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PACKAGING

The only place I've seen this unit being sold is 01MEDIA and it only took a few days for the the package to arrive, great service. The packaging looks very much like the GBA Movie Player, only smaller and very orange. This could mean that the people responsible for the GBA Movie Player also invented this adapter.

The adapter - which is the size of a normal GBA cartridge is, not so surprisingly, placed inside the box in a plastic inlay along with a small piece of paper which is supposed to look like a manual, I believe the nice people at 01MEDIA bothered to include an instruction - the english written on it is too good :-)

There was no software included. Also, please note that the Super Card requires a Compact Flash card, neither CF card or CF USB adapter is included in the package.

WINDOWS SOFTWARE

No software, hrmmm, this has to be downloaded from www.supercard.cn which is okay, if the site wasn't so slow, we'll of course try to offer you the software updates here on 64scener in the future, so be sure to check out the tools section.

There's a couple of different programs for the Super Card, the first one, and probably most important, is the Game Converter. If you want to run games from the Super Card, they have to be converted first, sadly. But this is done easily with this converter. But to make up for the downside of having to convert games, there are options such as:

· Rom compression - games takes up less space on the card.
· Realtime saving - Save anytime and anywhere in any game!
· Enable restart - Return to the game menu without rebooting!
· Save patching
· Enable cheating

Rom compression is excellent as it makes room for more games on your card, you can get room for about 1/3 more games if you use the compression, very nice! Another option I absolutely love about the Super Card is the "Realtime Saving", meaning that you can save in any game and even anytime you'd like to, even in games that normally don't feature saving. The realtime save is stored if the GBA is switched off.

I almost forgot the Restart option which allows you to return to the game menu without having to switch off the GBA first, if you want play another game.... absolutely wonderful... and time saving :-)

Rom Converter - Simple but does the job superb!

If you know a little bit about the 2nd version of the GBA Movie Player you may know that it also features Famicom/NES emulation, and don't worry, the Super Card is also capable of doing FC/NES emulation, even roms of any size. Heck that's not all, it also does SMS/GG and PcEngine emulation, all possible because all the great emulators by Flubba as well as the DrSMS emulator, all are built into the Super Card bios file, now how cool is that? It even play's old GB games! (Isn't too happy about the GBC option in the Goomba emulator)

New bios upgrades are available from time to time just like the GBA Movie Player and the Super Card is even upgraded the excact same way, by placing the bios binary in the root of the CF card and when powering the GBA you'll be prompted with an upgrade Super Card "yes/no" screen where you'll see the current bios version and the version number of the file on the CF card.

THE CARTRIDGE

The cartridge is manufactured only in a purple flavour, I believe it's what Nintendo calls Indigo. The most perfect fit for the Super Card was in the GBA SP, I got a few black screens when using it with the older GBA and it didn't fit at all in the Nintendo DS. The reason why can be found on the back of the Super Card where one side doesn't have the "cut out" piece like the original does. Only one side is used in the GBA SP so the GB switch isn't pushed down when playing GBA games.

The Nintendo DS has a small plastic split on each side of the cartridge connector and one of these splits are in the way when the Super Card is inserted in the Nintendo DS and prevents the Super Card from touching the cart connector. Why on earth they didn't just adapt the design of an original GBA cartridge is beyond me, it's quite sad that this very cool cart doesn't fir in the Nintendo DS. Well once the Super Card is inserted into the GBA along with a Compact Flash card, you'll be presented with a nice, yet very simple, GUI. At the top of the screen there are 4 buttons, first one is the default LIST, displaying what's on the Compact Flash cartridge - only showing files that are compatible with the features of the Super Card. Next button shows the save games available. Third button shows 2 options - Auto load saver and enable set emu options. The fourth button shows the different key combinations used for saving, returning to the menu during game play and such.

Another great feature about the GUI is that you're able to use directories on the CF cartridge, so Famicom games can be placed in one dirctory, GBA games in another and so on.

Upgrade bios screen

Super Card GUI

The Super Card is no good without a Compact Flash card, as mentioned earlier. Today CF cards are quite cheap, not to mention the high storage capacity. The Super Card supports CF cards from 16MBytes to 1GByte - that's 8Gbits - or 12Gbits of games if you use the compression option, though it's said elsewhere on their website that there is no size limit to the CF card. Also, keep in mind that the largest current GBA Flash cartridge is 2Gbits and most has very slow game transfer times.

It takes no more than 8 seconds to transfer a 32Mbit from the CF card to the Super Card, which I believe has 256Mbit built-in. The Super Card is said to run 6 hours on a GBA SP, I have not tested this however but it sounds about right.

SAVE TYPES SUPPORTED

Since the Super Card has built-in realtime save, I don't really care about save support, but I've tested a few games anyway and it turns out the Super Card doesn't save in games with that option unless you tell it to, with a button combination ("Shoulder button L"+"Shoulder button R"+SELECT+A) and even old EEPROM saving in games such as Super Mario Advance goes bezerk if you try to load the saved game, use the "realtime save" option ("Shoulder button L"+"Shoulder button R"+SELECT+B) instead, it worked in every game I tested.

FINAL WORD

I absolutely love the Super Card, though being a bit sceptic at first, like the rom conversion gave me the creeps, but it really isn't too much work. The ability to play (almost) all types of roms without having to patch with various emulators first and the large storage space it just too cool. The realtime save and "return to menu" in-game button combination is just.... WOW! :-)

The price might be a bit high for my taste, but it's a killer product, but please please fix the design bug so that it fits in the Nintendo DS, please please please.