Everdrive GB, Game Boy flash kit released

[raulpica]

Not sure I'd pay $100 for a GB flashcard. I don't really need it for Pokaymanz, as I've already got 'em all (except Silver...)

I mean, it's awesome and everything but, oh gosh, DAT PRICE.

The EMS USB is a lot cheaper and probably does whatever I'll ever need from it.

...but I DO love the GB, so I might end up getting one anyway and slap all the GB romset on it

 

[Foxi4]

Not sure I'd pay $100 for a GB flashcard. I don't really need it for Pokaymanz, as I've already got 'em all (except Silver...) I mean, it's awesome and everything but, oh gosh, DAT PRICE. The EMS USB is a lot cheaper and probably does whatever I'll ever need from it... but I DO love the GB, so I might end up getting one anyway and slap all the GB romset on it

The obvious benefits here is SD support and MBC1/2/3/5 support - not all GB/GBC flash carts can boast practically full compatibility like this as far as I know.

 

[raulpica]

The obvious benefits here is SD support and MBC1/2/3/5 support - not all GB/GBC flash carts can boast practically full compatibility like this as far as I know.

I think the EMS is pretty much 99% when it comes to compatibility?

 

[Foxi4]

I think the EMS is pretty much 99% when it comes to compatibility?

Not an expert, 'amma just sayan in general.

 

[westdog]

the emu for gbc runs best on a dscart so im good on buying that looks allright price too high lower price

 

[Bonny]

This Everdrive is nice if you wanna carry around the full GB Romset. But the EMS USB 64 is also doing the job right. 64Mbit = 8 MB, most Black/White GB games have around 128 - 256 KB. If you don't insist to carry around the whole Romset, the EMS Card sure will satisfy your needs. With MottZillas Flash-Tool, multipe saves files are also possible.

 

[Shicky256]

This Everdrive is nice if you wanna carry around the full GB Romset. But the EMS USB 64 is also doing the job right. 64Mbit = 8 MB, most Black/White GB games have around 128 - 256 KB. If you don't insist to carry around the whole Romset, the EMS Card sure will satisfy your needs. With MottZillas Flash-Tool, multipe saves files are also possible.

The only thing I don't like about it is that you can't change the color palette of Game Boy games if playing on a Color, so all of your original games look like crap.

 

[Ahuch]

This Everdrive is nice if you wanna carry around the full GB Romset. But the EMS USB 64 is also doing the job right. 64Mbit = 8 MB, most Black/White GB games have around 128 - 256 KB. If you don't insist to carry around the whole Romset, the EMS Card sure will satisfy your needs. With MottZillas Flash-Tool, multipe saves files are also possible.

The EverdriveGB is much more future proof though. It would have been nice if RTC was added, but I think the Pokemon RTC patches will probably work on it as well.

Just being able to throw files on a microSD card instead of having to use legacy software is a big bonus to me, and no patching roms for multi-saves.

 

[Isaac]

I'd use this for my pirated roms completely legal backups.

 

[tbgtbg]

1gb would be plenty for entire romset w/o regional clones.

No harm in supporting larger cards. As time goes buy smaller cards get harder to come by, might as well support big ones, even if there's literally no way to fill that space.

 

[Drenn]

I think the EMS is pretty much 99% when it comes to compatibility?

It's pretty good, but strictly speaking it only emulates the MBC5. It's mostly backwards compatible with other mappers, but some games don't cooperate with the new features and quirks.

Also, the EMS leaves its registers out in the open for games to write to. Among other things, this means that extreme glitching is more prone to crashing when it shouldn't crash. A new glitch in Oracle of Ages which skips a quarter of the game doesn't work for this reason.

It sounds like the everdrive won't need game patches to fix these things, if it really does emulate the mappers correctly.

 

[Shicky256]

Indeed. It's also a PITA to get the EMS working on Windows 7 64 Bit, as I have to patch each individual driver file, boot up in Test Mode, and deal with a watermark on my desktop.

 

[Bonny]

The only thing I don't like about it is that you can't change the color palette of Game Boy games if playing on a Color, so all of your original games look like crap.

What exactly do you mean? When you flash BW games to the EMS card, you can select the color at start up at the GAME BOY logo with pressing left/right/up or down and the DPAD in combination with the A or B Button.

 

[total_split]

A problem with current flashcart multi rom menus (with a single compiled rom rather than a menu accessing a filesystem) is that the gameboy boots into "color" mode or "B&W" mode and then its set, so a few limitations present themselves when using a menu that do not when you flash games 1 at a time.
1. difficulty when mixing color and b&w games on the same card - some games are for GBC only, some are universal etc. You can't switch the color pallet around when its booted into color mode, you cant play color games if its booted in B&W mode, niggly little things like that.
2. Gameboy color pallet *special* table missing. - i.e. when you load a launch game like tennis on a gameboy color or later including gameboy advance and gamecube player, the pallet will be specifically colorized - the court is green, the players are yellow etc. this is more complex than the default hold the dpad when booting pallet switches as its in the hardware's bios.
3. Super gameboy special features aren't there - borders aren't there, also possibly the 2 player supported games like KOF95 SF2 (maybe gameboy gallery...) won't have the 2 player mode, donkey kong wont have the "help help" voice samples....

So if this cart does the same kind of magic that current NDS carts do, i.e. dynamically patching the stuff above out, then this cart is well worth the money and engineering time that went into it.

Also... save game management on all cartridge based flashcards is a PITA if this raises the game, then im in!

I'm very fond of all of my flashcarts for various systems, but most are contemporary and a nightmare to use compared to the DS carts, I've somehow managed to not have a single everdrive in my collection yet - not sure how thats happened... but this could be the first. Eagerly awaiting a full review.

 

[driverdis]

I must be crazy to already own a Drag'n'Derp and to have already purchased the everdriveGB.
my idea is this
Drag'n'derp for the pokemon games (allows it to work with pokemon stadium 1 and 2 also as the Drag'n'Derp acts like a 1:1 copy of the cart) [works well since I normally only play 1 pokemon game at a time for extended periods so having 1 game at a time is no big deal]
EverdriveGB for everything else.

 

[Heran Bago]

I got in on a group buy so I'm getting this for cheaper. I'd pay the full price though, krikzz products are wonderful and it's amazing what he's doing in spite of the whole revolution going on in his country.

 

[kaputnik]

Sooo tempted to pick this and a GB up, just to play the games on the original hardware, even though Lameboy and a DS Lite in my opinion do a better job than the original GB, with savestates, backlit screen, and so on.

Got the ED64, Super ED and ED N8. Really good stuff, this is probably just as great

 

[Vappy]

Mine arrived this morning, just got to testing it. Works great with all the games I've tried so far, takes a good 10-15 seconds to start a game as it reads/writes save files.

 

[Shicky256]

A problem with current flashcart multi rom menus (with a single compiled rom rather than a menu accessing a filesystem) is that the gameboy boots into "color" mode or "B&W" mode and then its set, so a few limitations present themselves when using a menu that do not when you flash games 1 at a time.
1. difficulty when mixing color and b&w games on the same card - some games are for GBC only, some are universal etc. You can't switch the color pallet around when its booted into color mode, you cant play color games if its booted in B&W mode, niggly little things like that.
2. Gameboy color pallet *special* table missing. - i.e. when you load a launch game like tennis on a gameboy color or later including gameboy advance and gamecube player, the pallet will be specifically colorized - the court is green, the players are yellow etc. this is more complex than the default hold the dpad when booting pallet switches as its in the hardware's bios.
3. Super gameboy special features aren't there - borders aren't there, also possibly the 2 player supported games like KOF95 SF2 (maybe gameboy gallery...) won't have the 2 player mode, donkey kong wont have the "help help" voice samples...

The thing is, these issues could be resolved if EMS just made it so the card did a soft reset after loading the game. Because they didn't do this, games are doomed to looking crappy.

 

[Videomanman87]

The best GB/GBC cart I have seen for GB/GBC is emerger with its RAMCARD. The card had a full RTC, SRAM and ran every rom I ever threw at it. Also the battery for the SRAM was a DREAM to replace. Just unscrew the case, slip out the battery and slip in another. Love that system, still works well, the only problem these days is it runs on the old parallel port. Also software I *think* only works on windows XP or earlier. I have a old laptop that works well with it. I also have a Virtual Box machine set up in case I ever need it. Software wasn't the easiest to understand and there were a few quirks, such as you wanted to backup the entire Sram memory separately before you tried anything or you could accidentally wipe the sram memory. Other than that, it is a wonderful system.

I do like the looks of this cart thought and I LOVE the idea of SD cards instead of having to hook up a old laptop when I want to move ROM's around. Still a little expensive for me at the moment.