Review: Supercard SD for Gameboy Advance
By Jeffrey | October 29, 2007
Note: This guide is directed solely towards the Gameboy Advance feature of the Supercard.
Also, all ROM files discussed and utilized throughout the course of this review are legal backups of Gameboy Advance games that I own. SavvyGeek does not condone, nor facilitate, piracy in any form.
I tend to go through cycles when it comes to my gaming habits.
I will focus on one system, move on to another, and, more often than not, I’ll get nostalgic for older systems that I loved to play.
Most recently, I pulled out my Gameboy Advance SP and lugged it along with me on a recent vacation. As I was playing I noticed that it is rather tedious to carry around a dozen games for what would otherwise be a great portable system.
I started reading up on Gameboy Advance flash carts - I’d known about them for a couple years - and after some research decided to settle on the Supercard SD.
Here’s the solution I found…
What’s A Flash Cart?
A Game Boy Advance flash cartridge is one of several cartridges containing flash memory that have been developed for use in the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. These cartridges enable homebrew applications and games to be used on a GBA.
More recent cartridges use external memory cards as memory, in place of onboard memory, such as Compact Flash, Secure Digital, etc. memory cards.
Thanks to Wikipedia.
The Supercard
The Supercard falls in that latter category of carts that are actually flash adapters that take typical memory cards and allow the Gameboy to read from them.
Other such flash carts exist, notably the M3 which is a - some might argue better - competitor to the Supercard.
Although a miniSD version is available that is the exact size of an actual Gameboy Advance cartridge, I chose the slightly longer SD version, as I didn’t have any miniSD cards available.
For all intents and purposes, though, both versions of the Supercard are exactly the same other than that key difference.
Opening It Up
I ordered mine from Jandaman’s - a great import gaming store - and it arrived in about a week, counting the weekend.
The light orange box it comes in is rather indiscreet, featuring legible, but broken English, descriptions and graphics. No instructions are included, other than the basics, and only the cart itself sits inside in its cheap plastic holding.
Not incredibly impressive, but it gets the job done, and the card was protected.
The Cart
The Supercard SD is only slightly longer than an actual Gameboy Advance cartridge, and only slightly protrudes from the end of the system when it is inserted.
Not as perfect as I’d like, but it does not get in the way at all during play.
As mentioned above, the cart is really useless by itself, as it requires the use of an SD memory card in order to function. I had a few available and decided on a 512mb card.
In theory, any size SD card should work, but when you take in to account that you can fit around 50 Gameboy Advance games on a 512mb card, any larger is almost superfluous.
The SD card is inserted in the side and “clicks” into place in typical SD fashion.
Playing Attempt
After inserting the card in the Gameboy Advance and throwing the switch I was greeted with a blank menu.
Although, this was to be expected, as no files have yet been placed on the device in this virgin state. However, it did ensure the device was working.
The Supercard operates using a simple directory structure, and the List tab will “list” - clever, eh? - the files available on the device.
Load ‘Er Up!
Much like software emulators, the flash cartridges operate through use of game ROM files. The key difference, however, is that no emulation is taking place on the Gameboy Advance as it runs the games natively.
However, it is more complicated than simply copying over a bunch of ROM files and playing. First, they need to be patched, using the Super Card patching software, which is available from the company’s web site.
Once installed, I opened the program and added in my ROM files.
The program allows the setting of options for each game you want to patch. Here’s a breakdown of what you can do:
- Enable Save - The Supercard does not automatically store game saves while playing. If you want to save normally as the game allows, you must enable this option for the patched game. Then, when you normally save in game, you then can store that save on the Supercard. Enable more Saver allows for more space for this, but I never used that option.
- Enable saver Patch - This is the patch for the option above.
- Enable Real Time Save - Software emulators have a popular feature which allows the saving of a “state” - that is, saving anywhere, anytime in a game. That is what this option allows for, as well. Enable more Real Time Saver provides more space for this option.
- Enable Restart - Similar to the In Game Reset option that a modded Xbox has, this allows you to instantly exit a game and return to the Supercard menu.
- Enable add text file - Any text file can be added to the game, allowing for FAQs and game guides to be accessed while playing a game.
- Enable Cheat - Just as it says, this allows for cheat options to be patched in to a game.
After selecting which options to patch with, and proceeding, the program successfully patched the ROM files and exported them to the directory I had selected.
Although the software provided little to no explanation on what each option did, once I learned the basics the process was very straightforward and painless.
Playing For Real
After I copied the files to my SD card, and re-inserted it in the Supercard, I was ready to go.
I popped the cart into my Gameboy Advance, turned it on, and was greeted with the same menu, only this time with my games displayed.
The List displayed my files, the Saver tab my save files, the Options tab allows me to choose whether my most recent save was loaded automatically or not, and whether to set the emulation options manually (more on that later), and the Help tab displayed a list of what button combinations did what in-game.
Overall, the menu was very functional, and, although not gorgeous, looked good enough for what it was.
Most of the Gameboy Advance games I tried ran perfectly, although some did not. The Supercard has been criticized for the slowdown that can occur in some games. The reason for this, without getting too technical, is that the Supercard memory is just not fast enough to keep up with these games.
But again, I rarely encountered this problem, so having to carry around a couple actual cartridges is not a major issue.
Emulation
One other nice benefit that the Supercard has built-in is the ability to emulate older systems, specifically Sega Master System (including Game Gear games), NES, Gameboy/Color, and PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16.
Playing these old games is as simple as copying their ROM files - they don’t need to be patched - on to the SD card for the Supercard. It loads them up natively as easily as it does Gameboy Advance files.
Compatibility is not perfect, as the built-in emulation’s foundation is in the homebrew emulators available for each system, but it worked just fine for me with the original Gameboy games I threw at it.
But…
I did run into some various problems while using the Supercard, particularly with the firmware.
The Supercard has a nice feature of being able to upgrade the firmware on the cart. I attempted to do this, going directly to the latest version (1.83), and it upgraded fine.
Unfortunately, this broke all the emulators so they would no longer run. After some searching I discovered that the firmware must be updated incrementally with each progressive update (1.70 - 1.80 - 1.81 - 1.83, etc.) in order to avoid this bug. Once I did that it worked fine.
Also, although the cart itself is rather nice, with some very attractive features, the complete lack of information, instructions, and software included made the learning curve much more steep.
Thankfully, the Internet is a savior for this type of thing, especially due to the communities that exist around modding, so it was easily overcome.
Still, it does place the Supercard slightly out of the beginning user’s grasp.
Also, because it is based around the Secure Digital format, one must have an SD card reader, or at least a digital camera that uses that media type, to access and add files.
Most people will have access to this, but still, it’s a drawback.
So, How’d It Do?
Even with those problems, though, the Supercard performed superbly. I loved its “emulation-like” features that it allowed games to use, as well as the built-in emulation of other systems.
The menu was functional, the software and firmware is easily updated, and the cart is perfectly portable.
All in all, it fit my purpose of game consolidation perfectly, and I highly recommend it to anybody seeking to get some old life out of their Gameboy Advance.
Memory Size - 10/10
Features - 9/10
Ease Of Use - 7/10
Portability - 10/10
Functionality - 9/10
Final Score - 9/10
Some Notes
The Supercard is able to be used on a Nintendo DS, as well, but my purpose for the cart was the Gameboy Advance. Reviews and guides for the Nintendo DS side of things are readily available online.
The cart also supports some other capability, like media playback (mp3, gameboy video, etc.), but as dated as the system is for such purposes I had little interest in reviewing that portion of its features.
And finally, a full PDF guide to the Supercard’s capabilities, written by FifthE1ement, is available from here.
Topics: Guides |
Haloo
Posted by: Zendy on July 29th, 2008 at 2:20 pmThanks for the review, but after I follow your review I can’t list my game (I follow your instruction, like using supercard software V2.62, but I update the firmware V1.85) can U explain it?
Sori if I just newbie in here and If my english is bad..
Thanks again