First thing your going to notice is the Matrix box design. Ok so it’s cheesy, it screams “ I want you to think I’m cool”, but it really is sort of fitting. It is named the “Neo”-max after all, and it has a chance to be “the one” due to the MK3 cart included, as silly as that might sound.
If you look past that you find a heavy cardboard box that is built a lot better then some of their previous kits, and when you open it up you notice that the lip of the top of the box has a magnet that keeps it closed. Everything’s packed inside of it rather snugly, but perhaps too snug. To remove the USB card reader, and the USB slim loader III I had to pull out the felt laced plastic insert and push from underneath it to get them loose.
Once you have all the bits and pieces out of the box, it’s time to inspect them.
Let’s start with the Neo-Max 512Mb+128 Zip GBA cart.
On the top of the cart is a small battery bay, that is removable so that you can replace the battery’s without taking the cart apart. You pull out by clasping two tiny tabs of plastic with your fingernails and squeezing them in, and then pulling the bay out.
Now this probably worked well in theory, and I’ve seen other carts with a similar idea, but what happened with me was as soon as one side was ok, there was no room for my fingernail on the other side.
It took me a good 10 minutes of fiddling around with this, just to put the battery in the cart. So, I managed to do it eventually, I wish I could say it was easier to pull it out, but that’s the other problem. Pulling the battery bay out is just as much a pain in the ass, and I don’t see this changing as even once your fingernails are in place and your ready to pull out, it just stays there.
Yes sir, that’s a good feature to put on the back of the box, the first battery bay for a Neoflash cart. I really wish I could have just unscrewed the damn thing, popped the battery in and went upon my merry way.
Other then that, the cart seems to be similar to most of the other Neoflash carts, only this one comes with a shiny sticker “Matrix” design like the box that says “Neo-Max”.
Next up we have the USB Slim Loader III, and while I like the idea of having a GBA cart loader that doesn’t need a GBA to flash the cart, I really hate this thing.
The USB cord, that in pictures looks like a good idea, is fit so tight into it’s slot that you have to pry the damn thing loose, and when you put the Neo-Max cart into the loader, the fit is so tight that I feel I’m going to break either it or the cart every time I use it. Because it’s a hard plastic, and not a woman, I fear it will never loosen up over time, and it’s just a matter of that same time before something breaks.
To get this working you need a driver, and it’s the only piece of software on the disc that came in the package worth a damn, everything else has already been updated so rather then waste time playing with any of the rest of the disc, lets just leave it at that shall we…
We move on to the SD/MMC/RS-MMC/T-Flash USB 2.0 card reader/writer (say that ten times fast), and once again the “it’s too damn tight” feature kicks in. The little cap on the end of this really doesn’t want to come off. The second time I tried pulling off the cap I had to use a pair of pliers to rip the cap off, so it’s a good thing I took all the pictures before I did this. This doesn’t require any drivers but at this time I’m unsure if it, or the generic SD card that comes in the kit is the culprit behind one of my personal pet peeves with this entire thing.
For some reason, when ever I load a rom onto the SD card, even if it’s the exact same rom, the time it takes to load varies. I’m going to use Phoenix Wright as an example, the first time I put in on the SD card it took 3 minutes. The second time I put the exact same rom on it took around 1. The third time after 5 minutes of waiting for it to load, I got an error message I have seen atleast 20 times in testing this kit out.
Now, while this error message is a constant nagging problem, for some reason every single rom still flashed to the SD card, and still worked in the DS, but it still wants to tell me it’s not there, or that it didn’t flash. The complete random nature of the loading times, and the utter lack of logic to it all makes me clueless as to what the problem really is, but I’d wager it might be the software.
So what’s left?
There’s a USB expansion cable I didn’t need so I left it untouched.
I used one of the three battery’s for the GBA cart and it works so far.
That’s everything touched upon then, so lets move on…
What?
I forgot the MK3?
Ok, fine.
The MK3 is pretty much exactly like the MK2 (for more information on the MK2 check Darkforce’s review
here, it pretty much sums up the MK3 in it‘s current state as well so be sure to read his review if your considering a purchase) , as can be seen from this list from the Neoflash site:
MagicKey2 / MagicKey3 Main Feature:
1.Boot from ANY Flash cart.
2.Included 8Kb high-speed inner buffer, can use command to read/write it.
3.Included 2M SRAM for NDS game save ( 100% hardware save, support EEPROM and Serial Flash directly ), and can compress the game save then backup to 16M menu flash later ( SMS function ).
4.Included 16M Flash for menu, can store the MK2 / MK3 boot menu program, and can backup / restore the NDS SMS file
5.Support SD and MMC card directly, maximum memory size up to 16Gb ~ 32Gb.
6.Included Li-Ion battery, lifetime over 5 years, can keep the game save data around 3~7 days, for temporary using only, must backup the save data to menu flash later for a long time safe backup.
7.Battery voltage display, can show NDS working voltage and MK2 / MK3 Li-Ion battery voltage.
8.Support software reset, it'll help to make the multi-files loader.
9.Support memory bank swap, very easy to use offset to swap the memory bank.
10.Support power saving mode, some hardware module can enter sleeping mode when it don't run, and can use command to call them wake up.
11*.Included 256M / 512M Flash, for run PD rom and APP rom through MK2/MK3 and not need SD/MMC support.
12*.Included 64M / 128M Zip RAM, for decompress the data and run directly, also can use for a huge size high-speed working buffer, for example the Linux / EMU / PDA ...
The only difference between the MK2 and the MK3 are the last two numbers (11 and 12 for you slow people)
So that’s that right, that’s all you need to know?
Well the Neo-Max MK3 is the most neutered MK3 money can buy. While the stand alone MK3 comes in two sizes, the first being 256m + 64m zip and the second being 512m + 128m zip. The Neo-Max kit comes with 64M + 32M zip…
What this is supposed to do is give you even more space to store games, menus and applications, this is the feature that is touted to kill the need to boot from a GBA cart. This is where the “the one” reference I made earlier comes into play, as this would also theoretically kill the loading and slow down issues the MK2/MK3 now suffer from, but this also is where the Neo-Max falls flat on it’s face.
What good is the 64m +32m zip in the Neo-Max MK3?
The thing is right now, this isn’t an issue simply because this feature isn’t even working yet, but the point is that if you care about loading roms without a GBA cart, or loading roms directly from the MK3’s extra memory your shit outta luck with the Neo-Max MK3, it‘s not going to be able to handle all the games, and that is the most important part of any flash kit.
So while it’s nice to sit back and talk about the future of the MK2 + MK3, and about how cool it is to play clean roms, the future of the Neo-Max really isn’t as bright. You can buy 4 different types of the Neo-Max kit, and the only difference is the size of the generic SD card that comes with it. The MK3 is neutered in all the kits.
One day I hope to do a full on proper review of this kit, of the MK3, and of all the endless possibilities touted for it. And when that day comes I’ll be one happy camper, but with what seems like beta software, and what looks like a huge lack of support for most things most other flash carts can do there is little for me to do or say.
Let me touch upon the compatibility of the MK3, no matter what size it is, right now only a little more then 50% of the DS roms list works, and even when you get say Jump Super Stars loaded up and working, your looking at about 10 to 15 seconds of loading times in-between each different menu screen. It can take minutes to just go through a few of the rounds. Something like Phoenix Wright on the other hand, which is just a text based game barely has any loading at all, but does have hiccups that pause the dialogue.
Now you can use the GST patcher to make a few more games work, and while that takes away from one of the main selling points of “clean roms working”, I do think that’s where the Neoflash team gets it’s 80% compatibility numbers from. In the end that still just adding more work to what should be a simple process, and storing multiple copies of the same roms patched and unpatched is a waste of space on your hard drive.
I could talk more about the Neo-Max specific software, I managed to get a GBA game to run, but I couldn’t get it to run a DS game at all, I had to use the Neo flash power kit for the MK2/MK3 to get that done, which goes to show how much of a beta kit these products all feel like. I hope with the next batch of software alot of these issues will be clear up, but I doubt it will all be fixed and working with the next release, it may take many software revisions.
One last thing to add to this, right before posting this up I pulled out the kit to play some Phoneix Wright, it being a simple text adventure game, the loading issues are not much of a problem. It took 20 seconds to load to the Capcom screen and shortly after that it crashed. So I put it away, and decided to buy the game instead.
I also had a bit of fun with my nephew showing him the kit, and watching him try to get the Neo-Max into the USB Slim Loader III, watching him struggle with it made me laugh, but also showed me I'm not really being too harsh.
