GBA Flash Carts

[Darth Sensei]

I just bought a bunch of EZF Advance Carts (for friends and family for XMAS) at the advice of Jive3d and I freaking love it. I got a gold SP after Thanksgiving and I can't stop playing NES games on the GBA. It is cool beyond words.

I'm playing all the Megaman games, Zelda, Tecmo Superbowl, Bionic Commando, Bubble Bobble, SMB's, etc. I put approx 60 NES games on 256mb cart and it's only 1/4 full.

Hey, it's even a good way to meet people. I was sitting at the mall playing while waiting for someone and an attractive young lady walks by and can hear the sounds. She said, "Isn't that Zelda?" and off we went on a convo about retro gaming. :D

So, if you don't own one of these stop what you're doing and buy one now. You won't regret it.

PM me if you want info on where to get one in the US. I'm not selling them, nor do I profit in any way by passing on the info.

D

[Zubiac666]

too bad they are sooo expensive
too much cash for me :(

[Darth Sensei]

$100 + shipping for 256mb is too much? It's really a steal. And truly a steal if you choose to do bad things with it.

D

[Jive3D]

they really are awesome little toys.

Excellent for games
images
movies (15 minutes is the max that I can do on a 256 card)
and plenty of other hacker homebrew things.

lots of fun to be had with these.

[GameGuru]

Is there an NES emulator for the GBA?

[WiseSalesman]

read the first post.

If you want the actual emulator, check www.zophar.net.

[GameGuru]

I just bought a bunch of EZF Advance Carts (for friends and family for XMAS) at the advice of Jive3d and I freaking love it. I got a gold SP after Thanksgiving and I can't stop playing NES games on the GBA. It is cool beyond words.

I'm playing all the Megaman games, Zelda, Tecmo Superbowl, Bionic Commando, Bubble Bobble, SMB's, etc. I put approx 60 NES games on 256mb cart and it's only 1/4 full.

Hey, it's even a good way to meet people. I was sitting at the mall playing while waiting for someone and an attractive young lady walks by and can hear the sounds. She said, "Isn't that Zelda?" and off we went on a convo about retro gaming. :D

So, if you don't own one of these stop what you're doing and buy one now. You won't regret it.

PM me if you want info on where to get one in the US. I'm not selling them, nor do I profit in any way by passing on the info.

D

He never once said anything about installing an NES emulator on the system or anything about ROMs so that is why I am asking. I know some of the classics he is talking about are made for the GBA so I didn't know if they all had been now.

[Jive3D]

I just bought a bunch of EZF Advance Carts (for friends and family for XMAS) at the advice of Jive3d and I freaking love it. I got a gold SP after Thanksgiving and I can't stop playing NES games on the GBA. It is cool beyond words.

I'm playing all the Megaman games, Zelda, Tecmo Superbowl, Bionic Commando, Bubble Bobble, SMB's, etc. I put approx 60 NES games on 256mb cart and it's only 1/4 full.

Hey, it's even a good way to meet people. I was sitting at the mall playing while waiting for someone and an attractive young lady walks by and can hear the sounds. She said, "Isn't that Zelda?" and off we went on a convo about retro gaming. :D

So, if you don't own one of these stop what you're doing and buy one now. You won't regret it.

PM me if you want info on where to get one in the US. I'm not selling them, nor do I profit in any way by passing on the info.

D

He never once said anything about installing an NES emulator on the system or anything about ROMs so that is why I am asking. I know some of the classics he is talking about are made for the GBA so I didn't know if they all had been now.


LOOK! His Second paragraph says that he has bene playing NES games on his GBA with a flash card. Open yo eyes sucka!

Yes there are a bunch of emulators that you can use to play NES, Atari, MAME, TG-16, SMS, Gamegear, GB Mono and some GB Color games as well - ALL ON YOUR GBA with the use of a flash card. I can't recomend these little buggers enough, very well worth the price, even if you are not into the GBA rom scene, the NES games that you can fit on a 256 card alone will blow any oldschool NES fan out of the water.

It gets even better if you have the Gameboy Player for the Gamecube (Like I do). Now I can play ANY nes game I want on my Gamecube, which is a whole helluva a lot of fun.

Then think about all the Hack-Nes.roms there are out there, you know modified Mario 3 and metal gears, Bionic Commando hacks and what not...

there is A Lot of fun to be had... honestly, far too many games to have time to play.

Somehow CueWarrior picks up chicks while playing the dam thing. LMAO!

[GameGuru]

Yeah we have been playing NES ports since Super Mario DX showed up on the GameBoy Color. Because he didn't say he was playing emulated games I just assumed he was playing NES ported games like the Super Mario Brothers, Dragon Warrior etc. I haven't been keeping up with the GBA scene so I don't know what NES games have been re-released for the GBA.

Don't get testy because I don't read into the post, I just interrupted it as it was written. That is the whole reason why I asked. :)

[norkusa]

Wow! I didn't know that you can put emulators on those things. Is it easy to load them onto the flash cart? I'd love to get one of these but I have a Mac, so there might be compatibility issues to deal with.

[GameGuru]

Yes there are a bunch of emulators that you can use to play NES, Atari, MAME, TG-16, SMS, Gamegear, GB Mono and some GB Color games as well - ALL ON YOUR GBA with the use of a flash card. I can't recomend these little buggers enough, very well worth the price, even if you are not into the GBA rom scene, the NES games that you can fit on a 256 card alone will blow any oldschool NES fan out of the water.

Question, why emulate GB mono and color games when the GBA is backwards compatible already? Instead of running through an emulator and slowing it down can't you just run those ROMs natively?

[dr mario kart]

what id like to see is a gba to usb keyboard adapter, that would open up some nice applications

[nesuser2]

how big are these carts? I've always wanted to get one but I didn't because I thought they were bigger than the GBA cartridges. Which is, the exact same reason I never bought an E-reader.........

[SoulBlazer]

$100 for a flash cart? When I got my GBA for only $79? No thanks. I don't want one THAT badly. If they were $40 or so, maybe.

[Bratwurst]

Question, why emulate GB mono and color games when the GBA is backwards compatible already?

Non-GBA roms will not normally play on GBA flashcarts because of the circuit board, cartridge architecture etc. So in order to play GB roms on there you have to stuff in an emulator.

Flash carts these days are the same size and shape as the regular GBA carts, I got into the scene rather early and have one of the physically larger (although not by much) carts, 64 MB. Though, as a perk, it was made by Visoly who no longer manufactors them, and for some reason or another they are more desirable, though I can't offhand say why. Probably because of the external docking station that's supposedly more reliable with writing/erasing because of the dedicated power supply. New carts just write to themselves while in the Gameboy through the use of a cable in the link port running to the USB / serial port of a PC.

256 MB (megabit) carts tend to hold 2 to 4 GBA roms on them so that should give you an idea of their capacity. Needless to say regardless of the seemingly high cost they are worth. Every. Penny.

I remember having this sort of discussion with CueWarrior over the phone about this very subject long ago. Where's the love? :( ;)

[NE146]

Yes there are a bunch of emulators that you can use to play NES, Atari, MAME, TG-16, SMS, Gamegear, GB Mono and some GB Color games as well - ALL ON YOUR GBA with the use of a flash card. I can't recomend these little buggers enough, very well worth the price, even if you are not into the GBA rom scene, the NES games that you can fit on a 256 card alone will blow any oldschool NES fan out of the water.

I got all excited after hearing here about the Gamegear/SMS emu.. but after checking it out, it looks like it doesn't run any of the Shining Force games. Maybe later on :) (my Gamegear has a black line running on the bottom.. and I'm in the mood to play it again!) :P

Looks like the NES emu got updated since I last checked it out. Time to update on that as well...

[Zubiac666]

Is there an NES emulator for the GBA?
yep
and even better:

Once u have ur fav roms on the flash-card u can play them on Gamecube via Gameboyplayer on TV-screen too.

So,it's some kind of NES-emu for Gamecube too
:-P

[oesiii]

I got all excited after hearing here about the Gamegear/SMS emu.. but after checking it out, it looks like it doesn't run any of the Shining Force games. Maybe later on :) (my Gamegear has a black line running on the bottom.. and I'm in the mood to play it again!) :P

Looks like the NES emu got updated since I last checked it out. Time to update on that as well...


I can't get the SMS emu to work, I build the .gba files with all my roms and then I get a menu with all the games. But right after that all I get is a black screen, no game :( I'll have to wait for an update or something, how's the gameplay speed on this thing?

PocketNES is coming along real nice, I can't complain with the speed or accuracy for Blades of Steel, Tecmo Bowl, and Ninja Gaiden which I've been playing this week.

[Darth Sensei]

Question, why emulate GB mono and color games when the GBA is backwards compatible already?

Non-GBA roms will not normally play on GBA flashcarts because of the circuit board, cartridge architecture etc. So in order to play GB roms on there you have to stuff in an emulator.

Flash carts these days are the same size and shape as the regular GBA carts, I got into the scene rather early and have one of the physically larger (although not by much) carts, 64 MB. Though, as a perk, it was made by Visoly who no longer manufactors them, and for some reason or another they are more desirable, though I can't offhand say why. Probably because of the external docking station that's supposedly more reliable with writing/erasing because of the dedicated power supply. New carts just write to themselves while in the Gameboy through the use of a cable in the link port running to the USB / serial port of a PC.

256 MB (megabit) carts tend to hold 2 to 4 GBA roms on them so that should give you an idea of their capacity. Needless to say regardless of the seemingly high cost they are worth. Every. Penny.

I remember having this sort of discussion with CueWarrior over the phone about this very subject long ago. Where's the love? :( ;)

I'm sorry Sausage Man. I honestly couldn't remember who I talked to on the phone. :embarrassed:


$100 for a flash cart? When I got my GBA for only $79? No thanks. I don't want one THAT badly. If they were $40 or so, maybe.

Are you kidding me? $100 for every NES game ever created and other benefits we won't mention here? The only thing that made me wait this long is that I didn't want to Western Union money to Korea. As soon as I found a USA supplier with a reasonable price, I bought 8 of them.

They're definitely worth the money. I'm just hoping for a 512 or 1gb card by EZF Advance.

D

[Jive3D]

The Visoly cards that were mentioned above are no longer in production because no one was buying them due to the manufacturer not giving any tech support,. I also think there was some kind of bust on thier manufacturing plant as well. Those cards (Visoly Xtreme cards) worked with an external linker, think of it as an external Zip drive for a gba cart. I bought one of the external Visoly Linkers alone and it is compatible with the "Flash 2 Advance" cards, but I got very lucky with that.

Size of the cards: the cards come in 64, 128, 256 and supposedly 512 and 1G
Thats in mBit, not to be confused with MegaByte, these are megaBITs we are talking about here. Say that a gba Rom file is 4MB, it will be 64 mBit when tossed into your flash card. I have only only seen people mention the 512 and 1G cards, never seen em for sale. The 256 cards are really the way to go though.

GBA roms come as 32, 64 or 128 mBit. So depending on the size of your rom, you can have anywhere from 2 huge gba games (Like Golden Sun 2 or Sonic ADvenure 2 are 128mBit) or you can have eight 32mBit gba roms on there. It all depends.

When you put nes roms and other emu on there, they dont take up nearly as much space. I only mess with the nes roms, I have not done sms or tg-16 yet, though it seems like its coming along nicely. and just in case anyone is wondering, snes emu is NOT possible on the gba.

thats all the info that I can think of right now, Im not a master of this stuff, but I have been on a scene for a little while.

[NE146]

I can't get the SMS emu to work, I build the .gba files with all my roms and then I get a menu with all the games. But right after that all I get is a black screen, no game :( I'll have to wait for an update or something, how's the gameplay speed on this thing?

Which one are you using? DrSMS or PocketSMS?

I didn't try either! I simply looked at the compatibility table (http://drsms.bornonapirateship.com/gg_compatibility.html) for DrSMS and it said Shining Force wasn't working yet so I said "oh well" :)

[MoreEbolaForYou]

i have the ez flash 2 powerstar (this is different than the ezflash that plugs directly into the gba), and i couldn't be happier. some of the nes emulation is spotty, but most of the important games work well. river city ransom works perfectly, but none of the other kunio games really work that well.

the ability to "test" out any gba game is also quite nice. i'd also suggest to anyone to get one.

[Jive3D]

This is true. The market is rather flooded with poor GBA games (Cartoon Network Speedway for example). And even though I have a Flash card I do still purchase games, Like Megaman Battle Network and Zelda.

[SoulBlazer]

I just don't see the value of paying that much to play NES games on my GBA when I can do that quite well on a great emulator for my PC with a real NES conroller. :) So I can't play the games on the go -- I have about a dozen GBA games and that's quite good enough for me.

Now maybe if a good SNES emulator for a flash cart comes along then I might just do it -- then it might be a good enough value.

Hey, I'm cheap. :)

[oesiii]

[
Which one are you using? DrSMS or PocketSMS?




I only tried DrSMS and the games showed up in the menu but they wouldn't boot when selected. I'll give PocketSMS a try and I sure in a few months someone will have an update.

[MoreEbolaForYou]

maybe your rom dumps are bad.

[Bratwurst]

Oh yeah, I just remembered. With the docking station I can dump my commercial games and also write / copy save files from the cart. Very nifty.

[waxpoet]

could someone post a link to a the best gba flash setup? I use a mac but it should work through USB....

also it would be nice to have the ability to dump commercial roms to a harddrive if there is a device that does that too.

[Jive3D]

All GBA Flash Cards / Flash Linkers have the ability to 'dump' a cartridge that you purchased onto your Hard Drive. I know that GBA emulation is pretty good on the MAC, but I really don't know much about using the hardware with a mac. www.gameboy-advance.net is a pretty good information site about all gba-dev products.

[MoreEbolaForYou]

i'm about 97% sure it won't work on a mac. at least with the setup i have. it was hard enough getting all the software and drivers to work on a pc, and that's what they were "written" for. once i got them going though, everything worked well.

[oesiii]

I got all excited after hearing here about the Gamegear/SMS emu.. but after checking it out, it looks like it doesn't run any of the Shining Force games. Maybe later on :) (my Gamegear has a black line running on the bottom.. and I'm in the mood to play it again!) :P




Hey I just downloaded a couple of gamepacks off of usenet with SMS/GG .gba images and one of them was a Shining Force pack. Had three games in it, SF2, SF3, and SF Gaiden, they all seemed to work well :)

Only thing is that they are all in Japanese, but you can read that right?

[Darth Sensei]

I'm not a mod here or anything, but I started this thread. You can't discuss downloading GBA games or making "backups" of them or they'll lock the thread.

I started this thread simply to share how much I love the NES emulation on the GBA. If you want to read about the rest of that stuff there are lots of other sites for that.

D

[soupforare]

I started this thread simply to share how much I love the NES emulation on the GBA. If you want to read about the rest of that stuff there are lots of other sites for that.

I use a Flash2Advance USB for my gba and a PC-Linker Parallel for my gb.
GBA can play most NES games 100%, I use PogoNES within Pogoshell.
I haven't tried other emus, but I'm hoping for a PCE emu :roll:

A full flash can take 2-3 minutes on a 256Mbit cart over USB. They are well worth the money, emulation aside, I use it to backup savegames and run homebrews/synthcarts as well.

[GaijinPunch]

Looks like a good deal to me. NES games, and some PC-Engine/SMS games as well? Sounds great for a trip.

I've got a GBA emulator for my Xbox, but never play it unless I"m trying out an iffy game. I buy my GBA games.

Can anyone recommend a good setup for a GBA SP?

[soupforare]

Can anyone recommend a good setup for a GBA SP?

A flash2advance usb 256M from <a href=http://www.success-hk.com>success-hk.com</a> is cheap at $115 and works well.

[Darth Sensei]

EZF Advance 256mb for $107 shipped is a better deal to me.

http://www.mwelectronics.com/

I bought 8 of them and had a good experience. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.

D

[Jive3D]

Go for the EZFA (EZ Flash Advance). I have the Flash 2 Advance 256 & the EZFA 256. The EZFA is far better, the software is easier to use and more reliable. The guy that programs the software for the EZFA frequents many gba forums and answers questions. the cartridge hardware is better than the F2A also because the battery charges when its in the GBA, so it will take a much longer time for the internal save battery to die, the EZFA also has a built in calendar and RTC (real time clock) for games that require such. plus its cheaper and you can buy it domestically.

Go for EZF Advance, hands down.

I agree with CUE warrior, lets not discuss gba commercial roms here please.