Hi,
I understand that this has probably been asked a thousand times and I'm sure there was a sticky for that as well somewhere.
But as we all know, the DS cart market is real MESS with all those clones and cracked Wood FWs out there, it's hard to decide whats probably the best cart currently out there.
To me, "best" (for 3DS) is defined by 3 factors:
1) The time it takes the team to push a bootstrap update once a new 3DS FW gets released.
2) The time it takes to get Wood FW updates (official support).
3) NDS Game compatability
I have 3 carts on my radar currently, which have pros and cons as it seems (of course they do), but sometimes it's not clear how to tell them, so I opened this thread in the hope that this helps me to decide which cart to take and maybe even have a potential sticky, for newbies to directly have a place to go to, once they enter this messed up market.
First on my list is the R4i Gold 3DS from r4ids.cn
There are a few reasons why I like this cart:
1) It is officially supported by the creator(s) of the Wood FW, which is good for the NDS game compatability. Looking at the dates, the news have been posted, it only takes them 1-2 days to release the new version (if even!), it seems that it gets its own updates every now and then. The developer behind the Wood FW said, that their Gold FW is developed in close contribution with the R4iDS Team, which is probably why they are currently at v1.64 instead of v1.62.
2) The bootstrap can be updated and they are actually quite fast as it seems. They pushed their 6.2.0 bootstrap update on the 6th august, one day after Nintendo released the FW update. Since then there was no need to udpate the cart again, because the update still works with 7.1.0.
The 6.0.0 update for their cart on the other hand was released on the 23rd June, 5 days after Nintendo pushed the update. This was way back when you had to cut the line on the PCB.
I don't know if such thing will happen again, but lets put it as the only con currently here.
The second cart on my list is the DSTWO from the Supercard Team
Now this one is a mistery for me, as it seems to be doing its own thing (which is good), but it's hard to get any info on it apart that it's "the most powerful card" and "the most expensive card".
Price doesn't matter to me as long as the product is great (which it probably is).
Like the R4i Gold 3DS, it gets its updates pretty fast as it seems, I can't confirm this with any dates, but this card is always on the list of compatible cards after a 3DS FW update and some useres here reported that it's usually within 24 hours so thats again a plus for them.
Now the "most powerful" part confuses me ... what's so powerful about it? Is it because it has these fancy features like a built-in movie player and GBA emulator? If so I couldn't care less, the CPU inside this thingy probably drains the 3DS battery faster then it already does by the system itself.
But how about the NDS game compatability? Is their EOS-thingy on the same level as the Wood FW? Or is it worse ? (lets say "worse"), I know I shouldn't care if it doesn't support exotic titles like some stupid Sudoku game, but for me it's important that it DOES support everything I throw at it, just IN CASE it ever happens that such a title lands on my microSD card.
Don't get me wrong, I know that no card supports EVERY DS title out there, but even if the compatability is greater by only 1 title, it's worth its money for me.
Maybe someone has some expierence with the carts listet here and can tell what definitely doesn't work (there doesn't seem to be a compatability list for EOS if I'm not mistaken).
Last cart on the list is the R4i-SDHC 3DS (RTS) by R4i SDHC
There is only one reason I list this cart, which will be clear in a second, so let's get some pros and cons out of the way first.
I can't tell by any dates, when they push their bootstrap updates on their website, because it's a big mess there and they use 5 words to describe the same thing. It's also hard to understand what they say, but to me it looks like that not every revision they release supports their bootstrap updates, which is a big no-go for me ... on the other hand, it has this built-in Wi-Fi update feature which is nice, but no reason to decide if it's worth buying.
This YouTube guy here seems to like this cart the most, I don't know why exactly, but he probably held like 1000 differnet flashcarts in his hands, so theres gotta be something special about it, if he prefers it over the two I already mentioned:
Now the funny thing is, this cart isn't officially supported by the Wood FW dev(s), which again a no-go for me, but I noticed something interesting in a comment on FileTrip in the Wood v1.62 release.
Two users said:
Now if you look at their site, the latest news says:
So they are cracking the Wood FW on their own and manage to support games that are still missing in the Wood FW compatability list, so this is a big plus imo.
As you can see there is a lot to say about DS flashcarts and I hope we can get a competent talk running here w/o any R4i / DSTWO fanboy catfights.
I also hope that I picked at least 2 of the best carts out there as I've seen the first two on every compatability list, once a 3DS system update gets released.
Of course there are a lot more out thre, but those are clones like the last one which require real cracking of the Wood FW, which I actually don't like because you have to rely on them, which CAN work out but has proven to be a hit or miss scenario.
Let hear what you guys have to say about this
Kindest regards,
iCEQB
I understand that this has probably been asked a thousand times and I'm sure there was a sticky for that as well somewhere.
But as we all know, the DS cart market is real MESS with all those clones and cracked Wood FWs out there, it's hard to decide whats probably the best cart currently out there.
To me, "best" (for 3DS) is defined by 3 factors:
1) The time it takes the team to push a bootstrap update once a new 3DS FW gets released.
2) The time it takes to get Wood FW updates (official support).
3) NDS Game compatability
I have 3 carts on my radar currently, which have pros and cons as it seems (of course they do), but sometimes it's not clear how to tell them, so I opened this thread in the hope that this helps me to decide which cart to take and maybe even have a potential sticky, for newbies to directly have a place to go to, once they enter this messed up market.
First on my list is the R4i Gold 3DS from r4ids.cn
There are a few reasons why I like this cart:
1) It is officially supported by the creator(s) of the Wood FW, which is good for the NDS game compatability. Looking at the dates, the news have been posted, it only takes them 1-2 days to release the new version (if even!), it seems that it gets its own updates every now and then. The developer behind the Wood FW said, that their Gold FW is developed in close contribution with the R4iDS Team, which is probably why they are currently at v1.64 instead of v1.62.
2) The bootstrap can be updated and they are actually quite fast as it seems. They pushed their 6.2.0 bootstrap update on the 6th august, one day after Nintendo released the FW update. Since then there was no need to udpate the cart again, because the update still works with 7.1.0.
The 6.0.0 update for their cart on the other hand was released on the 23rd June, 5 days after Nintendo pushed the update. This was way back when you had to cut the line on the PCB.
I don't know if such thing will happen again, but lets put it as the only con currently here.
The second cart on my list is the DSTWO from the Supercard Team
Now this one is a mistery for me, as it seems to be doing its own thing (which is good), but it's hard to get any info on it apart that it's "the most powerful card" and "the most expensive card".
Price doesn't matter to me as long as the product is great (which it probably is).
Like the R4i Gold 3DS, it gets its updates pretty fast as it seems, I can't confirm this with any dates, but this card is always on the list of compatible cards after a 3DS FW update and some useres here reported that it's usually within 24 hours so thats again a plus for them.
Now the "most powerful" part confuses me ... what's so powerful about it? Is it because it has these fancy features like a built-in movie player and GBA emulator? If so I couldn't care less, the CPU inside this thingy probably drains the 3DS battery faster then it already does by the system itself.
But how about the NDS game compatability? Is their EOS-thingy on the same level as the Wood FW? Or is it worse ? (lets say "worse"), I know I shouldn't care if it doesn't support exotic titles like some stupid Sudoku game, but for me it's important that it DOES support everything I throw at it, just IN CASE it ever happens that such a title lands on my microSD card.
Don't get me wrong, I know that no card supports EVERY DS title out there, but even if the compatability is greater by only 1 title, it's worth its money for me.
Maybe someone has some expierence with the carts listet here and can tell what definitely doesn't work (there doesn't seem to be a compatability list for EOS if I'm not mistaken).
Last cart on the list is the R4i-SDHC 3DS (RTS) by R4i SDHC
There is only one reason I list this cart, which will be clear in a second, so let's get some pros and cons out of the way first.
I can't tell by any dates, when they push their bootstrap updates on their website, because it's a big mess there and they use 5 words to describe the same thing. It's also hard to understand what they say, but to me it looks like that not every revision they release supports their bootstrap updates, which is a big no-go for me ... on the other hand, it has this built-in Wi-Fi update feature which is nice, but no reason to decide if it's worth buying.
This YouTube guy here seems to like this cart the most, I don't know why exactly, but he probably held like 1000 differnet flashcarts in his hands, so theres gotta be something special about it, if he prefers it over the two I already mentioned:
Now the funny thing is, this cart isn't officially supported by the Wood FW dev(s), which again a no-go for me, but I noticed something interesting in a comment on FileTrip in the Wood v1.62 release.
Two users said:
Now if you look at their site, the latest news says:
So they are cracking the Wood FW on their own and manage to support games that are still missing in the Wood FW compatability list, so this is a big plus imo.
As you can see there is a lot to say about DS flashcarts and I hope we can get a competent talk running here w/o any R4i / DSTWO fanboy catfights.
I also hope that I picked at least 2 of the best carts out there as I've seen the first two on every compatability list, once a 3DS system update gets released.
Of course there are a lot more out thre, but those are clones like the last one which require real cracking of the Wood FW, which I actually don't like because you have to rely on them, which CAN work out but has proven to be a hit or miss scenario.
Let hear what you guys have to say about this
Kindest regards,
iCEQB
