walkabout with but to each their own I guess -- the GBA has a fantastic library that will take you years to go get through at a vaguely sensible pace but why you would want to also have every region's copy of a trash anime tie in game I am less sure about.
EZ4. Prior to the everdrive it was the main GBA flash cart available. In recent times it added SDHC support and auto patching of games (which some seem to really like despite it being trivial to patch things).
Everdrive. There is the X5 model ( http://gbatemp.net/review/everdrive-gba-x5.489/ ) and the X7 set to drop any day now. They are more expensive than the others, however they are also slightly more featured. You can play just about every game with one, just like you can with basically any other flash cart which is not a supercard (or a clone of it). If you are not familiar with the everdrive peeps then basically where all the other consoles were messing around with old designs for flash carts the everdrive came in and designed things from the ground up using modern chips. As a result they now basically own the entire older console flash cart market (or at least all the big sega and Nintendo cartridge consoles and handhelds that were not the GBA). They also did it for the GBA a bit later but the GBA is pretty easy when all is said and done (no real major trip ups like NES mappers, GB/GBC memory bank controllers and SNES special chips) so everybody that wanted such a thing could play whatever they like as it would have be in an original cartridge, and had been doing so for many many years (I have a list of trouble games I link in these situations http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 , everything else http://www.advanscene.com/ worked fine really and most of those trouble things could be fixed).

"infinite saves"
Do you mean you want to be able to rename saves endlessly or just that everything needs to be able to save? The former was sort of a feature on some carts (not sure if the current EZ4 loaders have it but the older ones did) but it was buggy. The latter only really applies to old style NOR flash carts where you had limited SRAM and thus with large Flash using saves and smaller ROMS you might have been able to filly up the SRAM while the NOR still had space, I am surprised you found anything about that really.

As was mentioned the GB/GBC and GBA are different beasts. There was an older series of flash carts with an adapter but today it is GB/GBC flash cart or emulate it via something like goomba color (though if you are going for the 3 in 1 and a DS then the DS has nice GBC emulators too). The everdrive company makes a GB/GBC flash cart if you are going that way.

First, whats so bad about gba supercards? that to me looks like the best one because it has a sd card slot and it's flush with the gba system (doesn't stick out like a GBC game)
Second I meant infinite saves as in I can (for example) have 5 pokemon games and they all save with no problems.

 

[Armadillo]

First, whats so bad about gba supercards? that to me looks like the best one because it has a sd card slot and it's flush with the gba system (doesn't stick out like a GBC game)

Slow ram. GBA games can't run directly from the sd, it's too slow, cards normally load the ROM from the sd into faster memory before playing. Supercard uses cheap slow memory, too slow for GBA games, so the games suffer slowdown and other issues when playing.

 

[GoodAtBeingNoob]

So if I were to go out and buy a gba flash cart right now that is the same size as a gba cartridge, uses sd cards as rom storage and lets you save your games which one should I buy?

 

[FAST6191]

Most things that are not the everdrive are GBA sized, some were DS lite sized (most 3 in 1 carts you find today will be lite sized) and some legacy things were also bigger.

The GBA needs fast memory to read the ROM from. NAND (what is used in SD, CF, XD... memory formats) was too slow at the time and likely still too slow today. This is why carts have small NOR and PSRAM sections to stick things on to run and have to load those up. The supercard people cheaped out when it came to the GBA slot supercards and used too slow memory. This leads to slowdowns, serious incompatibility issues, the requirement for speed patches. In addition to that where saving on other things is transparent the supercards need a bit of fiddling.
Of all the GBA flash carts it is the supercards, the supercard clones (most notable being the team cyclops one) and some of the very first GBA flash carts which were basically GBC carts with a slight twist that suffer those issues. Every other one is pretty much "if it fits on the cart then it runs and runs like it would were it an original cart". As this is not a trivial thing you can fix with a patch that has been made years ago and tested by hundreds for my money it then makes them the worst GBA flash carts.

"5 pokemon games"
As in you want ruby, sapphire, emerald, fire red and leaf green and they all work? OK. They are all separate games and will be fine, give or take the clock patches thing (the ones named for gems have a so called real time clock in them which the GBA does not, the EZTeam dropped RTC from their carts for the EZ4 and did not put it back, the patches then just advance the time when the game is powered).
If you mean I want 5 copies of pokemon fire red and them all to have their own saves I am not sure what the everdrive uses (worst case scenario if they do some kind of serial detection is you alter the serial) but if you name them something different on the EZ4 they appear as different ROMs and you can do that (name them all subtly different things and stick them in their own directory, named for a person if you are sharing the cart or something). The EZ4 did have a feature where you could create up to 100 or 101 saves per ROM but again it was buggy and it might have been dropped in the newer kernels.

 

[GoodAtBeingNoob]

Most things that are not the everdrive are GBA sized, some were DS lite sized (most 3 in 1 carts you find today will be lite sized) and some legacy things were also bigger.

The GBA needs fast memory to read the ROM from. NAND (what is used in SD, CF, XD... memory formats) was too slow at the time and likely still too slow today. This is why carts have small NOR and PSRAM sections to stick things on to run and have to load those up. The supercard people cheaped out when it came to the GBA slot supercards and used too slow memory. This leads to slowdowns, serious incompatibility issues, the requirement for speed patches. In addition to that where saving on other things is transparent the supercards need a bit of fiddling.
Of all the GBA flash carts it is the supercards, the supercard clones (most notable being the team cyclops one) and some of the very first GBA flash carts which were basically GBC carts with a slight twist that suffer those issues. Every other one is pretty much "if it fits on the cart then it runs and runs like it would were it an original cart". As this is not a trivial thing you can fix with a patch that has been made years ago and tested by hundreds for my money it then makes them the worst GBA flash carts.

"5 pokemon games"
As in you want ruby, sapphire, emerald, fire red and leaf green and they all work? OK. They are all separate games and will be fine, give or take the clock patches thing (the ones named for gems have a so called real time clock in them which the GBA does not, the EZTeam dropped RTC from their carts for the EZ4 and did not put it back, the patches then just advance the time when the game is powered).
If you mean I want 5 copies of pokemon fire red and them all to have their own saves I am not sure what the everdrive uses (worst case scenario if they do some kind of serial detection is you alter the serial) but if you name them something different on the EZ4 they appear as different ROMs and you can do that (name them all subtly different things and stick them in their own directory, named for a person if you are sharing the cart or something). The EZ4 did have a feature where you could create up to 100 or 101 saves per ROM but again it was buggy and it might have been dropped in the newer kernels.

Well you never really answered my question, I said "If I were to go out today and buy a gba flash cart that supports sd cards which one should I buy"

Also the "5 pokemon games' point I made was just an example, I was trying to say I want all the games to save and have no issues.

 

[3dsgametime]

I haven't played GBC on my EZ Flash IV for a whole, But I bought the new ez flash iv from https://www.r43ds.org/products/EZ-Flash-IV.html and that worked fine for me. I did have to compile and use the goomba software, but it worked fine for the games I was using. I am sure it works on the older EZ Flash IV as well since it uses all the same firmware kernels. The supercard SD from what I read some time ago, also runs the Goomba emulator, though it only works with 2GB mini sd cards. It is however cheaper than the EZ IV

 

[GreatCrippler]

One doesn't exist, because that's not really possible. The GBA and GBC/GB have different voltages going to their cart slots (and when the GBA is in "GBC mode" it uses a different voltage as well), so a cart designed for "GBA mode" wouldn't really work in "GB(C) mode", nor would a cart designed for the GBA work on a GB(C) console. You'll have to make a compromise by either:

A) Getting two flashcarts, one for GBC and one for GBA.
or
B) Getting a good GBA flashcart which can run Goomba Color (a GBC emulator which runs on the GBA, but it has compatibility issues with some games like Pokémon Crystal).

For what it's worth there is a card that offers both GB, and GBA modes. It was the Flash 2 Advance with bridge. The bridge accessory let it function as a regular GB cart. So yes it does exist, just not super easy to get a hold of.

 

[FAST6191]

Well you never really answered my question, I said "If I were to go out today and buy a gba flash cart that supports sd cards which one should I buy"

Also the "5 pokemon games' point I made was just an example, I was trying to say I want all the games to save and have no issues.

I said in the first reply I made, though I will restate it all

If you have a DS and DS flash cart to manage it then the 3 in 1 will do, if you want to to act as a standalone then it will not do for you. As you mentioned price as a concern then this is the cheapest way you are going to get hardware playback of GBA games.

If you want cheaper and the ability to play near every game (list of the trouble games and fixes for them http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 ) then the EZ4 is a fine cart that has been time tested.

If you want a really fancy thing and are prepared to open your wallet then the everdrive x5 does all the EZ4 does and has a real time clock onboard (means pokemon ruby, sapphire and emerald do not have to use the patches). It sits proud of the GBA slot though. There is also the x7 which may not but I am not sure at what cost (the easiest way would be to drop real time clock).

All three will allow you, and have allowed probably several thousand before you, to readily play almost the entire GBA library as it would have ran on an original cart (unless of course you hack the game to be even better), give or take the pokemon clock thing for the 3 in 1 and EZ4, tilt sensors and solar sensor for those games with them. Saves should not be a problem else I would have mentioned it, there have been some quirks in the past but nothing you really need to concern yourself with. The supercard however is a bad choice, were I inclined to give a "buy this, do this" type answer (if I could I would but not for this) then I could say either of the latter two and you would likely not come to regret it, plenty have been in your shoes before now and opted for the supercard only to have to buy something better a few months down the line or return to emulation.

You are not going to get an emulator grade full ROM set experience with anything really, on any flash cart on any system come to think of it. You can however do very very well with them and if playing exactly as it would be on hardware is a thing for you (I like emulation and all the filters and perks really) it will do that too. If you are using a GBA cart then it will require emulation for the GB/GBC as the GB player, GBA and SP basically only plays GB/GBC by virtue of having a complete GBC in there which is isolated from the GBA hardware. Said emulation is primarily done with an emulator called goomba on the GBA and it works on every GBA flash cart going really. If you are using a DS and DS flash cart you have other choices which may be better. Alternatively the everdrive people make a GB/GBC flash cart which is unquestionably the best choice for a whole library type session.

 

[daxtsu]

For what it's worth there is a card that offers both GB, and GBA modes. It was the Flash 2 Advance with bridge. The bridge accessory let it function as a regular GB cart. So yes it does exist, just not super easy to get a hold of.

Fair enough. Quite the bulky looking solution there though. Rather just have two separate carts.

 

[garbanzox]

I just use two different carts, one for GBA and one for GB/GBC. Both are Everdrives. The quality and compatibility are fantastic, and they're dead easy to use. The price is quite reasonable compared to the cost collecting all your favorite games as loose (and possibly counterfeit) carts from eBay...

The GBA Everdrive has built-in support for several emulators (meaning you don't have to patch your games, you can just select a GBC or SMS or NES or whatever game from your system menu and it will open in the correct emulator). I haven't actually tried goomba on it I have a GB cart, but apparently it runs with black borders on all sides and is not able to scale to the GBA's screen, either stretched or OAR. Not cool.