Gaming The Ultimate GBA

[Takatoshi]

Can the DSTwo emulate all GBA games properly? Theres a plugin here:
http://eng.supercard.sc/manual/dstwo/plugin.htm
http://forum.supercard.sc/thread-11299-1-1.html

 

[FAST6191]

The DStwo, ismm and other enhanced flash cart emulators are not 100% of games and I doubt they ever will be, however they can play an awful lot of the GBA library (enough that you can mop up the ones it can not do on a PC or something), they have easy control remapping, they have better cheats, some savestate action and are generally nice to work with (they are emulators after all).

 

[Foxi4]

If you're interested in a backlit GBA but don't feel confident enough to slap one together yourself, this might be worth a look:



Pair it with an EZ-Flash IV and you have a kick-ass combo right there.

 

[Takatoshi]

well, who care about ez flash, I JUST GOT AN M3 PERFECT MINI SD DDDDD
im super lucky, found a seller selling the original nintendo ds with the M3! and i got it cheap!
Super happy right now This is it:

its the M3 perfect right?

 

[Foxi4]

well, who care about ez flash, I JUST GOT AN M3 PERFECT MINI SD DDDDD
im super lucky, found a seller selling the original nintendo ds with the M3! and i got it cheap!
Super happy right now This is it:
View attachment 16575
its the M3 perfect right?

Finding an M3 Perfect is about as easy as finding the Holy Grail these days, but if you're lucky, you should no doubt go for that.

 

[Takatoshi]

well i found the holy grail DDD IM SO HAPPY DDD

 

[Deleted User]

I would recommend the original DS over the DS Lite. The DS Lite was very uncomfortable to hold and the buttons were very loose and wobbly. The top screen hinge is apparently less solid than the Lite but the base (which is all you need if you plan to remove the top screen) is very solid. There is no link cable port but you could probably have one modded on like people did with the SGB1. There is also no GBC compatibility but I've heard of people modding a GBC chip on.

Overall, I'd just recommend the original GBA, there's plenty of backlight modded ones on the market and unlike the SP it has an audio jack and it's more solid. FYI, if you're playing GBC games bear in mind the GBA doesn't have an infrared port which some GBC games like Pokémon use but you could get one modded on if that's an issue. If you don't care about portability, the GB Player is another option, it has all the features of the normal GBA (sadly that includes the GBA's lack of SGB support) and you can stream your GBA games on twitch by hooking the GC to an easycap.

 

[romanaOne]

actually I have been hunting gba sp for a while, but pretty surprised that it still cost around 40 bucks. I don't really like to buy ds lite because I already have a 3ds xl, it feels kinda redundant. so which one is superior to play gba? gba sp or ds lite?

DS Lite is the only DS that can play GBA games natively. It can also dump GBA carts to a slot-1 flashcart microsd, a very handy backup tool and no wacky network hassles.

I use mine with an old R4 in slot-1 and a EZ-Flash 3in1 in slot 2: this allows easy 1-click launch (no emulator!) of NDS and most GBA games (less than 16MB game size).

I think GBA SP is overpriced, very limited with only so-so flashcart options, and just not as good as DS Lite. I think the bright screen GBA SP (AGS-101) is in demand ever since people figured out how to stuff its screen into an old original GBA. I did this one time and, well, it's not worth the trouble and way to expensive to buy now. Used to be you could get kits which included screen, shell, buttons, even tools for like $30.

The DS Lite on the other hand is cheap.

I'm never gonna sell my DS Lite. And if it breaks, I'll probably replace it. Good to have around.

 

[Takatoshi]

Could someone help me with M3 game manager? I can seem to get the reset function to work. After i press A+B+L+R, the menu pops up but it just resumes the game when i press A. how do I exit back to the M3 main menu?

Also, I updated the original post.

 

[albertar]

i'd recommend getting a modified nintendo ds and getting and r4 and either an m3 perfect or an m3 gba expansion pack for the nintendo ds lite. I now have every single gba, gb, gbc, nes, and nds game in existence on one flash cart

 

[Takatoshi]

i'd recommend getting a modified nintendo ds and getting and r4 and either an m3 perfect or an m3 gba expansion pack for the nintendo ds lite. I now have every single gba, gb, gbc, nes, and nds game in existence on one flash cart

Can you play pokemon black 2? I got a DSTT because the R4 is unable to run pokemon black 2 even with YSmenu. Also, are you able to use the soft reset function for your M3?

 

[Takatoshi]

Does anyone still have a working M3 flashcart? I really need help with the soft reset function. Also, i have this 160 in 1 modded cartridge that is able to load games instantly. the cartridge and what booting it looks like is shown below. Why can't flashcarts boot games instantly like this?

 

[FAST6191]

"Why can't flash carts boot instantly?"

Because GBA games need fast memory and fast rewritable memory to the tune of several hundred megabytes circa 2004 was very expensive. There were some flash carts that went as far as 1024Mbit of NOR (128 megabytes) but they were very expensive. Write once, mask rom and certain other types of read only memory can manage more storage for considerably less price but they are not user changeable.

I am sitting here trying to think what that loader reminds me of but I am drawing a blank. It is very similar to a fairly well known GBA flash cart though.

Do all of those games save at the same time?

 

[Takatoshi]

Im not sure how the saving works, but for example, i am able to save in game in mario and the next time i start up the cardtridge theres no sign of any save file being written unlike ez flash where it will show a loading screen for the save file. I can then start up mario and my save will be there. i cannot load games into this cardtridge tho. would you like a picture of the insides? theres no battery for this cardtridge iirc
it is highly likely someone simply loaded games into a flashcart, sealed off the micro sd slot and sold it to me.

are there any gba cardtridges that use infrared?

 

[FAST6191]

Nothing that uses infrared as far as I am aware, certainly nothing common.

As for saves it sounds like the old style GBA flash carts which had a bank of SRAM (sometimes not enough if you wanted multiple large save games) and would select the appropriate section on boot. No battery is odd but non volatile save memory does exist, and indeed was used in some commercial GBA games.

 

[migles]

Does anyone still have a working M3 flashcart? I really need help with the soft reset function. Also, i have this 160 in 1 modded cartridge that is able to load games instantly. the cartridge and what booting it looks like is shown below. Why can't flashcarts boot games instantly like this?

do that card really got 160 games? or is just the same 10 over and over?

 

[Vipera]

I only count 9 GBA games, the rest are NES.

 

[Nephiel]

I recently sold my GBA SP and 2 Flash2Advance kits. For GBA, I use a DS Lite + M3 DS Real on slot-1 + M3 Perfect Lite MicroSD on slot-2.

The DS has FlashMe v8 but by now its only use is to get rid of the health & safety nag.

The M3 Real is running the latest RetroGameFan multicart firmware for native DS games, and also native GBA when paired with the M3 Perfect Lite. The latter can also run DS and GBA software by itself but requires patching with M3 Game Manager, so I mostly use it as a GBA extension pack and to extract/inject saves from retail carts.

The M3 Perfect Lite sits flush on the slot-2 and is one of the few carts with enough RAM to load even the largest GBA ROMs. The rechargeable battery no longer held a charge and I wasn't able to find a replacement LIR1220 with solder tabs, so I used a ML1220 (which needs a lower voltage to recharge, but the actual voltage from the cart was still within specs).

Game Link (playing a DS game with a GBA game on slot-2 to unlock extra content on the DS game) is also supported with this combination using ROMs for both games.

Most DS and GBA homebrew works as well. For emulated GB/GBC, there's Gameyob - you could carry nearly every single GB/GBC game ever released, all on a single card. Who needs Virtual Console anyway?

 

[Takatoshi]

I recently sold my GBA SP and 2 Flash2Advance kits. For GBA, I use a DS Lite + M3 DS Real on slot-1 + M3 Perfect Lite MicroSD on slot-2.

The DS has FlashMe v8 but by now its only use is to get rid of the health & safety nag.

The M3 Real is running the latest RetroGameFan multicart firmware for native DS games, and also native GBA when paired with the M3 Perfect Lite. The latter can also run DS and GBA software by itself but requires patching with M3 Game Manager, so I mostly use it as a GBA extension pack and to extract/inject saves from retail carts.

The M3 Perfect Lite sits flush on the slot-2 and is one of the few carts with enough RAM to load even the largest GBA ROMs. The rechargeable battery no longer held a charge and I wasn't able to find a replacement LIR1220 with solder tabs, so I used a ML1220 (which needs a lower voltage to recharge, but the actual voltage from the cart was still within specs).

Game Link (playing a DS game with a GBA game on slot-2 to unlock extra content on the DS game) is also supported with this combination using ROMs for both games.

Most DS and GBA homebrew works as well. For emulated GB/GBC, there's Gameyob - you could carry nearly every single GB/GBC game ever released, all on a single card. Who needs Virtual Console anyway?

Do you know how to use the soft reset function for the M3 Perfect Lite? Such that you can still save when the battery runs out? I would really prefer not to have to replace it >< worried i might brick my M3

 

[Nephiel]

No, I never use the soft reset, sorry.

IMHO the M3 battery isn't much harder to replace than the one on any Game Boy Color cart. Try to ask someone who changes those, but make sure they use a rechargeable one if your M3 has it.