DATEL'S CARTRIDGE CONSTRUCTION KIT

Datel is mostly known for their highly successful brand of cheat devices for various game consoles, called Action Replay or GameShark in the US. But Datel is also known for producing all sorts of grey area gadgets, such as an unofficial Gameboy Advance adapter for the GameCube, or a Gameboy Color adapter for the PS2, heck they even released unofficial Gameboy Color games once, using a brand called Rocket Games. Lately Datel has begun releasing all sorts of gadgets for the Nintendo DS, including an incredibly expensive Media Player. The latest item on the list is called Cartridge Construction Kit although it has absolutely nothing to do with constructing cartridges. Instead it offers access to the masses of homebrew available on the net by making them playable on your Nintendo DS using a special cartridge. WHAT YOU GET Packed in typical Datel blister packaging you get a Nintendo DS cartridge with a MicroSD slot built-in, a 128mb MicroSD card, a small (useless) manual, a CD with exactly 32 games/applications for the DS, all homebrew of course, and finally a small MicroSD USB card reader. The most notable ting about Datels blister packaging this time around is that it's actualy possible to open it with out stabbing yourself with a knife like the old Datel days, cause now you don't need a knife or anything sharp to open the package, sweet! THE DS CART The cartridge is a normal DS cart but with a small extra feature, being a microSD card reader built-in just like most of the current DS flash carts available. The Cartridge Construction Kit (CCK) is supposed to accept any brand of microSD cards and up to 2gb. I've used my DaneElec 512mb and it worked flawless. A funny thing about the CCK is that is uses old style PassMe technology where it boots the CCK directly instead of the user booting it from the DS GUI. HOW IT WORKS Using the CCK is pretty simple as no manager is software is required. It accepts a FAT32 formatted microSD and you simply drag and drop homebrew (.nds) files to the microSD. I've tested some of the better homebrew to check the compatibility, here's how that went. Title Note BOFH Legends DS OK Breat Out DS OK DS Doom Boots, but unable to select media device DS Organize Boots, but unable to initialize (cow keeps dancing) DShokoban OK Explosive Gas OK Extreme Onslaught OK Flashback DS Boots to a white upper and black lower screen Invasion OK Lemmings DS Boots to a black screen Mario Bros DS OK MP3 Play Boots to a black upper and white lower screen Mp333333 Boots and freezes Nester DS OK NitroTracker Boots, first screen garbled, then it freezes OMalone OK Snezzi Doesn't boot, GUI freezes Snowball Fight OK Space Games OK Super Mario War DS OK Super Pang OK Tetatt DS OK Watari Boots, but unable to select media device Way of the Rain OK Wolfenstein 3D DS OK XMas 2005 OK xRick DS OK I think it safe to say that homebrew support is somewhat ok on the CCK, applications being the biggest problem. But everything is overshadowed by a very annoying and slow, although great looking, user interface. When starting a game, you pick the game you want to play on the bottom screen by tapping on it using the stylus, but then nothing happens and you tap again, and again, and again..... and finally someting happens. Sometimes its just because the game takes time to load, but then again all games seems to take an awful lot of time to load on the CCK. Why on earth you're not able to use the D pad, A and B buttons to select and run a game is beyond me. While we're at it, why on earth not include a "loading" screen so the user is actually able to see that something is happening, loading, or if the CCK is taking a nap. Should you have a crazy need to boot a game directly without entering the CCK user interface, try renaming a binary to bootme.nds COMMERCIAL ROMS I of course had to see if the CCK was able to boot commercial roms, but this doesn't seem to be the case. My guess is that the CCK OS (user interface) somehow prevents commercial roms from running. There might be a very good reason for this though as Datel most likely would be sued by Nintendo if the CCK was capable of running commercial games. However games probably could be patched to run on the CCK, but at the moment it's a no go. And no, the Maximum Overload patcher released for the Datel Max Media Dock will not work :-) CLOSING WORDS Just as I thought, the Cartridge Construction Kit is yet another mediocre gadget by Datel, they seem to be great at releasing crap these days.It's sad to see that there is absolutely no support for the product on Datels own website, called codejunkies, as in no firmware upgrades or even new DS homebrew to download. Another funny thing is that the CCK was discontinued the day after I ordered mine from the codejunkies website. Orignally Datel released the Cartridge Construction Kit for playing homebrew, and in an attempt to milk consumers as much as possible, another cartridge called Max Music was released, offering MP3 player. These two products have now merged into something called "Games 'n Music" due to poor sales of the initial products I guess. But owners of the CCK or Max Music, which essentially is the same except the firmware, will most likely not be able to download a firmware upgrade to "Games 'N Music"? I do love the idea of allowing people to run homebrew and am not too annoyed by the fact that running commerial material is impossible on this, I would've been quite surprised if it was possible. This way Datel is able to allow everyone out there to explore the world of DS homebrew, both the great and the endless line of crap, without a lawsuit from Nintendo.