Ed64 Plus Cheats
Nolan Guyz
The relentless march of technology - combined with the rising price of certain retro games - has created a healthy market for flash carts which allow you to load up a bunch of ROMs onto an SD card and play them on your original vintage consoles.
We've made no secret of our affection for such carts in the past, despite the rather shady moral (not to mention legal) nature of ROM distribution, but if you've got the means to dump ROMs yourself then a flash cart is a valuable way of saving wear and tear on your collection - and it's more convenient than having to constantly dig games out of storage whenever you fancy playing them.
However, db Electronics has cast serious doubt over how suitable such carts are for your old systems, citing the mismatch between the 3.3V carts and the 5V systems they're being used on. The site states that many flash carts - and "multigame" carts, which chuck a load of games onto a single cartridge - don't have the correct tech in place to ensure that damage doesn't occur to both the cart itself and the console it's being used on:
On other common devices, such as multicarts, there is no R1 and a logic high of 5V driven directly into the 3.3V flash results in a short circuit between the 5V and 3.3V supplies. In either case, this causes unnecessary and potentially damaging stress on both ends:
The thing is, many of these flash carts are quite new and haven't been on the market long enough for us to see what kind of damage they can this cause to original hardware - even db Electronics admits that there's not sufficient data to really make a call on this definitively. But what could happen with flash carts which don't have the correct tech inside?
Prolonged use of components outside of their specified tolerances inevitably leads to failure. On the console side, the stress is excessive current output on digital outputs when driving a logic high. On the cartridge side, the stress is excessive heat dissipation due to conduction of the clamping diodes. I have already heard from several friends that their NES consoles have died most likely due to their admittedly heavy use of cheap multicarts. These are particularly bad. I would avoid these like the plague. I suspect poorly designed Everdrives will require more time before we start seeing failures.
db Electronics then goes on to rate a bunch of common flash carts - mostly Everdrives - and the verdict isn't great. The vast majority are listed as "avoid", with only the Mega Everdrive x5, Turbo Everdrive x2, Everdrive N8 and SD2SNES coming out with a high recommendation. Some carts - like Everdrives made for the N64 and Game Boy Advance - aren't listed as they run on 3.3V systems, so there's no mismatch. It is also pointed out that the more recent Everdrive carts have been engineered to a much better specification and moving forward, such voltage mismatches should become a thing of the past - which means the potential of future flash carts harming your consoles is removed completely.
Yeah, that's just sad. You should not be promoting rooms at all. Emulators are not technically illegal but there is no legal way I know of to own a ROM of a Nintendo game and they will tell you that as well.
Well, makes sense, but you have to wonder, is the breaking point in any relevant time span?
But dunno, SD2SNES would be the one to get anyway, since NES is dirty cheap to emulate in almost everywhere,
Roms preserve these games though. if you look at rom dumping as a preservation act, they become a lot less sinister. I''m not a fan of flashcarts myself but the roms themselves are not evil, they're a preservation of the past.
@Kalmaro Well, Nintendo is the company that referred to the game rental business as a "grey market," so I wouldn't put any stock in what they say about ROMs. Owning a ROM is fine, under the right circumstances.
@Kalmaro Just because they show affection for the device that plays roms, doesn't mean they're promoting roms, the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. Its not hard to see the benefits of such devices and even being impressed with them, while at the same time taking a stance that you don't condone the devices and wont personally be getting one either.
As an example, there have been some counterfeit paintings that are next to discernible to the real artist's paintings. You look at some counterfeits after its know, that they're not the real deal, and you can still see that someone talented reproduced the original, and they clearly do have skill and talent, and you can admire them for that. But all at the same time still not condoning the practice of counterfeit nor taking part in the actual trade of such counterfeits.
@mikegamer It is indeed a hefty investment, but with the price of cartridges hiking up every year, pretty much we will no choice in the near future to play all those delicious Super Famicom exlusives.
@GoneFishin To be fair, the article is pretty clear that this is stuff that isn't confirmed at this point to kill the consoles, and that devices like Everdrive are too new to yet be affecting the consoles in such a way, it may still be a decade before Everdrives start wearing down systems (if they ever even do that is).
I still have my original cartridges for my retro consoles. Using tech that wasn't intended for the console sounds like a bad idea as it is. I'd never try it. I prefer to own legal copies of games. The virtual console service doesn't have all games but it has a lot to offer. Hopefully Nintendo can release some of gems that haven't been available yet. Terranigma on the SNES.
I wish there were greater strides to making old videogames available. Availability of NES and SNES minis would be nice, as would a Switch virtual console. Most gamers don't want to be "criminals", but big companies leave us little choice with limited production lines and scalper style secondary markets and yes, I have paid for legit versions of my games several times over and I'm fine to do it again. Having a complete set of NES, SNES, and Genesis roms on an old xbox is mere convenience.
@Kalmaro lol that is rich. Gonna play that ancient cave final fantasy 5 hack for great justice; badass blue mage once I open 1000 needles skill in a chest. Most developers find ways to screw their remakes/rereleases or simply choose not to translate it. Hell, some don't even release demos of games, like not even a test drive to put into car terms.
I use my Everdrives with a Super Retro Trio, instead of the original consoles. I own the original consoles and they work great, but I don't want to put extra wear and tear on them, so I use the Super Retro Trio clones system instead, although I'm looking forward to the forthcoming HD version which supports HDMI.
Not exactly the same circumstances. ROMs are not the same as stealing and people have been doing this since video games existed. The act of making a digital dump of a game is an old practice and one people will continue to do.
Obviously, no one dumps a rom with the purpose of preserving it and that was never my argument to begin with. I'm simply saying that a more positive outlook is to view the roms as preservation. At no point did I ague that dumpers are saviors of the video game kingdom building an Ark of video game data. I simply said that the roms themselves are a digital preservation of video games. Anyone with the slightest tech saavy can access a rom and play it.
Also, roms are the ONLY way to play some games. Not everything had a physical release. This applies to Japanese games as well, which can be downloaded and patched by English speakers to enjoy in their own native tongue.
Put simply, there is nothing evil about roms, only the intent behind the downloader. Downloading new games that are still being counted as a profit towards the developer is bad, no one here is denying that. 20+ year old games are a different story. Arguing otherwise is simply white knighting and arguing for the sake of arguing.
@Kalmaro but what about when there is no legal way to buy that game anymore, other than to buy second hand for 100+ to some 'collector' on eBay, of which no money goes back to Nintendo or the original developer or publisher? I personally buy lots of VC games as a means to own retro games legally and give some money back to the owners, but I end up playing them on my Everdrives anyway because I prefer original hardware. I agree with your point about the preservation excuse. Emulators and ROMs are hardly ever true preservation as they end up bearing little resemblance to what they're supposedly preserving, having to be hacked to death just to work. Only the Higane emulator can use that excuse, as it's a work of genius.
I was worried when I first saw this, but by the end I realised most of my flashcarts fall into the low or zero risk category. Phew. I don't mind too much if the hardware wears out, as that's still pretty cheap to replace. Flashcarts aren't though, I wouldn't want to have to keep replacing those!
@GoneFishin I can assure you that Ren isn't interested in hits for the sake of hits. His site isn't monetized (no ads), and while he does sell some homebrew retro gaming products, none of them are competing with anything Krikzz does. He wrote the article because he had sent several suggestions for improvements in this regard to Krikzz over the years, and never got a response. He wanted to inform people and provoke a change, and since Krikzz has promised to solve the problems on all future products, I'd say the article was successful.
I'm glad I never used pirated games with illegally modded video games anymore.
I started to Clean Slate after my first experience bought the Original games and No Modded video game machines for the first time.
Flashcarts, Homebrew, Modding Communities, all of them started and continue with good intentions and without them NONE of the existing and past game companies would be where they are now, with saying that all communities have within them rotten apples and it only takes 1 to make them all look bad. This latest re-surgance of "classics" would NOT be at the fever pitch it is without these supposed "horrible" communities...
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