nathan_gignac wrote:
I've made a huge mistake.
Would the CycloDS be a better choice?
The CycloDS is the best flashcart on the market compared to features and support though t does have a heft price tag which to some people, don't justify all the features the CycloDS has. The Supercard DS 1 isn't that bad but it has a very shitty cheat engine and some of its features aren't built into the flashcard and need to be manually enabled by compiling a cheat file for every game. The M3 Real isn't a bad card, it has some decent features for its price, though its not the best card out there.
Stay away from the R4 and DSTT at all costs. Those are well, pretty aweful cards. The R4 has millions of clones running off hacked R4 firmware and well, pretty much see no updates and have a high chance of failure. The original R4 has stopped being manufactured for months now and impossible to find anymore. Though overall, the R4 is dead and is an out dated piece of hardware.
The DSTT is going the way of the R4, updates are slowing down, the team offers little to no support, there are many clones on the market and its getting near impossible to tell a real DSTT from a fake. If you happen to run the DSTT firmware on a fake DSTT, it bricks it. Also the DSTT team has intentionally made it so patched games (For piracy fixes, translations, etc) don't work on their card.
Now for very good budget cards, I would go with the AceKard 2, iTouchDS and possibly the EDGE. The AceKard 2 is what I recommend and its priced fairly cheap. While the default firmware/loader sucks, I suggest using AKAIO, a custom firmware alternative for the AceKard +/2/2.1/2i/RPG which brings in better better game compatibility and features. It has really nice native Slot 2/GBA support, its a lot faster, better game compatibility, auto-patching games that use piracy checks, DMA and many other features that blow the normal AceKard firmware away.
The iTouchDS is basically a stripped down M3 Real and meant for the budget market. It has Real Time Save, GBA support via Slot 2, slow motion and other nice features. You can even run the M3 Real and Sakura firmware on it (Minus some M3 Real specific features) as well. Though the GUI is a bit slow and cludgy to use.
The EDGE started off as an CycloDS clone and it is one of the three carts (Including the CycloDS and M3 Real and I believe the Supercard might as well) that support DS-Wii connectivity though the implementation is a little buggy. Overall, its not a bad card and makes a decent budget card.
If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know. Also you can find more information and reviews of most of the flashcarts on the market over at
GBAtemp as well. GBAtemp is a great resource when it comes to flashcarts as Kodewerx is a great resource when it comes to game hacking.