Question about GBA Flash Carts

[Retro Pro]

I know this has been discussed before in other threads, so I'm guessing it's not a taboo topic here.

Anyway, I'm very interested in acquiring one of these, but I have a few questions:

1) Where are they sold? I don't see them at lik-sang.com, which is usually the first place to find devices like this.

2) Would I be able to store more than one regular GBA game on one of these carts? I want to store more than one game I already own because it's inconvenient having to lug around all of those small carts since they can easily get lost and all of the GBA carrying cases currently on the market are incredibly childish looking and clearly geared toward the Pull-Ups set.

3) How easily available are the emulators that work with these flash carts? I remember one person saying that he/she was able to play old NES games with one of these carts.

4) Are they available in different storage sizes and at what cost? I'd want one that could store as much as possible.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Darth Sensei]

I'm not an expert on what is or what isn't allowed on here. However, I do believe that if you talk about GBA Backups the mods will likely lock the thread.

I use mine primarily for NES emulation and it's wonderful. It's fairly easy to set up PocketNES and it works well.

I've read that SMS emulation on GBA works well too. The Atari 2600 is supposedly more spotty and I haven't tried it.

I bought 8 EZF Advance linkers (256mb) from:

http://www.mwelectronics.com/

They were prompt and communicated at all steps in the transaction. I am very happy with them. I don't have any relationship with them, I'm just satisfied with what I bought.

You can look there for prices. There are 512mb and 1 Gb cards out, but I've I haven't read much about their stability. I don't want to be an early adopter and have to deal with ROM patches and such.

Feel free to ask me anything else you'd like to know or to PM me.

D

[SoulBlazer]

I plan to pick up one of these at some point, so....

Just how many NES games can you fit on a 256k cart? Are they easy to download into the flash cart? Will the flash cart handle any other games besides NES games?

[Retro Pro]

Feel free to ask me anything else you'd like to know or to PM me.

Just sent you a PM. Thanks!

[Darth Sensei]

I plan to pick up one of these at some point, so....

Just how many NES games can you fit on a 256k cart? Are they easy to download into the flash cart? Will the flash cart handle any other games besides NES games?

Yes, SMS is emulated, but I haven't tried it.

I have approximately 60 NES Roms on mine right now and it takes up 1/4 of my 256Mb Card.

http://gbatemp.m4d.sm/

is a great site.

D

[SoulBlazer]

How did you pay for yours? I admit that having a portable NES on my GBA SP is awfully tempting, but paying more then I did for the GBA is'nt.

[Darth Sensei]

How did you pay for yours? I admit that having a portable NES on my GBA SP is awfully tempting, but paying more then I did for the GBA is'nt.

I bought 8 of them for nephews and 2 girlfriends. You can get a 256mb flash cart for around $107 shipped.

Let's see, I can play any NES game ever created on both my GBA and GC using the player. I can pause the action and save the state of the game anytime I want. I can play two player versus someone else with the card via a cable. Exactly how is this not worth more than $107? This doesn't even include the other things you can do with it that would anger the mods if we discussed them.

Hell, I paid more than $107 for my Game Axe and it's a p.o.s.

D

[SoulBlazer]

Well, it is tempting -- more money then I have now, but thanks for the infio. So you really suggest that company you linked to in the first post? Do these ever turn up on EBay or in local stores? And if 256 is enough for about 240 NES games (give or take) then that should be big enough, right? I did'nt know you could use it with the Game Boy Player, though -- cool!

Okay, I don't think this question steps on the mod's toe's either -- could you download old Game Boy games (the ones from 10 years ago) onto the flash cart and play those?

[Darth Sensei]

I haven't played the old GB games on it, but there are emulators to do it. You can also play some GB Color games on it.

I recommend that site because they communicated with me during the sale well and the product works very well. Your mileage may vary. Some people prefer to get the items cheaper from Korea, but you pay through the nose for shipping and Western Union fees.

D

[Keir]

I have approximately 60 NES Roms on mine right now and it takes up 1/4 of my 256Mb Card.

That sounds right. I have about that many on my 64Mb card which is not quite full.

In fact, if all you want to do is emulate NES, than a 64Mb card is all you need. They aren't that expensive. I paid $60 for mine but they've probably come down in price since then due to the larger ones being much more popular.

I may even sell mine since I got a GP32 which does all the GBA flashcard does and so much more.

[FF6]

Damn, im always learning something new on this site. I was wondering if these cards are the exact same size as the regular gba sp games. I have no idea how it works and don't know if theres a site that explains it.....but Im trying to picture what you guys are talking about. Do you connect your Gba into you computer? very confused. I bet its probably going to be simple too.

[Jive3D]

There are a bunch of different types of flash cards but its really simple. Most of them are all conforming to the same type of flashing method.

The flash cards are the exact same physical size as a regular GBA cart, except for the older "Xtreme Cards" which were a little bigger, if you have seen the BOKTAI gba cartridge, then think of it as looking like that.

You put the flash cartridge/card into your GBA/ GBASP, there is a USB cable that plugs into the ext. port on the gba and the other end into your PC usb port. The card will come with software or you can DL it from the homepage of the Flash Card maker and you use that to write the roms to the cartridge, not unlike sending mp3s to an iPod. Very Easy Stuff.

One note when you are looking for flash cards, some of the older Flash 2 Advance cards came with a Parallel Cable rather than the new USB standard, the parallel cables wont work with a GBASP (unless you modify it, which it tough). This is due to the internal voltage of the SP being different from that of the regular GBA. The flash card will work on both systems, but the flashing method with the Parallel cable will only work on a regular GBA. They have since updated those with USB cables, so there is nothing to worry about, but I thought I would meantion that if you happen to buy yorus on eBay or something.

to all who are interested in buying: the best deal, as meantioned above is the 256 EZFA for $107 shipped from www.meelectronics.com

BUT the real round of 512 and 1G cards are begining to be released, there are not many product reviews on them yet, but these seem very promissing so all of you who are thinking about buying one might want to wait. The current 1G cards cost around 250.

256 really is enough for games though, the largest GBA roms are only 128 and you can fit 2 of them on a 256, but most games are 64, and many games can be truncated to be smaller.

ADvantage to the 512 and 1G cards are if you plan to put video on the card. YES, there is a video compression tool called Meteo and you can compress almost any pc video file into a .gba file. but they are big, I think that a 23 minute movie was compressed to about 400mbit, NOT mega byte, mega bit.

Anyway, food for thought ^_^.

[SoulBlazer]

Hum, very interesting. Thanks for the info, guys.

That 64mb one would be big enough for me, I think, but the 256mb sounds like a nice bargin as well.

So you can play NES and SMS games with the system.....could someone makea emulator to play other 8-bit and older systems in the flash cart?

[Bratwurst]

There's a Tg-16 emulator out there too, but I haven't tried it yet. One day.. :P

[NE146]

I bought one offa jandaman.com. It came in like 2 days

[Goblin]

I followed cuewarriors advice and ordered one from mwelectronics, and can honestly say it is the best gaming product I've bought for myself in years. I'll be doing quite a lot of traveling in the next few months, and this thing will be great. I ordered it in the afternoon on Newyear's day, it shipped that Friday and arrived at my house on Monday. Like many others I've wanted one for a while, but never wanted to import one from overseas. Having a domestic source solved that problem. After I ordered I did some comparison shopping and they do have the best price. These units appear on ebay, but they are either around the same price or slightly higher, so if you are thinking of taking the plunge do it.

So far I've played around with pocketnes, and a few of the homebrew titles and utilities. Pocketnes is fantastic, it's so great to play a number of NES titles that I haven't thought to pull out in years. Some of the homebrew things are neat, and quirky - like the slide show generator. It's cool to actually have my own picture appear on the GBA, but its a one time thing. I did download an SMS emulator image: basically the DrSMS emulator and about 16 different titles. They play rather well, but I didn't like the selection of games and have been unsuccessful in compiling my own. There is always room from improvement, but so far I'm highly impressed with the emulation scene.

My goal right now is to make the perfect optimized image with every nes game I will likely want to play. This is harder than you think because I want to it be significantly diverse, without any overlap (for instance I like tengen tetris not the nintendo version). I'm attempting to keep my image around 4MB (or multiple of), so I can also through backups of titles I already own on, without wasting any space. That way I can travel with a single cartridge.

[GaijinPunch]

Seems that meleeelectronics.com isn't working. Is the URL correct? I need to get one of these, so I can play TG16 stuff on the train.

[Darth Sensei]

Seems that meleeelectronics.com isn't working. Is the URL correct? I need to get one of these, so I can play TG16 stuff on the train.

It's http://www.mwelectronics.com/

Jive mis-stated the address.

Also, I'm glad to hear that it worked out for you Goblin.

D

[Bratwurst]

Just a quick shot in the dark to see if anyone's got some experience / know-how concerning putting a rom on a GBA cart, like burning your own homebrew Atari carts.

I already have my own flash cart but I'd like to make a 'dedicated' cart for something I've been working on.

[Jive3D]

I have not heard much about atari emu at all.

but I would check out www.gameboy-advance.net for other info on emuloators for use on a gba flash card.

i'm gonna try to get the sms/gg emu to work this weekend.

sorry about mis typing the link above. I, obviously, almost never read over what I type before sending it.