New Member Review - UltraFlash Pass 512Mb

[shaunj66]

Member Review - UltraFlash Pass 512Mb

Reviewed by doomkiller








A new member review of the UltraFlash Pass 512Mb has been submitted by doomkiller.
Go and check out their review to see what they thought of the product.

I got this card about a week ago and have enjoyed it being my first flash device I’ve ever owned. I am however going to review this on how it stands up to what else is on the market.
At first glance this thing looks totally sweet. It looked perfect for a user who only played DS games. It also seemed very well designed. However after the first impression I had reading things on the site, things just got worse.

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  Member Review - UltraFlash Pass 512Mb

Thanks doomkiller!

 

[djgarf]

hmm

well done for the review

i cant see many people wanting to buy one of those after reading it

 

[antihaxer]

I hope my Ninja pass junior is better than this. The software for the ninja pass and ultrflash pass look identical.

 

[shaunj66]

I hope my Ninja pass junior is better than this. The software for the ninja pass and ultrflash pass look identical.

Unfortunately the software and the hardware are pretty much identical on those two cards.

 

[pubjoe]

okay, it's a smidgen overpriced maybe.

If it was no more than twice the price of a passcard-3 then you could consider it a top of the range passthrough device with VERY nice extra functionality.

This scores badly as a backup solution, but if it was reviewed as a passcard alternative (and priced accordingly) the score would be good.

P.S. What I'd love to see, in place of a passthrough, is a device like this, with fast read speeds, that can transfer one game, on-the-fly, from a GBA slot card reader. Then you could get the cheapest, slowest, largest capacity GBA solution and just use this DS card for your game-of-the-moment (with no slowdown).

 

[id242]

Nice writeup, but but something strange about the link that was included

Ordering
As of now there is only one place you can order this product from (http://minionlinestore.com/). The website may not be the best in the world but it is nice to be able to go directly through paypal via a shopping cart instead of having to send the payment on paypal’s site. All shipping is free (via airmail) but it’s obvious they jack up the prices to compensate for this.

isn't this blatant piracy?
http://203.218.176.30:2888/minionlinestore.../special_cd.htm ( middle of the page at http://minionlinestore.com/ )

 

[djgarf]

indeed

dont be surprised if that shop gets taken down soon doing shit like that

selling roms is fuckin lame

 

[memyselfandi]

Tottaly. Why would they sell that shit?... They should sell a guide on how to download them, LOL!

 

[m2pt5]

512Mb is not near enough for a DS flashcart. There are several 1Gb games now, and there will surely be more in the future - all of them completely unplayable by this thing. Minimum size for a flashcart should be equal to the largest game. (Ok, ok... some GBA flashcarts came in 128Mb, and the biggest GBA games are 256Mb. But only a few outside of the Videos are that large.)

If I were going to get a Slot-1 flashcart, I'd get the Xtreme over this, if only because it has 8x the capacity... and it's not even out yet. (I'm not planning to, as I'm happy with my SCSD.)

 

[Ipho]

Nice review of a sucking card. Maybe you better read a review, before you buy a product

.
But it was fun te read

. I never thought you get your product whit a shop like that. It dont looks like a good shop.

 

[Lily]

I hope my Ninja pass junior is better than this. The software for the ninja pass and ultrflash pass look identical.

They are identical, and they both suck.

2/10 is generous! Great review!

 

[antihaxer]

So it takes 10 minutes + to write to the ninja pass too! That is lame. I ordered 2 ninja passes.

 

[Lily]

Correct.

 

[squirt1000]

Damn, That sucks major balls!!! Im gonna go with the SC Lite methinks!!!

 

[ridgecity]

Maybe wait after a couple updates before buying??

 

[Deleted User]

great review! imo no one that owns one of these could've done it better!

Maybe wait after a couple updates before buying??

that wouldn't improve the build quality. this thing really feels cheap and the raised chip on it even makes things worse, you should take a look at the sticker after the ufp was inserted several times.

but even though it's a terrible flash cart solution, the save management worked fine for me. i tested 'mario kart' and 'advance wars' and with both it worked like it should (my guess is that it has something to do with choosing the right save type before flashing the game - but how to determine which one is used?) - another thing that's annoying is that you need to sync the saver first after flashing the cart and then put it back into the linker to restore the save.

the speed of the flashing process actually improved a lot with version 2.0.1 of the software (erasing the cart is about four times faster than before) but it's nowhere near perfect (or better: reasonable) and i doubt that future updates (of the software) will make it that much better.

 

[adgloride]

When a thread was made about this before it was released I had a idea it could be a load of rubbish. At least with flash carts like the supercard and m3 you know they're well supported and firmware is updated if the latest games don't work. With this you could have just bought another NeoKey.

 

[memyselfandi]

this is prolly the worst score that anything has gotten.

 

[moshii]

I think this is a pretty bad review (the review itself, not the product).

First off, both myself and my little brother have one of these... He has a release original DS and I have a black DS Lite.

Functionality-wise ... considering a Supercard, Pass device, and media would cost at least £80 for 29 quid shipped you do get what you pay for. That is a card that is only really suitable for one game at a time. Most games I've tried have worked fine even if they did take a while to burn to the card. I don't know why the reviewer is getting issues with Mario Kart DS, it works fine here and I've been playing online with it for the last week. Sometimes it seems the US versions work and EU ones don't and visa versa. The fact is this card costs the same as a single game in the shops, and should really be treated like a DS CDRW and not "a super dooper piracy solution for people that carry around thousands of games they never play". It's also possible to flash DS's using it.

Build quality... The flash eeprom (unless it's a integrated flash/logic solution, the markings on the top of the chip have been removed) is a standard legged surface mount part and not a BGA or loose part covered in epoxy and does stick out from a hole in the top of the cart because of it's profile. It should be noted that the width of the cart back to the top of the chip is still slightly smaller than an original cart. It goes in just like a normal cart on my DS lite.
The quality of the programmer isn't as good, and the casing will pop off if treat it badly. But then again I haven't seen many backup systems that have had particularly good build quality.. and certainly not in this price range.

If you play a game each couple of weeks like I do and don't want to pay that much the flashpass it actually pretty good.