You know, back when I bought the R4, it WAS the best choice for a DS flashcart. I still enjoy my R4 very much for what I can do with it (playing my DS games for free instead of paying for them) and it has served me very well.
BUT
Nowadays, there are better choices for a DS flashcart than the R4. If my R4 died tomorrow, I would NOT buy another R4....at any price. I would buy one of the more evolved carts that are available now. The CycloDS seems, to me, to be the one to get, but I would still thoroughly investigate ALL the current lineup of carts before I would just blindly choose one for purchase. Especially considering all the choices we have now for our DS pirating needs.
There are two main features I consider very important for today's flashcarts, neither of which the R4 has; real-time-save and SDHC compatibility. I know there are other features of newer flashcarts that the R4 doesn't have that I'm not even considering, but those two features alone seem the most important to me. All the R4's popularity can't give it those features either. (You're either an idiot or a noob to the "scene" to not know why, but I'm not going to explain why here)
You see, popularity in a pirate cart is a funny thing. While it will certainly generate lots of sales for the creators, it's also is the FIRST target of attack when the "war on piracy" ramps up. The R4 has had a great run and has become the icon of DS piracy. So much so that Nintendo has even organized a task force to cripple its availability trying to eliminate it altogether.
Do you really want to buy into a flashcart this late in the game that has been around so long that it is now the target of those who it's screwing? Do you really want to buy a flashcart based solely on its popularity without considering the features it's lacking, which CAN be gotten in other flashcarts? Do you really want to buy into an antiquated cart and starve yourself of those features....even if you don't think you'll ever need them? Why would you intentionally do that to yourself?
Let's look at it another way......would you buy a single core CPU today just because it's popular and everyone had, or has, one now? Or would you buy one of the new quad-core super fast processors instead? I think the choice is pretty damn obvious. It's the same with the R4 as compared to newer flashcarts.
Many keep singing the praises of the R4, but its time has come and gone. Sure, the R4 team has shown great loyalty to their creation, but let's face it, the R4 has nothing further to offer in terms of features. If it did, don't you think the R4 team would have added them by now? At this point, some will say, "But it plays ALL the games and THAT'S what really matters." This is a true statement...to a certain extent. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of having to remove games I enjoy from my R4 to make room for a new one that comes out. SDHC capability would alleviate that. I'd really love to be able to save a game to play later when I want to, not just when the game says you can. Real-time-save can solve that. The R4 can do neither of those things.
Now they're jacking up the price of the R4. They "say" it's because of the weaker US dollar.....yeah, right. The R4 team has decided it's time to milk the R4 for all it's worth before they are either shut down by Nintendo or people start migrating to the newer, better carts that are available now.
Did any of that sink in to anyone's head? Can you understand what I'm saying? Did anyone even bother to read it all and even attempt to understand? Probably not.
sigh....
