Review Supercard DSTwo Review

[Xoo00o0o0o]

Welcome to my review of the Supercard DSTwo, one of the most hyped flashcards so far

Introduction

The DSTwo, successor to the Supercard DSonei, is the second flashcard to have an on board cpu more powerful than the DS itself. The card was announced on Gbatemp in November of 09 and the second card to boast a Game Boy Advance emulator and the first to boast a Super Nintendo emulator. Along with these features it boasts the plugin ireader and drag and drop video support. Some say the DSTwo shouldn't have been released as it was not ''finished''. Lets see if this "unfinished product" is really unfinished.

Packaging and Installation

The packaging of the DStwo is pretty straight forward. When you open the DSTwo packaging you will be greeted by a Micro SD reader, the card itself, and a manual
in Chinese and Engrish explaining how to setup the DSTwo. (If you were lucky your supplier would have sent you a wrist strap)

On to installation. The firmware can be downloaded at the Supercard website http://down.supercard.sc/download/dstwo/DSTWO_v1.03_eng.zip or Gbatemps own file sharing website Filetrip http://filetrip.net/file.php?id=12072 After downloading the firmware unzip all the files to you fresh formatted SD (remember to back up everything). Then after the firmware is installed download the temporary cheat database from http://cheats.gbatemp.net/Temp/ and put it into the _dstwo folder. Then copy your *backups* on to your msd.

Build

Honestly I give the DSTwo props for build quality. I has a better build quality than certain cards. The only two downsides is if you look at it just right you'll notice two bumps on the front which gives the DSTwo a slight thicker size than a retail game card and the odd placement of the screw.The SD card slot is spring loaded which I find good but some people find as a downside.

Firmware

When you boot the DSTwo you'll find a menu that closely relates to the DSi menu it has the slider bar and a "channel" for each plugin. There are 3 start plugins that come in the DSTwo firmware DS_Game (which can be changed to anything with DS_Game.txt plugin), GBA Emulator (which is pretty self explanatory), and Moonshell for videos and music (as the Supercard player has not been released yet). Next stop is the DS_Game section. The DS_Game section is the .nds file launcher. GUI wise it closely to the AKAIO firmware because the are both written with the Acekard rpg source. The DS_Game menu does come other languages such as English, Standard/Traditional Chinese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Korean. Also the start menu has File Managment.

GBA Emulator

I'll put it this way, all the GBA Emulator is a different skinned iPlayer GBA Emulator, but the Supercard emulator is actually updated for compatibility. The GBA roms can be place anywhere but the emulator looks in the gamepak folder first so it is best to put them there. If your having compatibility issues use this file. It boosts the compatibility quite a bit.

Real Time Menu

The real time menu consists of Game guide, Cheat code, Save, Load, Slow motion, Free cheat, and Soft reset. Most of these are self explanatory except you might miss Soft reset. It is is little icon in the top left corner. Here is a guide to use free cheat http://forum.supercard.sc/thread-6050-1-1.html

Compatibility

I honestly don't play a lot of games but here's my list:
Green: Works
Black: Minor Glitches
Red: Unplayable

NDS

Dementium the Ward
Dementium II
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars
Hotel Dusk Room 215
Mario Kart
Mario and Luigi BIS
Mario and Luigi PIT
Megaman Zero Collection
New Super Mario Bros.
Sonic Classic Collection
The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks

GBA

Castlevania AoS
Castlevaina HoD
Mario and Luigi SS
Mario Kart Super Circuit
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Zero Mission
Pokemon Emerald
Pokemon Fire Red
Zelda the Minish Cap

So Pokemon were the only problems because after you save and reload it says you have 1m circuit board error.(which doesn't really do anything)

iReader
The iReader plugin which was released on 2010-7-09, it is a decent program. It supports picture loading of the formats BMP?JPEG?JPG?PNG?TIF, and GIF. It also suppots the text formats TXT, PDF, HTML, and INI files. The progam does get slow when loading a pdf file over 10kb.

Feature List

*Simplified Main Feature list*

Real Time Function
Multi Saves
Free Cheat
Multi language
GBA Emulator
Slow Motion
File Managment
eBook support
Intelligent Clean mode
Emulate retail game no need for patches

As you can see they have every thing there except for the Snes emulator and the drag and drop video support which actually aren't listed in the main features.

Rating

Installation 9/10
Build 8/10
Firmware 9/10
GBA Emu 8/10
NDS compatibility 10/10
iReader 7/10
GBA compatibillity 8/10
Features 9/10
Real Time Menu 9/10
Total: 77/90 rounded to 80/90

I feel that this card was released when it needed to be.

Feel free to point out anything I missed I'll be glad to fix it.

Thanks:
DeltaBurnt - his guide encouraged me to write my own
Supercard - Great card
Gbatemp - For letting me be apart of this
Realhotstuff for selling me this great card

 

[Raynar]

Nice Review. Future note: add pics so reads can get a better understanding from your review. Another then that once again awesome.

 

[petitejam]

As probably one of the very (only?) persons that uses the DS mainly for its text reading abilities.. *cough* What did you think of the "ebook" function on the DSTwo?
Compared to say Moonshell? Does it save where you've left off in a file.

Was very excited to see it capable of reading .pdf files but someone said that it's really really slow for files past 10kb which is almost going to be a certainty.. Any chance of a screen shot?

 

[Xoo00o0o0o]

I have updated with iReader section and updated score.

will update with moonshell and saves for both nds and gba

 

[FlashX007]

I think this was too short. You simplified things as such I think it is more of an overview rather than a review. It is great and I am not saying reviews can't be short and simple but in my opinion you should have worked harder on this. I can tell you that I can do this review in under 20 minutes. I made a review as well and I went over everything as much as I could. Next time take your time and don't rush. It's worth it to see the results of your work.

Criticism before you get there.

 

[Deleted_171835]

Decent review.
I would have liked it more if it was longer and there was more information. The formatting wasn't good, either.

 

[soulfire]

The packaging of the DStwo is pretty straight forward. When you open the DSTwo packaging you will be greeted by a Micro SD reader, the card itself, and a manual
in Chinese and Engrish explaining how to setup the DSTwo. (If you were lucky your supplier would have sent you a wrist strap)

engrish ?

 

[Ryukouki]

Engrish is failed English language.

 

[awssk8er]

Awesome review!

I was really, really considering getting one, but I wanted to wait for a review from a user or GBAtemp.

I have an Acekard2i, and I would love GBA games (I actually bought one the other day because my GBA flashcart is broken). I'll probably order one tomorrow from the GBAtemp shop.

P.S. Sorry this is unrelated, but does anyone know if the shop ships from the US?

 

[riverchen]

Above: they ship from hong kong.

 

[Xoo00o0o0o]

I honestly reread my review and it sucks. I think I'm going to rewrite it this weekend along with my Acekard 2i and Supercard DS One I reviews