E-MAIL 64SCENER
MESSAGEBOARD

All trademarks and logos used on this website are copyright of their respective owners.

64scener.com is an independent website with it's entire content offered free of charge. Please note that this site has no affiliation or endorsement from Nintendo or any other videogame publisher. Also, 64scener.com is neither a manufacturer or reseller of videogames, this means that none of the products displayed can be bought directly from us, please don't send any more orders or price requests.

Layout and text on this page is owned by 64scener.com unless stated otherwise, please ask before using parts of it, permission is usually granted, but as any other media we would like to know where and how our work is being used.

This review is about a product partly from the makers of the XG2 Flash Kit, called NeoFlash. The worlds first Nintendo DS "copier" which isn't really a copier, but in fact a Gameboy Advance cartridge with an adapter, that makes it possible to play homebrewn, and commercial, Nintendo DS games and/or demos.

The NeoFlash has been heavily hyped at a website called www.neoflash.com, offering any amateur developer a free NeoFlash Kit, which indeed helped to hype the product. The best part of it was, that almost everyone suddently became NDS developers and websites popped up here and there to try to lure and secure a free NeoFlash set.

When scene website authors also got the opportunity to get a review sample, it really started to get out of hand, even more sad websites started to appear and their authors claimed them to be the leading sites, that they had been around forever, when in fact the website had no more than a couple of news posts from the previous 2 days and a design that looked like it was knocked together by a 2 year old.

About 50 sets were shipped out to more or less serious developers and scene site authors before the NeoFlash team decided to end the free kit offer and instead launch a coding competition, what a great move that was, and the "plz send free kit, k tnx" spamming of the NeoFlash websites forum fortunately came to and end.

64scener was lucky enough to be picked out to review the NeoFlash and we received our sample a few days ago, the same day as the last and final batch of free sets were announced and shipped.

PACKAGING

Like always we take a look at the packaing first, as it's the first thing that meets the eye when one receives a gadget of some sort. The NeoFlash is packed in a very small box, which might save you some shipping cost, if you're lucky. The packaging is a thin cardboard box with the NeoFlash nicely printed on the top and sides. The same box is used for both the 512mbit and 1024mbit sets, and instead of writing somewhere on the box that this either is a 512 or 1024, a GBA cartrdge label has been slapped on the box, underneath the NeoFlash logo, not very professional looking if you ask me, but it gets the job done.

Anyway, nicely packaged inside is a USB linker, called USB Slim Loader III, interesting enough the XG Team also uses this for their latest version of the XG2 Flash GBA copier product, called XG2 2005, same goes for the extension cable for the slim loader, the 3 batteries for the battery backup in the cartridge and the GBA cartridge design for that matter. Some people received a "driver CD" along with their free set, such a CD wasn't included in my package though. Finally and not to be forgotten is the NeoFlash cartridge and something called a "NDS Magic Key", we'll get back to both of these later on in the review.

WINDOWS SOFTWARE

Because no driver is included in the package, the new owners have to download the driver off the internet, just like the XG2 driver. You can find the drivers at 64scener's NDS copier tools section or at NeoFlash's website, www.neoflash.com. Downloading the latest driver off the net instead of including a most likely outdated one with the kit is not a totally bad idea, it might save you from ripping out a few more hairs on your head when messing with stuff like the NeoFlash/XG2.

But then atleast include a small manual, piece of paper, I don't care what it is, in the package to let people know where to go to download these drivers, why not help the new users a little bit?

Let's take a look at the software now, in this case called Neo Power Kit, a very green/blue'ish piece of software by default, fortunately the colors can be changed to something less disturbing for your eyes. Having already reviewed the XG2 copier, I wasn't too surprised when I noticed that this was nothing more than an updated, or not, version of the "Slim Loader Driver" software used for the XG2.

But knowing that the people who made the XG2 was involved in the NeoFlash project, I wasn't too disturbed by what I saw.

USB Slim Loader... no wait this is the Neo Power Kit, my bad.

When this review was made, the latest release of teh Neo Power Kit was 0.8a, which seems to be built on a pre-version 1.20 of the slimloader, as the detection of the NeoFlash cart seems pretty bad. Fortunately the XG team is known for producing a lot of software updates, so bugs are sorted out and new software versions are released as soon as possible.

There are very few options available in teh Neo Power Kit and it seems just as messy as the XG2 Slim Loader. I know the software is said to be at an early stage, but the Slim Loader software has been around for months now, so that's not a valid excuse, this software should've been much more reliable, with a lot more features, how about a simple format of cartridges?

On a side note I might as well mention that you can use the XG2 Slim loader software instead of the Neo Power Kit, it detects the carts better but also has a few more features than the Neo Power Kit. This is starting to smell of old wine on new bottles.

THE CARTRIDGE

The NeoFlash cartridge is a standard size GBA cartridge which is available in two flash sizes, 512mbit and 1024mbit. The cartridge design looks a lot like the one used for the XG2 copier series, again maybe not too surprisingly as the XG team was involved in the development, hmm I've said this before, haven't I?

Besides the obvious visible use of the same cart shell design, I can't really tell if the cartridge internals are the same as I do not own a XG2 512mbit cart, but a small test using the Neo Power Kit, XG2 Slim Loader software, a 1024mbit XG2 2005 cart and the NeoFlash 512mbit cart, shows that the XG2 Slim Loader software detects the NeoFlash cartridge as a XG2 2005 512mbit cartridge and the Neo Power Kit detects the XG2 2005 1024mbit cartridge as a 1024mbit NeoFlash cart.

The smell of old wine on new bottles is getting stronger. Please note though that not all XG2 carts are the same. The NeoFlash Power Kit will detect any XG2 cartridge as a NeoFlash cartridge, most likely because they just renamed the text in the program to say NeoFlash instead of XG2, but 256mbit carts will not work in the test I will be carrying out later on in the review.

NeoFlash and XG2 2005 cartridge

The new gadget in town is the magic key. The amateur developers around the world have already heard of or been using a gadget called PassMe, which allows you to run DS code off a GBA cartridge on you Nintendo DS. I've decided not to tear my Magic Key apart, but have been told that the Magic Key is nothing more than a PassMe in a very nice casing, which a test later in the review is supposed to prove right.

The Magic Key is needed to boot the NDS images and save games, on an original NDS cartridge.

Magic Key and PassMe - same thing....

There's not much to say about this one, if you want my oppinion about the Slim Loader III, I suggest that you read my XG2 review, because the NeoFlash uses the very same linker as the XG2, how convenient, and sad.

USB Slim Loader III

Well this part in interesting and reminds me of the good old N64 days. Since there's no way of saving directly to the GBA cartridge, the NeoFlash requires an original cartridge for saving, and you even have to match the type of sram used by the game you're playing, else your save won't save properly. But there's no way of backing up saves made on DS cartridges either, so unless you have an extra cartridge lying around, you'll have to get rid of your 99% progress in Mario 64 DS, boo.

IS NEOFLASH JUST AN XG2 WITH A NEW NAME?

So, it's time to prove what I've thought all along, that the XG2 2005 512/1024mbit and NeoFlash 512/1024mbit carts are the exact same. The first test was carried out using the XG2 Slim Loader software V1.20 and the XG2 2005 1024mbit and NeoFlash 215mbit carts. The rom used is the "GS" release of Mario 64 DS.

• The XG2 2005 1024mbit was correctly detected as what it is, an XG2 2005 1024mbit. It took 217 seconds to upload the 128mbit rom and it ran perfectly both with the PassMe adapter and the NeoFlash Magic Key.

• The NeoFlash 512mbit cart was detected as a XG2 2005 512mbit cartridge, which is quite interesting for my theory. It took an unimpressive 390 seconds to upload the same rom that was uploaded to the XG2 2005 1024mbit, using the same PC. The NeoFlash cart also worked with both the PassMe and the Magic Key, it would've been a real surprise if it didn't work with the last of the two :-)

• The XG2 2005 1024mbit is now detected as a NeoFlash 1024mbit cartridge, to me it seems that the XG2 text was just renamed to NeoFlash. The funny part was that the Mario rom already loaded onto the cartridge wasn't displayed in the NeoFlash software. Flashing the 128mbit game took 217 seconds, exactly like the XG2 Slim Loader software, and it ran perfectly both with the PassMe adapter and the NeoFlash Magic Key.

• The NeoFlash 512mbit cart was detected as a NeoFlash 512mbit cartridge this time around, but was called XG2 2005 in the XG2 Slim Loader Software. Again the rom uploaded with the XG2 Slim Loader software wasn't displayed, the cartridge was claimed to be totally empty. And again it took 390 seconds to upload the same rom that was uploaded to the XG2 2005 1024mbit. The NeoFlash cart also worked with both the PassMe and the Magic Key this time around.

Click here to view a divx movie of my XG2 testing, sorry about the bad quality but I'm trying to save some bandwidth.

FINAL WORD

So, the fact that NeoFlash is in fact an XG2, does that make it a bad product? Tough question really, the XG2 isn't a bad product, but not a great one either. The software is very buggy and slow, incluing the detection of carts, this has become better in release 1.20 of the Slim Loader software. Should you be lucky enough to have your cart detected by the software, you could be in for a bit of heair ripping when the software refuses to flash the cart. But with that said, I have to mention that it does work and when it finally flashes it's one of the fastest GBA copiers, especially the 256mbit and 1024mbit XG2 carts.

I've tested XG2/NeoFlash on two different PC's, a 6 year old noname PC and a brand new HP T850. The old PC managed to run the XG2 and NeoFlash flawless, well with about a 70/30% cart detections or not. The brand new HP machine managed to detect the cartridges after some time, but never managed to flash any of the carts before I gave up.

Most people seem to consider the NeoFlash an NDS copier, which is quite wrong. Eventhough I've placed it in the NDS review section of 64scener, I'd describe the NeoFlash as a GBA copier with the ability to play NDS images, specially patched no less, with the help from a Magic Key, which has no magic to it at all, it's just a PassMe that normally sells for $25 incl. shipping.

But if are you looking for a GBA copier with the ability to play NDS images, and don't own an XG2 2005 512 or 1024mbit already, then the NeoFlash is what you want to get, there's no other option anyway. If you already have an XG2 2005 512/1024, a 256mbit cart won't do the trick, well then there's no reason at all to waste US$200+ on a NeoFlash, try finding a place to buy a PassMe instead.