One thing I have always wanted to get my hands on is a GBA flashcart. I searched everywhere on Google and can't seem to find a reliable seller, nor am I sure which flashcart is the best to suit my needs. I found this, but I'd prefer to buy a flashcart from a non shady website that accepts Paypal. My last resort is to ask Retro, because I know a lot of you are familiar with Wii and DS homebrew. I just need something that I can put my GBA Pokemon ROM on (I own legit cartridges for all 5 versions), play on my Gameboy SP or DS Lite, and dump my saved file on my PC so I can hack it. Gamesharks for GBA have become way overpriced and I'd prefer not to put in cheats anyway, so any suggestions?
Lots of useful information at this website: http://gbatemp.net/forum/32-nintendo-gba-discussions/ I don't remember the exact name of the website I got my GBA flashcart, but it was something like "etcome". I highly recommend getting an EZ Flash IV. Unfortunately, there are no longer any flashcarts with RTC that are still in production, so the clock in R/S/E won't work.
Just get an EzFlash 3in1 for DSPhat. Works on gba fine. You'll need a ds to upload the roms to memory though.
I'd rather play GBA games on an actual GBA (preferably the SP AGS-101 with the backlit screen, or a GBA micro), because the black border that shows up on DS when playing GBA games bothers me.
Or you could just get a GBA Flashcart, which is what I did... (btw I have both a 3in1 and an EZ Flash IV so I know how all that stuff works)
I know you could just get a GBA flashcart, smartypants. M.E wasn't suggesting playing GBA games on a DS, but your response implied that he did.
EZFlash3in1 can only hold 1 rom in NOR. So it would be a complete pain in the ass to use it as an actual GBA flashcart, since you would have to erase the NOR and upload a new rom every time you wanted to play a different game. If you use AceKard2i + EZ Flash3in1, then you could store your GBA roms on a microSD card, and play basically any GBA game under 32mb, and only takes about 10 seconds to load. The only downside is you have to play on a DS Phat or DS Lite. Writing a game to NOR takes several minutes, and 32mb roms (like Mother 3) take at least 5 minutes. If you have the phat model of the 3in1 (which is shaped like a GBA cart), you can play whatever game you have on NOR on any model of the GBA, but you can only have one game on the cart's memory at a time, and as I said earlier, it's a complete pain in the ass to change the game. If you just use EZ Flash IV, you could literally just put as many games that fit on a miniSD and just play away, on any GBA/DS phat/lite. This is why EZ Flash IV is a more ideal flashcart than EZ Flash 3in1, because with 3in1 you can only have 1 rom at a time (unless if you're playing on a DS in conjunction with a DS flashcart), but with EZ Flash IV you can have as many roms as you want.
I know all of that. I was only pointing out that getting a 3in1 doesn't mean you have to play your games on the DS, which is what you implied M.E was saying. This wasn't supposed to get so involved, man.
Do you know a reliable site to purchase EZ FLash IV with Paypal? I prefer not to give shady websites my debit card info. I looked at the list of GBA Flashcart dealers on GBATemp but almost none of them sell GBA flashcarts anymore.
Im not even sure if they still do them, but steer clear of dealextreme if you do get one, as I was told they sold people out who bought flashcarts to nintendo/authories. :/ May be a far fetched tale, but cant be too careful these days.
I have a Flash2Advance Ultra, 1 gig. The USB cable has had to be taped as the casing was crap and fell apart after a few years, but it all still works perfectly. I might be willing to sell it to you if you can't find an alternative source of one (I don't use it any more).
You wanna play on GBA because of a border bothers you? If I knew that I wouldn't have even posted here. Also the SP/DSPhat front-illuminated screen just sucks.
You do realize that Nintendo released a backlit version of the SP in 2005? It has the model number of AGS-101, and its screen is just as good as the DS Lite. Yeah, the colors they were released in suck, but you could easily mod the casing to a color of your choice, which is what I did. http://www.etcome.com/ This is where I got my EZ Flash IV, and nothing fishy has happened to my bank account. Unfortunately I don't know of any sites that still sell EZ Flash IV that also use Paypal
If you don't mind doing it on a DS Lite, there's a nice little thing called the EZ Flash 3-in-1 Expansion Pak which you can temporarily load or write (making it act like a GBA cart) using one of the various Micro SD adapter devices such as Acekard (personal recommendation), CycloDS, R4, etc. It also automatically saves a backup save to your DS device the next time you go to the menu. I believe they also have a Game Boy Advance pak that work similarly but, I'm not entirely sure on that one. It's certainly worked quite well for me, and it even doubles as a DS rumble pak.
I got an EZ-Flash IV a few months ago. Great little flashcart, although I got my microSD to miniSD converter stuck in mine, so the thing now only takes microSDs... ;3 And yeah, I haven't seen anywhere that sells them using PayPal. I got mine from Real Hot Stuff. DealExtreme doesn't even sell flashcards anymore.
If you even want a 3-in-1 (and understandably so, as the rumble feature is actually kinda cool in the games that support it, and I think a couple homebrew emulators actually use the RAM expansion), good luck finding one in the larger size, as it doesn't seem to be in stock any more.
I highly recommend the EZ-Flash IV. I brought one a few years ago, and it's been an incredibly useful workhorse. Bonus points for making it trivial to dump DS ROM's and SRAM.
