Help me buy the best DS Flash Cart for a friend please? (he's paying)

[Searyan]

Hello, I've done some reason on DS Flash carts and I'm worried some of it is either here-say or outdated information. A friend of mine asked me to find him the best flash cart for $60 (including shipping and any other expenses like memory) and I only know so much about them. I know some of them can do a lot of things, and the things we're looking for are save states, cheats, GBA and Snes emulator, homebrew (perhaps other emulators?), and most importantly easy to use (he's an average computer user, drag and drop would be the best). I know all of that can be done on some so called "third generation" flash carts that have their own RAM and CPU. I'm a little worried to go in with just a day of research or so and just buy one, so I went here for people who would have the most knowledge about the best cards with little bias. If anyone can help me, thanks you very much.

[Zorlon]

What is the kit for, DS or DSi or 3DS??

on DS you won't want to emulate GBA you just play them via a 3in1 slot2 card

on DSi/3DS there is only one that can play GBA and that would be the DSTWO kit

[Searyan]

He has a DS lite (or original, but I don't know which but I know it's not a DSi). So if he gets this the GBA emulation wont work unless he has a DSi?

[Zorlon]

Oh it should work no reason for it not to but it is emulation and does not have 100% compat with GBA games, some games just have issues, like graphics glitches or slowdowns others won't boot and some just work fine but if you go with a regular NDS flash kit, like an acekard and grab a 3in1 gba slot expantion you will get NDS 100% and GBA 100% compat

3in1 uses actual GBA side hardware but a DSTWO does not, you can still get a DSTWO if you like and a 3in1 slot 2 device so you can take advantage of the DSTWO SNES emulation at the same time as taking advanatge of GBA using the actual GBA hardware of the DS/DS lite, though you may need to dig round for a 3rd party GBA loader

M3 Real and GBA Expantion is another kit that will give 100% NDS (some games need AP patching) and 100% GBA
One of the Supercard range has support for a 3in1 slot 2 cart (i.e. a GBA cart for GBA roms & homebrew), not sure if the DSTWO has native support for that though
EZ Flash do there own 3in1 and NDS Kits
there are others but can't think of em off the top of my head

Edit:- from what I can gather the Supercard DSTwo still has support for the 3in1 Slot 2 devices with a 3rd party gba loader (I can link you later if you are interested in doing that)

RTC is not supported from what I have read with the Supercard 3in1 combo but is in the DSTWO emulation (this is just what I have read mind as my M3 Real plus GBA Expantion does not suffer by this and my kit also supports save states that is also claimed as not supported by 3in1 slot 2 devices)

My advice would be to go for the DSTWO kit on it's own then think about a 3in1 at a later date, that you can use as an addon, it can also serve as extra memory for some emulators for the DS

[phoenix1234]

as a regular helper on a certain well known nds site, i can safely say the best card at the moment is the supercard dstwo, this card's website has everything you need to play gba and snes roms with the card http://eng.supercard.sc/manual/dstwo/ look in the plugins tab, it also plays AVI files for movies, which eliminates the need for moonshell which is far worse, all in all its the best card around and is highly recommended by people i know that have it.

[Searyan]

Thanks everyone . I saw the DSTwo before this and thought about it but I really needed a second opinion. Now that I know it's the best, I know it'll be ok to buy, thank you all again. That site I linked to seems like a good place to buy from because it bundles the SD card and has free shipping, so that's where I'm getting it most likely.