Hardware What is the rarest DS Flashcart?

[Pomegrenade]

The Nintendo DS family has been blessed (cursed?) with an abundant amount of different flashcarts throughout it's life.
Some had unique features and others were just clones, but some were truly hard to come by!
I recently found some of my old flashcarts and was wondering: What are the rarest DS flashcarts, and do people still own some of them?

My collection:

Feel free to post pics of your rarest flashcart and your entire collection too

 

[DinohScene]

Whilst not a flashcard, I do still own a SuperKey, Passcard 3 and a SuperPass 2.
Rare flashcards.. I guess the DSTwo? I got 2 of them, one dead?

 

[godreborn]

I've got a dstwo as well, and it's still kicking.

 

[SylverReZ]

Whilst not a flashcard, I do still own a SuperKey, Passcard 3 and a SuperPass 2.
Rare flashcards.. I guess the DSTwo? I got 2 of them, one dead?

I own a Passcard 3, which forces GBA flashcards to run in DS mode. But the rarest ones out there being the earliest DS flashcards such as the DS-Xtreme as well as the DSTWO.

 

[Hanafuda]

I also have a DSTwo that still works fine. Maybe not so rare lol?

How about an M3 DS Real?? I've got one of those too.

 

[DinohScene]

Apologies, it was a Passcard and a EZ Pass3 ;p


I've got the SuperPass 2 but it's not pictured.

How about an M3 DS Real?? I've got one of those too.

Still have one.

 

[xbmbmx]

I imagine the CycloDS (I)Evolution is pretty rare, especially if you want the box and dongle with it. That card never lived a long life support wise and was designed in Europe as far as I know. Idk if production also happened in Europe, I imagine that was still done in some chinese factory.

If you're looking into collection now (as I am ) the iEDGE and SuperCard dstwo plus are pretty hard to find too. Although the dstwo and the dstwo plus don't have big differences except for the Gateway emulation.

EX4ds is quite rare in the wild but that is just because the card never really took of... You can still find some stock of it on chinese / korean b2b sites like ecplaza and alibaba if you look hard enough.

 

[SylverReZ]

Apologies, it was a Passcard and a EZ Pass3 ;p

View attachment 347724
I've got the SuperPass 2 but it's not pictured.



Still have one.

I like your collection.

x2 TTDS/DSTT (Koo Flash (clone), ASDTF02 (genuine))
R4 SDHC Gold Pro (www.r4isdhc.com)
Passcard 5 (PCB 2006-09-11)
Acekard 2i (Yellow and black PCB) (genuine)

 

[Technicmaster0]

I think that the rarest ones are cards like the DSerial EDGE, maybe the cycloDS iEvolution and maybe clones like the DSTWOi (yes, DSTWO with an i). But there are many old ones that are pretty rare now like the old acekard cards (Acekard RPG etc).

 

[FAST6191]

Rarest is probably some R4 clone, or thing that lost out with the rise of the original R4 that did not come from an established team (or maybe whatever expensive models from those). For others playing along then DS slot flash carts appeared a while into the DS lifetime (though we had GBA slot carts which mostly did what was needed) but with different philosophies. However it seems ease of use and cheaper but not necessarily cheap won out (a thing I question to this day) and the R4 (which was created by the around since the late GBA era M3 company, the factory however realising they were onto a good thing and made a cheaper one) with its drag and drop but need for constant updates* where others were doing things like savelists (which continued to work with new games for many many years afterwards without necessarily needing updates, and would return in the fancier late stage DS flash carts in various guises). Indeed it won out to such an extent that much like the popularity of jailbreak in iphone/ipod circles entering the popular lexicon as a synonym of sorts for hack for anything then R4 became the byword for flash cart where the forums would get people asking for an R4 rather than a flash cart/card or the like. As trademarks are shockingly not a thing in pirate flash cart world then everybody and their mother adopted R4 for their flash carts; several of the big names released things under an R4 [some random tech or quality cool sounding words] name.

*prior to Wood and the various things with the DSi hacks was it then R4 stopped getting updates and were being sold off for pennies, and even then nobody was buying.

Later in life the build package for R4 clones (schematics, code and such) appeared in Hong Kong where for a few thousand USD you could make your own clone to try your hand at it and thus the billion things we tell people to look for a website for, and possibly dodge timebombs.

To that end some pre R4 thing (maybe ninja DS, arguably the first DS slot cart), some expensive effort (the various NAND chips on the G6 and I think one of the acekards did nothing too special compared to its GBA era counterparts but bump the price). You might have some trouble tracking down the ismart line of carts as well; they bought in schematics to an EZFlash cart and the supercard produced iplayer, making their own tweaks to the EZFlash kernel (albeit a very poor version of it) and porting the dstwo kernel to the ISMM (it being a poor man's DSTwo, and hampered by an agreement to not have third party software beyond the few versions of dingux it got), and then the dude that ran the site that did it had a heart attack so that ended that one (give or take the employees buying the stock and selling it off cheap)

You may also have rarest in given regions; EZFlash were a bit of a dark horse outside China, remembered/known mostly for the GBA era carts (and the EZ4 which for a long time was the best way to have standalone GBA games you could actually buy) and eventually the 3 in 1 despite having a long (and very solid as far as I am concerned) line of DS slot carts in the EZ5 family (and an R4 named clone that ran a version of its kernel). Within China though then at times they were probably the main maker of such things, above even what remained of M3 (they had their own dramas with Moonshell and Sakura which left a bitter taste in the mouths of many), G6, Supercard, Acekard (which mostly only got anywhere thanks to AKAIO/wood doing software for them) and such like. Several of those also being taken out with the DSi/3ds flash cart killer update, that also happened to be just before the last glut of DS ROMs (mostly pokemon conquest on up) and thus denying them that last bit of sales where the DSTwo became king of the jungle (but expensive and so not as common, and then not available anywhere for reasons unknown) with a few inbred later stage R4 clones doing other things.

In antiques something is said to be rare if a famous person touched it, was present for a famous action, is pretty, prototypes is useful and possibly some considerations for condition.
As famous in games is mostly limited to the nintendo power glove on the set of the wizard, a few decorated by designers (nobody cares), famous action is that gameboy that got blown up maybe, pretty matters mostly to a few console variant collectors, prototypes is games themselves and that Sony SNES addon, condition is minor at best (oh no not a dirty DSTwo with no label) then you are left with useful which as we have not had the modern return of flash carts for the DS just yet like we saw with everdrive on most consoles ever and them and EZFlash on the GBA. Some might be interested in notable developments in flash carts but most of those came from teams I already noted, along with one time supercard cloners team cyclops.

 

[Pomegrenade]

@FAST6191 Really interesting stuff you mentioned. You also resurfaced my memory of the Ninja DS, that thing had a full sized SD slot if I remember correctly . Do you have a personal collection you could share?

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2023

As a side note I wonder if there ever will be an Everdrive DS...although with the oversaturation of DS flashcart market (not to mention how inexpensive they are), I doubt there will be.

 

[FAST6191]

Afraid I am on holiday so many time zones away from my collection of such things, and will be for a while yet. Compared to some of the GBA stuff we saw a few months back then my DS collection there is nothing too special either and is mostly a few EZFlash carts, one or two boring R4 clones (probably broken as well), an ISMM and a DSone I got in a DS bundle a couple of years back ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/things-you-recently-bought-or-got.347639/page-555#post-8770940 ), oh and a bunch of nopass devices.

Everdrive DS or equivalent thereof.

I had hoped with the open sourcing of various EZFlash items that they would do the EZ5 as well and get at least its internal anti piracy database sorted out (not to mention with the hacks to the DSi and 3ds in the time since it can work happily by restoring older backwards compatibility layers, assuming such checks have not been entirely patched out). There were talks of it some years ago but hey.
That said the continued relative availability of some kind of workable flash cart*, the failure/fall from market dominance of the 3ds, the 3ds and DSi software/SD loading methods (if in the eyes of many they represent the present best hardware methods of playing, and have some power for better emulators then yeah).

*this is not the SNES with its fancy special chips, or even GBA where the pokemon set whined endlessly about real time clock. DS fancy things are limited to pokewalker IR comms, whatever wappy dog used, pokemon teaches typing bluetooth for the keyboard and we did see network hack for that, maybe guitar hero (button hacks don't work well/make for nice play), maybe that slider controller that saw a few hacks back when which is a separate thing entirely, all of which nobody really cares about**. Slap basically any SDHC supporting flash cart hard enough and you will play basically the library just fine and that reduces the scope for a "$50-100 and you can trivially have all the library anybody cares about in your pocket" that everdrive and EZFlash's Omega lines seem to generally target, to say nothing of most pre GBA consoles previously having no good flash cart since they were current (SNES things being seen with floppy discs, and that potentially being one of the more desirable back then) which further increased the scope for an everdrive a like party to clean up.

**indeed compatible with DSTwo homebrew is probably a bigger draw/why would I want something without it thing to whine about than able to speak to pokewalkers (for those unfamiliar some DS pokemon games shipped with a pedometer that would do something like 1 exp per step you took, infrared communications being used to send data around which in turn bothered some save dumping aspects as it sat on the same bus. With the save emulation seen on later GBA flash carts being also seen in various capacities on the DS you could probably do a basic IR send/receive if it really mattered).

 

[UnpredictableEnigma]

dserial and dserialedge, ninjakey/ninjapass, and slot-1 cards that predate micro sd cards like neo flash, etc pretty much any thing that predate m3 simply and r4

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2023

then you also have slot-2 flash cards,
back before .nds

you would load ds stuff with .ds.gba using a gba flashcard using a passme device or flashme installed

 

[Trevor_2012]

I have the real G6 but I don't have the usb reader.

Is there any replacement for the USB reader?

 

[duwen]

I've still got one of these...

...it still works. I think it only has a rom of The World Ends With You on it that I used for that games 'streetpass'-like feature.

 

[Evilengine]

M3 Lite. Still have a working one and a broken one...

 

[Jayro]

I can't imagine a DSTWO being very rare, as it was the creme-de-la-creme of flash carts back in the day. People bought them like crazy. I'd imagine that the original R4 card would be tougher to find, since the market was, and still is, flooded with endless clones.

 

[DinohScene]

I can't imagine a DSTWO being very rare, as it was the creme-de-la-creme of flash carts back in the day. People bought them like crazy. I'd imagine that the original R4 card would be tougher to find, since the market was, and still is, flooded with endless clones.

High price was a deal breaker for many-a-pirate.
Especially since you know, the majority of them don't want to spend more then a quid on backup solutions.

 

[Blauhasenpopo]

dserial and dserialedge, ninjakey/ninjapass, and slot-1 cards that predate micro sd cards like neo flash, etc pretty much any thing that predate m3 simply and r4

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2023

then you also have slot-2 flash cards,
back before .nds

you would load ds stuff with .ds.gba using a gba flashcard using a passme device or flashme installed

Yeah, had this one Navy Blue DS Lite from Japan, preflashed with M3 for Slot 2 , yeah was sooooo proud as i get it from the customs

 

[Jayro]

High price was a deal breaker for many-a-pirate.
Especially since you know, the majority of them don't want to spend more then a quid on backup solutions.

Indeed, as I wanted one but couldn't afford one either. I settled on the R4i Gold 3DS cart. Rev C at first, then had to do that shitty mod where you cut the trace so you can update it further. Then I got another one: R4i Gold 3DS (RTS) which was probably the most popular flash cart for a LONG time. (This was before the PLUS model that came with a hardware switch for magnethax/NTRBOOT support, and before the PayPal crackdown by Nintendo.)