Found this Genesis flash cart? on the ATgames website

[Leo_A]

Fast forward a few years, couple the cottage industry of flash-cart selling with sites like Aliexpress making it painless for Westerners to make purchases and the cheaper clones invaded quickly. Which is always a tasty bit of irony... people get all bent out of shape over "pirated" flash-carts. "I want to play my illegal pirated software on a REAL copier, not some cheap imitation!"

There are a lot of uses for it that don't involve piracy though. And I'm not just nitpicking since some of mine like my Cuttle Cart II have spent much more time on homebrews and other perfectly legal uses than piracy.

But it's not really because it's "pirated" and I'm afraid that I don't care too much of the creator loses a sale or two or if people are very pleased with their purchases of copies. I think the genuine deal is the way to go simply because if these imitations don't even accept his updates, I really doubt they work as well in general as his own Everdrives do.

And while I see some folks minimizing updates in here, I have updated mine several times through the years and gained much appreciated functionality. So while not a killer, let's also not pretend that it doesn't matter either.

[Tanooki]

Ummmm... I got one of these. Mine came from Aliexpress. Never considered that it would need any kind of update. Works great as is. Didn't know at the time it was pirating someone else's work. I consider it a nice sampler and I seek out the games I think a lot of, and purchase them.

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That's the one I saw too with like 400 games or so pre-loaded on the memory card. It's sooo tempting if anything because of the memory card. So much stuff one could try out to buy later. I've been telling people to do that lately with the everdrives on NES and SNES since I still people all jacked up to jump in and not realizing even some common games are getting into stupid price levels which will cause frustration, burn outs, and rage quits. An everdrive can save a fortune sifting the turds away from the gems. It's a reason why I even have that AT Games handheld, the SD slot. Try before you buy (and in this case, sound issues aside, portability factor since the NOMAD is a battery murdering brick.)

[CRTGAMER]

CRT good luck. I did find very little info which is why I posted. I did some screwball type searches with google and I did come up with the fact there have been revisions, and not the usual shit the chinese pull overseas with their console/handheld where it's microscopic. There's been at least 2-3 changes over time from when it came out. The oldest only worked on the AT games console you showed (original model), but then later ones I couldn't find an answer but read they were changed. I ran out of options and figured I'd dangle the carrot here. The model on the atgames site is the newest and renamed version of it.

Just got an EMail from PayPal that reported ATGames credited a full refund including shipping charge. Not sure if out of stock, but never heard from them other then the initial EMail stating the Mega Expert Passport Cart was purchased. I suspect it was in fact out of stock and took PaPal to settle the dispute.



Too bad the game roms have to be individually pulled from the SD Card and flashed onto the flash cart memory every time a different game is selected. Any Flash cart could eventually fail from a bad file transfer. The N64 Gameshark notorious for this, glad I bailed out.

[Gameguy]

Which is always a tasty bit of irony... people get all bent out of shape over "pirated" flash-carts. "I want to play my illegal pirated software on a REAL copier, not some cheap imitation!"

It's more for reliability and build quality. There have been some pirated fake GBA and DS flash carts that either wouldn't work completely right or would break down because they were poorer quality compared to the legit ones. I know of someone who fixed a GBA one by reflowing the solder on the board, they're just poorly made compared to the legit ones.

That's the one I saw too with like 400 games or so pre-loaded on the memory card. It's sooo tempting if anything because of the memory card. So much stuff one could try out to buy later. I've been telling people to do that lately with the everdrives on NES and SNES since I still people all jacked up to jump in and not realizing even some common games are getting into stupid price levels which will cause frustration, burn outs, and rage quits. An everdrive can save a fortune sifting the turds away from the gems. It's a reason why I even have that AT Games handheld, the SD slot. Try before you buy (and in this case, sound issues aside, portability factor since the NOMAD is a battery murdering brick.)

If you just want to try out the games before buying them you can emulate them on a PC for free, that's what most people did before flash carts existed.

[Tanooki]

CRT good for you and I agree.

Game guy we're not going to agree but I'll say this much it's not the same using a fake console sketchy PC emulator with ROMs and a different controller versus the real deal. Anyone knows that and given it's that cheap with over 400 games on there it is better. The time involved in downloading cataloging and installing those onto a slow SD memory card I would safely say my time and anyone else's time is worth the expense versus all that lost time finding downloading and setting it all up on your own.

[Gameguy]

I can understand the want to try out games properly on legit hardware with a correct controller, that's a point I understand. I'm not sure why you would have that shitty AT Games handheld then for trying out games as that's not like real hardware either, and with emulating on a PC you wouldn't need to transfer ROMs to a slow SD card at all as they'd be on your hard drive so I don't get that point either. Downloading the ROMs would take more effort, but at the same time you could get an entire ROM set so you wouldn't be limited to what came with the SD card, plus if you're just using it to try out games you've never played before you'd want to try out all the games so you'd be forced to download them all anyway. You don't have to stay by the computer while it's downloading either so it's not that time consuming. I guess it's just personal preference really.

[Leo_A]

Unless one is still using dial-up or is going through their cell phone or something, I don't really see any appeal in a preloaded rom set. A complete set of known good roms for platforms like the Genesis is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

The only things difficult are stuff not even provided here like patched roms for homebrew translated games, homebrew NTSC conversions of PAL titles, prototypes, original homebrew creations, and the like. Some of that stuff can actually take some searching to track down, but a complete North American released set for any cartridge system isn't a difficult thing to get.

With something like the Cuttle Cart II, I could understand since adding games is a pain in the butt and sometimes requires some detective work to determine such things as the bankswitching scheme that a game uses. But it's a non-issue for something like a Genesis Everdrive and most others since adding your games is a trivial task on more recent products.

[Az]

There are a lot of uses for it that don't involve piracy though. And I'm not just nitpicking since some of mine like my Cuttle Cart II have spent much more time on homebrews and other perfectly legal uses than piracy.

I totally agree with you, but I think it's safe to say that the vast, vast majority of use for a MD (and especially SNES) Everdrives is to play copyright infringing material. The amount of 100% legal, totally non-infringing homebrew available for the Genesis is minuscule and the SNES even smaller.

I personally do not care what people do with their toys, but what irks me is this: the same people that pull the tar and feathers out for pirates/counterfeits/repros and call for blood due to people "making money off something they don't own" and IP theft, yet they're perfectly cool throwing hundreds of bucks towards the 2-3 US/UK based stores/people that basically exist to sell nothing but flash carts. Dude in his basement soldering out a Starfox 2 repro is a leech that deserves a good thrashing, but a guy/store that sells a device where you can make your own personal repros deserves endless worship, praise, and money.

A) Sucks that Krikkz designed a product which was soon counterfeited
B) Sucks that Sega designed a product which was soon counterfeited

You can't be weep over one point and dismiss the other.

I think the genuine deal is the way to go simply because if these imitations don't even accept his updates, I really doubt they work as well in general as his own Everdrives do.

I own an original V1 MD ED and a SNES ED and both of the Chinese versions as well. The Chinese SNES one came with whatever the latest firmware was at the time (bought these over a year ago) and the MD version was one revision less than the newest version. I did read on one forum somewhere that supposedly a guy bricked his MD Everdrive clone when he went to update it to whatever that newest version was, I do not know if this is an actual fact or just bullshit, but I never bothered to update mine just in case. The update offered nothing that would help me personally so I figured I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Barring this possible(?) newest firmware issue on the MD clone, I can say that both of them work totally, exactly like the originals, with the exception that the ROM loading is slightly longer on the clones. If not for that you couldn't tell the difference.

[Tanooki]

I can understand the want to try out games properly on legit hardware with a correct controller, that's a point I understand. I'm not sure why you would have that shitty AT Games handheld then for trying out games as that's not like real hardware either, and with emulating on a PC you wouldn't need to transfer ROMs to a slow SD card at all as they'd be on your hard drive so I don't get that point either. Downloading the ROMs would take more effort, but at the same time you could get an entire ROM set so you wouldn't be limited to what came with the SD card, plus if you're just using it to try out games you've never played before you'd want to try out all the games so you'd be forced to download them all anyway. You don't have to stay by the computer while it's downloading either so it's not that time consuming. I guess it's just personal preference really.

Good question and I get that too. Easy answer, portability, and that's it. I would NEVER use it to test out games except as a last resort. I'd rather get the chinese old firmware everdrive. I don't have a SD card yet for the atgames thing anyway (and I also have their actually accurate GG/SMS one too which was pre-developed before ATGames got it from Sega under their newer license.)

I'm not sure how many Genesis games are skipped on that Chinese card, but the better link Niku gave for it on aliexpress shows there's 500+USA games, 400+JP and 500+EU/PAL stuff and I skimmed the lists and they do have some overlap but stuff only certain regions got only show in that region so if it's not a full set I'd bet it's extremely close. That's why I said that the other day as it's just wiser to buy this older one and save a crap ton of time, effort, and cataloging games when someone else already did it in differing folders in alphabetical order.


I could say a heap but AZ -- Very well said, all of it, the pick and choose whining hypocrisy, the rumors over bricking everdrives from china, and the rest. It's like it's ok to steal one way but not the other. Picking your flavor of illegality is like going FULL RETARD, and you never go full retard.

[Gamevet]

Just curious. Why would you need to update the firmware on an Everdrive cart?

[Tanooki]

Two reasons would be bugs that could cause a problem with it, or they add a small feature (say like save/load states if it didn't exist already. I'm doubtful a thing like that could be released where a certain game wouldn't work if it required not extra parts (like Virtua Racing, the one, that needs SVP.) That's why I said if the rumor is true you can't upgrade the firmware, who cares.

[PreZZ]

The preloaded roms were crap, first thing I did was delete them and put a custom ever drive romset with hacks and translations I found online. Just DON'T fully erase the SD card you need the old OS file on the card.

[Gameguy]

I personally do not care what people do with their toys, but what irks me is this: the same people that pull the tar and feathers out for pirates/counterfeits/repros and call for blood due to people "making money off something they don't own" and IP theft, yet they're perfectly cool throwing hundreds of bucks towards the 2-3 US/UK based stores/people that basically exist to sell nothing but flash carts. Dude in his basement soldering out a Starfox 2 repro is a leech that deserves a good thrashing, but a guy/store that sells a device where you can make your own personal repros deserves endless worship, praise, and money.

I could say a heap but AZ -- Very well said, all of it, the pick and choose whining hypocrisy, the rumors over bricking everdrives from china, and the rest. It's like it's ok to steal one way but not the other. Picking your flavor of illegality is like going FULL RETARD, and you never go full retard.

It's not really hypocritical. If people are against pirates and counterfeits for games, they feel the same way towards piracy and counterfeits of hardware and accessories too. People would be angry if they bought a fake SNES controller branded as legit as they wouldn't be the same quality as the real ones. It's really the prospect of getting duped into buying something fake that you think is real that's the main issue people have, followed by the direct profiting off someone else's work as a distant second. Destroying legit games to make bootlegs is another reason people dislike them, especially when uncommon or rare games get destroyed for a bootleg. Flashcarts by themselves aren't ripping off anyone's work, no more than buying blank CDs or DVDs and recording them with whatever you want. Nobody would get confused between a flash cart and a real cart anymore than confusing a cart copier with floppies over a real game. People didn't care about pirates when they were easily distinguishable from legit copies, lots of people even collected them as oddities of interest. Now that they look close to real copies people hate them.

As for counterfeit flashcarts, I remember back with GBA flashcarts that a few fakes couldn't save games while the real versions could. The limited functionality and possible compatibility and build quality issues is what bothered people the most with the fake flashcarts. Back then a lot of the real flashcarts weren't exactly high quality to begin with, the fakes just got a lot worse and a lot just died on people. It's a big reason why people would want to stick with legit versions over fakes, just to avoid possible problems or issues with lesser quality ones.

Just curious. Why would you need to update the firmware on an Everdrive cart?

I guess if any new homebrew game comes out that isn't compatible, an update to the firmware could fix the issue. Otherwise there's not many reasons if everything else is stable and running well.