64scener was fortunate enough to get a sample sometime during February and had a review in the works when hell broke loose and we lost the hard drive with the 64scener.com stuff in the works, and there was no backup of course. But here we are, so let's get started with the review.

The X-ROM was probably the cheapest 512mbit cartridge on the market at the time, the cartridge itself is no more than US$119 and along with the Linker cable US$139. Today XG also has a 512mbit set going at one dollar cheaper, but with Easybuy2000 being located in Canada, our US readers might be able to avoid US custom charges.

With a price that cheap, at the time, something had to be saved, and that thing was everything called labels, for the cartridge, a nice gift box and such, I got my X-ROM in a taped bubble plastic bag which wasn't thick enough to take the beating on it's trip from Canada to Denmark.

It's sad that they didn't even bother to slap a nice little sticker on the cartridge letting people know that what they are holding is the X-ROM 512, to be honest, the product looks unfinished.

But that's not all, The X-ROM comes without any manual, driver CD what-so-ever. Drivers and programs have to be downloaded from Easybuy2000's website. All you're getting for your US$139 + postage is a raw cartridge and linker cable with one of the most bulky and badly looking GBA connectors I've ever seen, I've compared it to the Flash 2 Advance and EZF-Advance linkers on the picture below.

TOP: X-ROM Linker, MIDDLE: Flash2Advance Linker, BOTTOM: EZF-Advance Linker

As said earlier, because there was no gift box and the packaging was bad, the plastic on my X-ROM linker broke into 3 pieces, now it's being held together by a rubber band. Come on Easybuy 2000, you could've done much better than this... crap, to be honest.

But wait, I'm not done with this badly made linker. The cord on this thing is no more than half a meter maximum, now seriously another half meter of wire can't be *that* expensive. I can't say this enough, this linker is so badly and bulky made, just check the picture below, but with that said, the Linker does work, even after a good beating by the currier service.

X-ROM Linker attached to a GBA/SP

To throw a little more dirt at the X-ROM Linker, the GBASP can not be charged while the X-ROM Linker is attached, only because it is as bulky as it is. But enough enough bashing of the Linker, the thing does work, I just don't like the design of it, it looks more like a prototype put into production than a finalized product.

The cartridge, currently only available as 512mbit, a 1Gigabit is in the works though, is actual GBA cartridge size like most GBA flash carts are these days. It fits perfectly into old-style GBA as well as the GBA SP, removal of the cartridge is easy, unlike a few others, such as the XG-Flash cartridge.

There is a total of 2Mb SRAM for saving. It seems to have nearly the same save support as the latest GBA copiers like the Extreme Flash Advance and G6 Flash, both released at a later date than the X-ROM. There were no problems what-so-ever with the SRAM and EEPROM games I tested with the unit. The game with FLASH save I tested stalled when saving so you had to power off the GBA, but the game did save after all. The cartridge also comes with RTC (Real Time Clock) useful for Pokemon fans.

As for software, the X-ROM surely lacks support from it's publisher, basicly because there is no real first party software except some DOS utilities which can be used for uploading and dumping games if you want to. It is all depending on LittleWriter, which is known to be very unstable. I've had my moments with LittleWriter, but the versions supporting X-ROM seem to run alright, it gets the job done, very slow though.

Upload of 32mbit took 99 seconds with LittleWriter which is far unacceptable eventhough it also had to do some erasing first, but I've seen this done faster. A new program has recently been released, called X-ROM Flasher, however that program seemed even worse, there was no listing of games currently on the cartridge, making nearly useless. It all smells too much of a budget flash cart and linker to be honest. I won't bother getting into the cartridge GUI since it's the usual, boring, LittleWriter menu.

The X-ROM also has a cheatcode system built in, called something like "XCode Cheat Patch" which is a plug in in little writer using Action Replay files for cheating. On Easybuy2000's website there's a detailed description of how to use this, I won't bother going into detail here as I find these cheat options stupid and pointless, but that's just my opinion. Some of you may like this feature, now it has ben mentioned that it's there, and that is it :-)

With all this said, bulky Linker with short cable, slow sending time, no nice label or gift box, it has to be said that the X-ROM Flash cart gets the job done, I've now used the X-ROM for serveral months and must say that the cartridge has been one of my favorites of all time, mainly because of the size. But now that most competitors have 512mb sets, I see no reason to put the X-ROM above any other copier.

But being in America or Canada the X-ROM might be the one to get mainly because Easybuy2000 is based in Canada and you therefore will be able to save some customs charges. If you do go for an X-ROM there is nothing to worry about, you'll be getting a quality product.