Thanks for the reply, glad to hear your thoughts!
As for your question, it's pretty much like what was mentioned earlier in the thread. I collect these flashcarts simply because they're unique pieces of hardware in their own right. For me, the fun is in experiencing their specific features, comparing them, and ultimately finding my absolute favorites to keep using for the long run.
Like I said at the beginning, I used to be a strictly legit retail gamer. I own at least over a hundred physical DS carts. While that doesn't mean I've beaten every single one of them, it does mean I prefer the native experience without having to worry about bugs caused by anti-piracy measures breaking the game, if you know what I mean.
Because of that, I don't actually pack my flashcarts with tons of ROMs. To me, a flashcart is more about enhancing the overall user experience—kind of like modding a 3DS. It lets you load up a curated list of games, try out cool homebrew, and customize the menus and skins. They're almost like neat little tech accessories to me.
But you're totally right, with all the clones and fake carts flooding the market, a lot of them do end up functioning identically due to teams splitting up and copying each other. That said, some genuinely amazing hardware came out of that era, and the original products were pretty pure in their design. Digging into that history and messing around with the hardware is exactly where the fun lies for me xD
