Hacking M3 Lite or G6 Lite

[mikesnickname]

Just purchased a brand new Black DSL today and love it. I'm looking to get flash cart for it and am looking at the G6 lite or the M3 lite. I'm looking for a cart which can load goomba so i can also play my old school gb games, does it make a difference which one i buy? Price doesnt make a huge difference to me, but compatibility does. Which one would you guys recommend.

Thanks,

Mike.

 

[DeVS]

Well compatability wise there the same as there made by the same Dev. I have both and would not trade my G6 for the world. The only thing the M3 Lite has over the G6 Lite is that it uses microSD cards so you can expand the memory and the G6 Lite has a set amount of internal memory that can't be upgraded (512mb). 512mb is about 12 DS games or a ton of GBA games or a nice mix of both. Now the G6 Lite has a similar save system to the M3 Lite but the G6 Lite save system seems ALOT smoother (no warning screen every time you turn on the DS telling you to hit "A" to save the last game you played like the M3 does). The G6 Lite OS is alot faster then the M3 Lite and the gui is way nicer looking with icons of all the games next to the games name. Again the ONLY draw back to the G6 Lite is it's fixed internal memory, but 512mb is plenty for a hand full of DS games and GBA games. I personaly LOVE the G6 Lite and it rarely leaves my DS Lite. The M3 Lite (and M3 series in general) seems slow,bloated, and handles saves poorly. My vote is for the G6 Lite. If everyone had the oppurtunity to use the G6 Lite and compare it to the other mod carts out there right now, my guess is that they would choose the G6 Lite over the M3 Lite 9 out of 10 times.

 

[RyuKakashi]

M3

g6 has a whole bunch of problems even though the menu looks so much better.

and even though they are made by the same people, they care much less about the g6 than they do the m3.

 

[DeVS]

How do they careless? It's updated just as often as the M3 series.

 

[tama_mog]

I would choose a m3 lite or supercard lite over the g6 lite, but I am one of the unfortuante ones that got shafted by the corruption. If the g6 lites I had have the dependability of my g6 3rd gens (still working perfectly), it may sway my decision a bit. But the supercard lite and m3 lite is hard to beat when it comes to ds support and other added bonuses. If you're looking for the simplest one to use, I would agree yes the g6 lite.....but if it were me I'd pick a g6 3rd gen over a g6 lite due to experience and prefer supercard lite or m3 lite.

 

[SlyGuy]

Depends if you want reliable memory or expandable memory.

 

[DeVS]

Supercard Lite is very nice too but there your trade off is not so good GBA compatability BUT you do get an increase in homebrew compatability over a M3 or G6. I would take the Supercard Lite over the M3 Lite,lol.

 

[kohkindachi]

LOL i love this thread

But M3 or G6, still can't make a choice.

BTW guys, beside the cartridge itself, what else do i need to play downloaded roms(DS/GBA Adv/GBA)?Or only the cart will do?

I read the review, but still has no idea what passme does LOL..is it necessary to have that?

 

[tama_mog]

the real selling point for me on a supercard lite is the simplicity of the menu (games launch instantly, and fast to browse through/boot up), homebrew support (like devs says), and the save implementation. That's the only reason why my gf uses a supercard lite because she's lost her saves too many times from not rebooting/soft reseting the ds to the main menu to save her progress (when she was using the g6 3rd gen). Supercard is save and forget about it, it's there forever (unless your microsd dies, unlikely if you took the adequate precautions). I like the m3 lite because of the fit, nice menu (though clunky but skinnable, that's kinda cool), gba support, and the e27a firmware makes it that much sweeter. Although supercard had them beat in terms of speed improvement weeks before.

 

[tama_mog]

LOL i love this thread

But M3 or G6, still can't make a choice.

BTW guys, beside the cartridge itself, what else do i need to play downloaded roms(DS/GBA Adv/GBA)?Or only the cart will do?

I read the review, but still has no idea what passme does LOL..is it necessary to have that?

you need to read more, a passme device allows you to bypass the security checks the DS runs normally to authenticate that you're running a real game and to read nds games from the gba slot (Slot2) while in nds mode.

 

[kohkindachi]

That means cart alone can't run DS roms?

 

[cory1492]

That means cart alone can't run DS roms?

Exactly. You will need some kind of passme solution that is compatible with your unit (DSLite, I'm assuming), even if it is only to install flashme's patched DS firmare onto your DS so you dont need the passme any more. The didnt market PassMe, PassCard and all the others just for fun... its simply what you have to do to get unsigned code running on the DS from the GBA slot.

 

[Hypnotoad]

Correct. You'd either need to flash your DS, or put a PassCard (i.e. PassCard3, SuperKey, etc) in your Slot-1.

 

[kohkindachi]

Correct. You'd either need to flash your DS, or put a PassCard (i.e. PassCard3, SuperKey, etc) in your Slot-1.

Thx cory1492 & tama_mog for replying.

But Keyser Soze, what u mean by either? From the abv replied i thought we need both?

Sorry for my ignorance

 

[gr33dy]

DeVS, just out of curiousity, which cart do you personally prefer between the G6L and SCL?

 

[ledats]

lol this thread is amazing lol
lol, i have a G6 and not lol having any trouble so far!
.
.
.
lol

 

[DeVS]

DeVS, just out of curiousity, which cart do you personally prefer between the G6L and SCL?

I have one of those White Foam Air cases and acutaly carry both of them. G6 gets used more for GBA and newer DS stuff that the Supercard might have trouble with (ie Starfox when it first hit) but I generaly use the Supercard Lite for DS and mostly homebrew since it has better homebrew compatability.

 

[lenselijer]

I got both and i only use my g6 lite, it has a nice interface with the game icons and its touchscreen.

m3 lite is just a normal m3 only a little smaller

not even a touchscreen menu.

 

[ceraphis]

I just posted my thoughts on this subject in another thread, but I'll post a couple here as well.

First of all, I can't say anything about the corruption issues. I have no idea why they occur, but I have a feeling its the contacts not always touching the way they should. What I mean by this is the G6 lite case over time gets flimsier, to the point where it is loose and not as sturdy as when it comes right out of the box. I already can't really use my white case anymore because somehow the screw holes got stripped and every time I try to fasten the case together, it doesn't work right. My G6 lite has been in the black case and GBA case ever since. This brings up another thought too: I have used the GBA case probably a LOT more than anyone else has, because I like to switch between GBMicro and DS Lite and Gamecube gameboy player. After a while of always changing the case, I started just leaving it in the GBA case because it was easier. The GBA case is also MUCH sturdier than the DSLite cases they give you. Anyways, I'm getting off topic, but if you get a G6 Lite, just do your best to take absolute care of it and you SHOULD have no problems. If you do, God forbid, then you should be able to get a replacement for no charge.

Now, to what I like about the G6. I'm obsessed with the G6 icon interface. it's as simple as that. I love it, and if you didn't know, you can create your own custom icons because someone released a very nifty wonderful program. I soon will release a pack of every icon available for both NDS and GBA, even with that hotpink background problem fixed, because like I said, I'm obsessed with the icons and this is some way I can give back to the community.

Also, everyone seems to fail to mention that the G6 touchpod menu has NO INTRO as compared to the M3 DS menu. The GBA menu has the intro, but not the touchpod interface.

I personally love being limited to the space I have on my G6. I know it sounds strange, but I get flashcard diarrhea with my M3. With a gigabyte of miniSD space, I can fit every GBA game I'd ever want to play, or at least twice as many DS games as the G6, and with so much added choices, and with no way to personalize them (the icons...drool), they seem faceless on the menu and sometimes I don't even want to sift through all the games I could play just to choose one, because there are so many freakin choices. In my opinion, the G6 is nice because it FORCES you to think hard about what games you really want to play. Like, for a while, even though I already beat New Super Mario Bros., I still put it on my G6 just on the off chance that I wanted to play it again for like 5 minutes. Well, after a while I got sick of not having Phoenix wright on the card (which I haven't gotten close to beating) so I deleted New Super Mario and Bust a move to make space for it. This was good for me, because it made me choose to have phoenix wright on there as opposed to two or three other games, which will in turn help me to want to play phoenix because now I made it that much more important than..GASP...new super mario bros., one of the best games to be released in a long time. This is just my opinion though, everyone will feel different about it.

With regards to speed, M3 users have to make a big decision about what memory cards to get for it based on their speed. G6 users have the fastest possible memory so thats a tough decision made irrelevant.

One other thing that's good about the G6 is the entirety of the GBA experience. M3 plays the games just as fine, but after experiencing the crazy faster realtime saving/loading of the G6, the M3's is really hard to deal with. Also, I've noticed that with compressing the GBA roms when you put them on the G6, it compresses them enough that the space the rom and its dual sets of three saves/RTsaves is less than just the rom itself on the M3. Add to that the added megabyte of required save space just for one realtime save and regular save for a GBA game, and an extra half megabyte for each realtime save after that and you have much more space needed for M3 GBA games. Games like riviera, a 32MB Rom, will be compressed to 15-16 MB on the G6, with 1.5 megabytes of RTsaves and 768 KB of regular saves and a 8KB icon, you have less than 20 Megabytes of space to put riviera on the G6. Compare that to the M3's 32MB for riviera, 1MB for one regular save/realtime save (with 1MB for any added regular saves), and a total of 1MB for two additional RTsaves, you have 34MB for a Riviera rom, 1 regular save (as opposed to three), and 3 realtime saves. Ok anyway, you get the picture.

Don't forget that with the M3 Lite, you're paying $80-$88+probably $10-$20 shipping on just the unit, then you need to buy a gigabyte microSD card that will AT LEAST cost you $30-$50 just to make the added memory availability a plus over the G6 (if you get 512mb sd card, its like an underpowered G6 for more money...ignoring the corruption problems). Then if you don't have one already, you'll need a memory card reader that you should probably spend about $10-$20, leaning towards 20 so you get USB2.0 and reliability (i use sandisk's microSd/miniSD/SD card reader...$20). Assuming you can get the lowest price in the ranges I suggested, that's still $80 for M3Lite)+$10 shipping+$30 memory card+$10 cardreader = $130 at the very least. If I were you, I'd get the $80+shipping G6 (even with possible corruption) or wait for the possibly amazing DSXtreme and get that instead for the same/less amount of money. (SOMEONE correct me if my price ranges are wrong)

What I do prefer about the M3 is the lack of reported corruption or other problem issues. It's just nonexistant on the M3, which gives you some peace of mind. Along the same lines, if you get a reliable memory card reader, you can easily plug/unplug the memory card into your computer, haphazardly throw some crap on it, and then unplug it before it's done copying and you'll probably still be OK, at least after a possibly needed formatting. On the G6, this would be tantamount to shooting the G6 in the chest and then hoping that the bullet didn't hit its heart. This is definitely a huge upside to the M3 over the G6.

I'll end my crazy long rant with a little nutty analogy: To me at least, the G6 is like a corvette and the M3 is like an overpriced camaro. They're both great to have (maybe a little on the expensive side) but they're still wonderful to use. If all you have is the corvette, you still need a way to drive to work, so you'll drive that to work everyday even with the added risk of a crash and insurance costs, and you'd love every minute of it because it looks pretty and drives faster. If I had a corvette AND a (overpriced) camaro though, the camaro is more reliable and costs less insurance and less to fix so I'd drive the camaro to work everyday and every once in a while take the corvette on a joy ride, wishing that I could drive that corvette everyday with the peace of mind that the camaro would give you.

The same goes for the G6 and M3 I think. If I had an M3 lite, I'd use it all the time just because I wouldn't want to break my pretty little G6.

 

[Topsy]

Great post ceraphis!

I guess everything has been said about the two cards really, but I'll add my thoughts.

I have both the G6 Lite and M3 Lite and it's a tough tossup for me. The things I like better about the G6L than the M3L are:

Nice clean boot (the M3L flickers the screen just before it finally gets to the media menu)
The menu interface game icons are really nice (M3L is just all txt)
Boots straight to games menu (M3L starts at the media page and has a splash screen even before it gets there)
Touch interface (none on M3L's DSL media menu)
L/R triggers scroll games list (the do nothing on M3L, but you can page with left/right pad)
One button or touch to run game (M3L you have to confirm the save to be loaded first... Would be nice if save confirmation was an option)
Easily backup original cart save files (can't be done with M3L unless you use Rein a homebrew app)
The white DSL cartridge cover is a close match than the M3L's
The loading screen for when a ROM loads is nicer (M3L is two boxes loading boxes of txt)
The G6 uses both screen for the menu (M3L is just black on top)
G6 feels more compatable... I would just hit soft reset/trim/dofat and everything seemed to work... I have to be more careful with the M3 as to which options I use with each ROM)
Nicer packaging hehehe - nice tin and GBA cart included (M3L was just a box)
More cartridge covers... (navy blue).
Save management system

Things I like about the M3L better than the G6L:

THE SPACE! OMG I have a 2 GB micro sd in it and I just love how much I can get on the cart (G6 is 1/4 the space of that)
Loading on ROMS to the micro sd is way way faster than loading ROMS to the G6L
Cartridge cases feel much sturdier
Easier to firmware update... one file dragged to root of SD and then boot the M3L. (G6L is more complicated then that - not difficult, but takes more time)
Flashme is recoverable (G6L not)
THE SPACE!
Shows more ROMS per page (5 on M3L and 4 on G6L)
M3L sorts the ROMS on the SD alphabetically by name (G6L just shows them in the order they were written)

Overall, I like the G6L better, but I will be using the M3L because of the space (not gonna sell my G6L though)... If I had to choose just one, I would get the M3L, but only because of the micro SD slot - if the G6L was 1 GB or had a micro SD... I would be all over it!!!

The perfect cart for me would be a G6L with a micro SD slot and the menu tweaked to show 5 game icons at a time. I would jump on it!

Goodluck with your decision. I think anything you ever wanted to know about them is in this thread now

EDIT: Just added a couple gifs to show the "from boot to game screen on the two carts"

G6 Lite

M3 Lite