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Unfortunately the NeoFlash needed games to be patched to be able to run, however no patcher was available to the public in the beginning, but at least it offered the possibility of running commercial NDS games when no other copier did. Later on a patcher was released, so people would be able to patch their own clean dumps to work with the NeoFlash. By this time a lot of other companies started to offer add-on's to their products, doing exactly what the NeoFlash already had accomplished.

The NeoFlash team then began working on the next generation of NeoFlash, and here is the result. The new product is known as NeoMax, which is either a 512Mbit GBA cart and Magic Key 2 or a Magic Key 3.

PACKAGING AND CONTENT

The packaging just gets better and better. If this box doesn't appeal to you then you should be ashamed of yourself. It has a nice touch of Matrix theme over it, just check the background image and also, no more poor english text written on the box. Professional and great hardbox packaging.

NeoMax Packaging

• USB Slim Loader III (GBA reader/writer)
• NeoMax GBA (512Mbit + 128Mbit Zip) Cartridge
• NDS Magic Key 3 (64Mbit + 32Mbit Zip)
• AData SD 128MB card (1Gbit)
• SD/MMC USB Pen
• 3 x Batteries (for GBA cartridge)
• USB Extension cable
• Driver CD

NeoMAX GBA Cartridge

Once again the GBA flash cartridge included is nothing more than a standard NeoFlash cartridge. The NeoMax cart is also detected in the Neo Power Kit V1.2, but not in version 1.0 though, so there could be some changes to the cart. Anyway It's not a bad thing to use the existing NeoFlash cart design, it's been around forever and therefore all bugs should be gone by now. According to the manufacturer it's possible to use the XG2 2005 series (1G) and NeoFlash carts with the MagicKey 2 and 3 "loader menu" in the near future.

MagicKey 3

The MagicKey has come a long way from it's initial release, which back then was nothing more than a PassMe adapter. You no longer have to upload the game you want to play to the GBA cartridge. The new Magic Keys makes use of SD and MMC carts for storing NDS roms and savegames, smells a bit like M3 and Supercard, and is able to copy the NDS rom to the GBA cart (slow) or play it directly from the MagicKey 3's internal memory or directly from the SD/MMC cartridge. The last feature mentioned is not available until version 0.3 of the "NDS loader menu" is released.

THE LINKER

As for the GBA linker, there's nothing new under the sun here. Just like the XG2-Flash 2005 and NeoFlash sets, the NeoMAX also uses the USB Slim Loader 3. It works and that's what matters. With the latest verison of the NeoFlash Power Kit software, the NeoMAX cart also is detected as NeoFlash cart :-)

The Linker can be used to upload GBA games to the NeoMAX GBA cart, or another brand of GBA flash cart in the future. More important, it is also used to upload the "NDS menu loader" to the GBA cart. Later on the "menu loader" on the GBA cart will be upgradable from the SD card, by downloading new versions of the loader from the SD cart to the GBA cart. This feature is said to be available from V0.4 of the "NDS menu loader".

THE SPECS

The Magic Key 2 and 3 should be able to use any GBA flash cart for storing the loader menu and NDS game, but the current loader only allows for NeoMAX carts to be used. Please note that not all other GBA flash cart brands will be able to run NDS games due to their design, NeoFlash can only be held responsible for getting their own type of cartridges working with the loader and NDS roms.

A "Built-in SMS2 system" allows save games to be saved to - or restored from the SD/MMC card. The hardware features 2Mbit save and supports both EEPROM and FLASH saving.

Only the Magic Key 3 has a 32/64/128Mbit buffer area and 64/256/512Mbit NOR game flash, which can be used for storing various files, saves or even run games or various applications off the MagicKey 3 instead of a GBA cart. This feature is not yet supported in the loader software though. It's also said that it includes 16Mbit menu flash, but as the loader menu is stored on the GBA flash cart, I suspect that this is an error?

The most interesting thing about the NeoMAX is that it doesn't require games to be pre-patched, which makes it the only device on the market right now where you can copy a clean game dump directly to the SD or MMC cartridge and run it, while other devices such as the M# struggle with weekly "game manager" software updates to make sure games work. Best ever reason to go for the NeoMAX in my book.

Team NEOFlash always lines up a lot of features which, to be honest, are very confusing, so I hope I got it all right.

What you see is what you get :-)

You're now able to store your NDS games on a SD or MMC card, much like the M3(CF/SD) and SuperCard (CF/SD), but the major difference is that NDS roms can be copied directly to the SD/MMC card without having to use a program first to patch the roms, like the M3 needs. With the help of a "NDS menu loader", placed on a GBA flash cart, the NDS roms can either be copied to the GBA cartridge for playing or played directly from the SD/MMC card.

Starting from version 0.3 of the menu, other GBA flash carts than the NeoMAX cart is claimed to work, we've tested the following with a 64Mbit rom:

TYPE	SIZE	NOTE
AnyU (Super FC)	128M	Stops at "please wait" before flashing
EFA (Extreme Flash Advance)	512M	Stops at "please wait" before flashing
EFA II	1G	Doesn't work because of the EFA2 loader
Ewin	256M	Stops at "please wait" before flashing
EZ-Flash III	1G	Stops after only a second of flashing
EZF-Advance III (SmartCard)	256M	Fails to boot the NDS rom after flashing
NeoFlash	512M	Stops at "please wait" before flashing
Qbus	256M	Stops at "please wait" before flashing
XG Flash	128M	Stops at "please wait" before flashing
XG2 Turbo 2005	256M	Works!
XG2 Turbo 2005	1G	Works!
X-ROM	512M	Stops after a few seconds of flashing

NDS roms now also can be played directly from the SD/MMC card from version 0.3 of the menu and forward, which gives the Magic Key 3 the exact same features as the M3, but without a lot of patching to do first. Should the game not run straight off the SD/MMC card, it can always be copied to a GBA cartridge and be run from there. Later on games and programs can also be loaded into and run from memory built into the MagicKey 3, this feature does not exist in the MagicKey 2 though.

Everything you need is packed with the NeoMAX kit, even a nice SD cart, size depending on how much you want to pay for the kit. I think the largest NeoMAX kit you can get though is 16Gigabit, it comes with a 2 Gigabyte SD cart.

At the time of writing, only a few early versions of the loader menu are available and it clearly shows that there's room for improvement, but also that the menu has com a long way since the initial release.

Copying a 64mbit rom from the SD to the NeoMAX GBA cart took:

Version 0.1 = 1 minute and 40 seconds
Version 0.2 = 1 minute and 25 seconds
Version 0.3 = 1 minute and 33 seconds

As the M3 loads a game almost instantly, due to running the games straight off the CF/SD card, instead of copying them to a GBA cart, the time the MagicKey3 uses to copy to the flash cart isn't too impressive, and the latest menu version even seems slightly slower than the previous. But from version 0.3 of the menu and foward, the MagicKey 3 will also be able to run games straight off the SD/MMC cart, unfortunately some games doesn't seem to work with this feature yet, but a very none the less.

The first version of the loader was said only to support 64mbit files, but I've successfully loaded files up to 256mbit, though these sometimes halted during the copying and I had to start over. This seems to have been fixed in version 0.2 of the menu though.

After a game has been copied to the GBA cart, the NDS has to be "power cycled" which means that you have to power off and on again, and not to forget, keep the start button pressed until the game starts. Hopefully it'll be possible to restart the NDS and start the game automaticly by pressing a button on the screen later on in the "menu loader" development.

Savegames are handled automaticly by the "menu loader". If you reflash the GBA cart with a new NDS game, you'll be asked if you want to backup the save from the previous game, to the SD cart, and also load a save for the new game if it exists. Unfortunately it isn't possible to just reload the savegame, or save it, unless you also flash a games, but I've been told that this will be possible in a future version.

The SD card included is a "A Data" (MyFlash) brand and it works flawless with the early loaders. In fact, it seems to be the only one that actually does work. I've tried a few other SD brands, a Kingston (512mbyte) and a Toshiba (16mbyte), but none of these seems to work, yet. I've heard of many other brands not working, the most common error is "unable to mount" the card in the loader, which leads me to believe that currently only "A Data" SD carts works with the loader. This has later been confirmed by the NeoFlash team.

We've tested the following SD card brands with menu 0.3:

TYPE	SIZE	NOTE
A data (MyFlash)	128mb	Works! (supplied by neomax)
Canon	32mb	Works!
Kingston	512mb	Works!
Toshiba	16mb	Fatal error initializing FAT

WINDOWS SOFTWARE

While no windows software really is needed, a program called NeoMAX was included with the kit I received. I don't recommend installing this piece of software, it's unnesseary for playing NDS games and is currently early in development. If you need to upload the "NDS menu loader" or a GBA game directly to the NeoMAX GBA cartridge, I suggest that you use the NeoFlash Power Kit V1.2.

For uploading NDS games to the SD cartridge, you may use your favourite SD/MMC card reader or the one supplied in the NeoMAX kit, no driver is needed. The games can either be placed in the root directory of the SD/MMC card, or placed in specific directories, but please note that the names of directories right now is limited to 8 characters.

Windows software

Unfortunately the NeoMAX Team has given the product a bad start. The NeoFlash seemed rushed and so does the NeoMAX. It took them what seems to be forever to get the product on the market and buyers are, as usual, impatient if their purchase doesn't work as expected. When the NeoMAX finally did hit the streets, only a very early, and not to mention buggy, loader was available. Things like this surely pisses off a lot of people and creates a lot of bad hype for the NeoMAX, some of the negativity most likely the outcome of fustration over not actually being able to use the product yet.

The NeoMAX seems great though, I was quite amazed even by the early loader and I'm fairly sure it will be lot more game compatible than the M3 in the future, without as much "ROM pokus pokus" as the M3 needs. But right now there really is no reason to spend your hard earned money, unless a new and much better loader is released soon, which I'm quite sure they're working on as you read this, the team is known for great support and lots of updates, I have seen some nice progress in just one week, from version 0.1 to 0.2 of the loader.

Some people have called Team NeoFlash thieves, for releasing products that doesn't work very well on launch day. I wouldn't go this far though, the GBA/NDS copier business is tough, there are lots of companies trying to be number one and delaying a product could cost a lot of money, so my question is, what would you do? delay your product until you have some working software, and risk loosing everything to the competitors, or get the product out on the streets and then iron out bugs as they're discovered?

I know what I would do, and I know what a lot of companies does, just look at all the patches released for PC games.

But for me to encourage anyone to buy a product that doesn't work very well yet, I can not do that. I will however update this review when new software is available, to ensure that you get the most up-to-dat progress report on the loader menu, because I believe thenew MagicKey 3, NeoMAX, has a lot of potential and could become the best NDS compatible "copier" product on the market.

+ I absolutely love the idea.
+ Potential to kill off all competition
+ Less bulky than the M3
+ Great and simple save support
+ Very nice user interface, but room for improvement.
+ Extremely easy to use.
+ No patching of roms before use!
+ Dedicated manufacturer

Unfortunately, due to the current state of the loader software, there's a lot of negatives, but I'm fairly sure that these will be removed very soon.