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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

$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.