You can do either one of these methods.
1. For certain games (this includes Sonic Chronicles), not all of them, they have an arm7.bin file that blocks the game from being played on a flash card. To solve this, just look on GBATEMP for DSLazy, & the hacked arm7.bin file. Download them, & open DSLazy. Click the ... & choose the game (SC
B). After it stops loading & says that loading was done/successful, click the button that says NDS Unpack. Wait until it is done & the folder pops up that has all of the game's contents. Now, take the hacked arm7.bin file, copy it, & paste it into the folder with the old DS game contents (i say copy so if something happens, you still have it & the original game, as long as you don't save over the original game). After you say "ok" to pasting the new arm7.bin file in the Game file, go back on DSLazy.(you should still have it in tabs below, if not, open again) Press NDS Packer. When you have to name the file & save it, just copy the name of the original game to the naming bar & go to a different directory. Your game is now fixed & ready to play on Firmware 1.18. That should only take about 10 min. to do.
2. If you want an easier way than patching every game you have to, do this. Like TrolleyDave said above, use YSMenu. The only long thing about this is finding the Yasu site, since i cant direct link it. To do this, you must get these things.
1. YSMenu.zip from the Yasu website. MAKE SURE TO GET YSMenu_ttextract080903.zip. (for now anyway, it the newest, & only one that works now.)I cannot give the link, for if i did, he has said he will quit making these patches work on R4, so when you do find it, don't give the link away.
2. R4ysauto. You can get that here.
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=103879&st=225 If you have a good internet connection, you wont need the update files, thats only if u cant update with the program.
All you have to do, is take the YSMenu.zip file & put it in the R4ysauto file, without extracting contents of YSMenu. Open the r4.bat file, it is the best to use over r4custom. Update when it asks, follow the directions it gives. When it asks a question & has different choices in lines like this - EN/EU/JP/G/ - answer by typing the letters/numbers only, not the slashes, & pressing enter. Don't rush through it, you could accidentally miss the part where it says to wait for it to extract, then press enter when it stops loading. I would suggest YSMenu, i recently did this, & its easier than using 1.18 R4 firmware. It is still being updated, unlike R4 firmware, so there will be more game compatibility with this. The only major downfall there really is with YSMenu is Chrono Trigger. You must Patch it with a hacked patch online to play it, but that doesn't take much time at all.