G6 DS REAL

The G6/M3 team has contributed yet another DS flash cart to the world, question is if the world actually needs another DS flash cart and if this is nothing other than more of what we've already seen. In this review I'll try to point out some of the positive and negative things about their lastest installment, the G6 DS REAL, what an amazing name that is. I will not go too much into detail about specific games not working. The reason being that a review showing games not working are often outdated only a few days after it has been posted and it only provides an idea of the product at a certain time. If your favourite game doesn't work, I suggest that you visit the author of the flash cart's website and check for firmware upgrades. So let's get started shall we? WHAT YOU GET The team responsible for the G6/M3 products have always produced nice professional packaging for their products and the G6 DS REAL is no exception, the only thing I do wonder about though is who came up with the stupid name, if this flash cart is real does it mean that the rest are fake? Anyway I can see a reason why they've used the name they did, but I won't spoil that little idea just yet, I want to steal a bit more of your time first. So the packaging is nice, my favourite color is blue. Bue who cares about the packaging really, most just throw it away and it's what's inside that matters anyway, at least that's what my girlfriend keeps telling me. Inside you'll find, not very surprisingly I hope, a Nintendo DS flash cartridge which is the exact size of a normal Nintendo DS cartridge, I would be surprised if someone today made a cart twice the size of a normal Nintendo DS cart. Though you can clearly see that this isn't an official product, why you ask? okay it's because the cartridge is held together by small hinge sort of things on each side of the cartridge, you don't see an official DS cart looking like that. The G6 DS REAL comes in two flash memory variants, an 8Gigabit (1 gigabyte) and 16Gigabit (2 gigabytes) however it's impossible to tell what's what from looking at the cart label, the two variants use the exact same label. It may not be much of a deal if you only own one G6 DS REAL cartridge, but what if some carts were misplaced during packaging and you receive an 8Gb when you ordered a 16Gb, try explaining that one to the owner of the shop where you bough it. Well besides the obviously included flash cart the box also includes some useless junk such as a cartridge cartridge protector case with wrist strap. I wonder how many of you that are going to use this junk, try taking a walk in the local mall with a DS flash cart dangling from you wrist, sorry guys but that is NOT cool and some may even call you various names because of your new piece of jewlery or whatever you wanna call it. My advice, avoid using the wristband. Now to the most interesting part about this cartridge. Back in the GBC and early GBA days every flash cart had a cart reader made had an exclusive cart reader included however this have not been the case with DS flash carts as most make use of MicroSD carts, the G6 DS REAL actually has a real exclusive cart included in the package. Oh boy did I cry and think of the old days when I saw this. A real flash cart, in my eyes, requires such a reader and I now know why they called it G6 DS REAL, oh my it actually is the only real DS flash cart on the market, thank you! Oh yeah I almost forgot, the box also contains a CD with software and drivers for the cart reader.... THE HARDWARE AND HOW IT WORKS Using the G4 DS REAL is pretty simple. Plug the cart reader into a USB slot in your PC and everything should install automaticly although beware that some old EZF-Advance (old GBA flash cart) drivers may cause installation errors. The G6 will then, when inserted into the cart reader, act as if it was a flash disk. On the cartridge you should have a directory called "system" which is the user interface for the thing. I've said this before but I wish the firmware was built into the device instead of being a directory on the cart which could accidently be deleted, which makes the cart useless if you're on the move and want to play some DS games. Copying a game to the cart is pretty quick, on my PC it took no more than 10 seconds for a 32megabyte binary. If you create a directory called NDS and place the binaries here, you'll be talen directly to this directory when booting the G6. I think you had to have this directory in previous firmware revisions (before version 2.2), but now it's also possible to access the root directory of the G6. G6 also includes a feature where a file called boot.ini can be changed to boot a specific file on startup and never showing the G6 cart interface. The idea is nice but I don't really see the purpose of it unless the cart is used for some sort of demonstation purpose. Included is several features such as Action Replay codes which seems to be more or less standard in new DS flash carts these days. The team responsible for the G4 DS REAL notes that users should remove insert the DS flash cart into the cart reader before inserting it into a pc and again removing the reader from the pc before removing the cart, this is a precaution to prevent data loss but honestly it's the worst crap I've heard for a long time, however if you'd like to be on the safe side you may want to follow their instructions. USER INTERFACE (OS) The interface of the G6 DS REAL is prettymuch that of a G4 GBA cartridge, easy to use and has a lot of settings to mess with for those who care to, but for normal use it's not necessary to do so. Since this device is made by the same people who created the Movie Player for GBA a version of the movie player is of course built into the G6 DS REAL, capable of playing movie files (Movie Player format), MP3's and Ebooks. It's also possible to use a special DS version of the totally useless G6 PDA software which offers Phone, Note and meno books, calculator and timer/date. I don't know if it's just me but I would never use my DS as a PDA, but at least this feature isn't seen on any competitors cart and I have requested new inventions for a long time instead of just using moonshell, which the G6 DS REAL by the way also offers access to from the gui. Both the PDA and moonshell software has to be downloaded seperately from the cart firmware though. CLOSING WORDS I was ecstatic when I saw the G6 DS REAL and the cart reader, this reminded me of the good old GBC/GBA days. But with a messy user interface and no real use for the cart reader (where's the software to backup your DS carts?) the G6 DS REAL doesn't really kill the competition and even though this is a REAL flash cart I'd rather go for the M3DS/R4DS or better yet the CycloDS Evolution. Good general quality to the items included. Offers more than just the usual features. firmware stored in a directory on the cart, this is absolutely stupid. User interface (GUI) seems a bit messy. PRODUCT RATING The rating given here is our overall impression of the device, 4 start means that this cartridge is well over average but still needs the final touch to make it a true master piece.