Hacking AceKard RPG and GBA Expansion Pack: Did I buy the wrong card?

[willowjapan]

I recently bought the AceKard RPG, which works great. In the store it was sitting on the shelf next to a "GBA Expansion Pack" so I bought that as well thinking I could play GBA games. (In Tokyo)

The box is in Japanese but mentions m3adapter.com, wwwm3flash.jp, m3/G6 Real Series, TouchPod for G6/M3DS Real, and says it has 32mb ram. It has no microSD slot or anything like that.

Did I make a mistake thinking I could use this with my AceKard RPG? The AceKard doesn't seem to recognize anything in slot-2 and the GBA games I loaded in the root directory on the card don't show up, although .nds games show up just fine.

What are my options? Is there anything I need to do, or did I just make a mistake buying the wrong slot-2 card?

Thanks.

WillowJapan

 

[Maikel Steneker]

The AceKard R.P.G. only supports the EZ-Flash 3in1 Expansion Pack directly from its menu. This is also true for AKAIO.

You can use the GBA Expansion Pack by using Rudolph's GBA ExpLoader (http://www009.upp.so-net.ne.jp/rudolph/nds/ExpLoader/). It's possible that a future version of AKAIO will also support this, but I think you will need to get a 3in1 if you want support from the menu.

 

[willowjapan]

Maikel,

Thanks for your quick response. I am new to this stuff. I just tried GBA Exploader and that works pretty well. There was also an m3/sakura in the store, and I guess that's the one that would've worked with this GBA expansion pak... I was 50/50 at the time and didn't know much about this stuff, so I just chose the acekard because it has 1gig internal memory in addition to a microSD slot, which by the way, is turning out to be quite nice.

So, I guess for me it'll be 1 extra step to load GBA games. I'm pretty happy anyway, everythings working just fine.

Incidentally, if anyone's interested, here in Japan the supply of DS Lites I suspect is starting to diminish. I had to go to a few places that were sold out before I finally found one. It seems there will soon be a push for promoting the DSi whether we like it or not. The price difference is only about $20 U.S., but I didn't want to get one because I'm still not sure how things will work out with the upgradeable firmware situation.

 

[AXYPB]

They sell flashcarts in Japanese brick-and-mortar shops? Where exactly in Tokyo do you live?

 

[willowjapan]

Yes, you can buy these cards in brick and mortar stores in Japan. You can go to Akihabara (i.e. Electric Town), which is a famous spot in Tokyo known for having all sorts of electronics goods.

 

[AXYPB]

I heard of Akihabara stores selling R4s some months ago and deliberately not telling customers what they're for. If I remember correctly, they've all been shut down by the authorities.

 

[willowjapan]

Yeah, I know what you are talking about. There was some talk about the legality of selling these cards here however, I don't know what conclusion they came to but, there are a bunch of stores that still sell this type of stuff. Just walking around I found 5 places that had them.
This is a well known store among techies in Japan and it's where I got mine:

http://www.clevery.co.jp/eshop/e/egametool/

One thing though, if you ask them any questions about these cards, they will tell you they don't know anything, in fact the Sakura web page doesn't talk about playing backups at all. Only mentions watching movies and listening to music.

 

[Endracion]

Sorry for reviving and old thread but I'm around the Tokyo area and I'd really like to get a card. I have previously owned an Acekard 2, back in the day where the DSi didn't exist and I lost it while on a trip to Europe. I recently purchased a DSi and I would like to get back into gaming with it. So if you do know any places, what kind of prices do you find? Is it similar to ShopTemp's range?

Thanks for the help!