Looking for opinions on good flashcarts for my DS Lite.

[Kazekai]

As per request of a mod I'll just make a new thread asking some questions. I tried the suggestions in the other thread but none worked for me. I will try to go into more detail about my finds and concerns though.

I would like some suggestions on a flashcart for my DSLite, and have come across a lot of controversies in this area of gaming culture. Some people swear by R4SDHC carts which was my favored choice until I had too much trouble finding a decent place to order them from.

One of my friends has an Acekart but apparently it's heavy on his battery and I don't want something that will kill the battery, I want my handheld to be as portable as it is now so I can have something on the bus, at the doctor's, at relative's houses, etc.

Some people suggest a Supercard (sp?) as being the best available. However, I know nothing about it except that it is a bit pricey. I don't want to spend more than $20 on a flashcart but that is negotiable. Some of the other brands people swear by are $60 and that's just out of my reach entirely.

And I want to know more about this R4 controversy. People claim the cart sucks and that the SDHC is a "ripoff" despite apparently being superior. What are the (preferably objective) pros and cons to both carts?

So yeah, suggestions please?
---

I would also like to ask another question: How is emulation in general on a DS Lite? A big reason why I'm interested in homebrew for my DS is because I want a portable emulator that isn't $500 (What I wouldn't give for an OpenPandora), and my PSP ended up being really terrible for emulation. At most, it could emulate GBA games but froze up/crashed when I wanted to run some of my favorites (The most notable being Hamtaro for GBA) so I am curious about how the DS holds up about emulators. I know that it runs GBA games natively which is a big plus since the GBA is one of my favorite systems, but what about 4th-gen and earlier consoles and earlier Nintendo handhelds like the GBC?

Edit: I should also mention I am primarily interested in slot-1 carts, or things which can handle an SDHC micro SD card.

[Zorlon]

The DS Lite can't emulate much at all, Megadrive/Genesis to a certain extent actually a very good emulator but due to screen size issues the image will be either warped or will need to scroll, SNES is out of the question as is GBA (though GBA can be played via a slot 2 device, like a GBA flash kit or a GBA memory kit + a Slot 1 device) anything from NES and Mastersystem under is emulated on the DS, GBC and Gamegear and under aswell, there is also SCUMMVM that works or for a handful of games (it is a lite version so some of the engines are disabled due to the limitations of the DS)

If you are only ever going to use a DSLite then the best kit is actually an M3Real kit or if you can't find one of those then the Acekard2i is very very good both use SDHC and that is not the issue with the R4 kits, the issue is that you don't know what you are getting when you buy any R4 kit there are tons of them and not one is by the official R4 team, they just use the R4 name to sell them

Battery drain... can't say I noticed battery drain and I had the original R4 kit, M3real kit & Acekard2i aswell as the SupercardDSTwo and none drain the battery any more than the other, if any of those should do it would be the SupercardDSTWO kit because of the extra work it does compared with any other kit

SupercardDSTwo can actually emulate GBA and SNES due to extra onboard chips inside the flash kit but don't get too excited the emulation of both is not perfect though GBA is close most software runs perfect for GBA while a few other seem to have bad sound (not terrible but not perfect), SNES has more issues but there are games that do run nice just don't expect everything to run nice, the extra chip set can be used in other emulators as well but most do not support it (I couldn't tell you if the game you had issues with on the PSP GBA emu would work any better with the SupercardDSTWO)

The PSP is really good for emulation but it is emulation and most emulators do not have 100% compat there will be games that don't work or just have issues in most emulators, for GBA though just use the DSLite's Slot 2 with a 3 in 1 cart (might be 4 in 1 I don't remember off the top of my head) these let you boot GBA roms from your Slot 1 flash kit, personally I have a full M3Real kit with a GBA Expansion & rumble pack that does the same thing as a GBA 3 in 1 for the M3Real (the 3 features are GBA memory used with the web browser, rumble and memory used to enable GBA rom from Slot 1)

Slot 2 flash kits cost a lot more than Slot 1 kits, because you want to be as cheap as you can and still get the best, then go for a 3 in 1 GBA kit (they are not GBA flash kits but require a Slot 1 flash kit) the M3 Real kit can end up costing a bit when you add the GBA expansion kits so perhaps an Acekard2i plus the cheapest 3 in 1 you can find or M3real kit plus a 3 in 1 instead of it own GBA Expansion, though if it was me I know the M3Real kit plus it's own GBA expansion works better than most other cards using a 3 in 1 so I would stick to that but the cost may put you off and be tempted with a cheap R4 card.

R4 kits you will need to patch DS games to bypass protection and you will want 3rd party flash kit software like R4wood or TTMenu or YSMenu depending on the kit you end up with

Acekard2i requires no patching last time I checked, it has been a couple of months since I stopped using mine though as it was blocked by nintendo on the 3DS
My M3Real kit hasn't been used in a while either but never needed to patch games on that either

Most help threads about DS flash kit issues are for R4 kits
Never seen any problem posts for M3Real kits (though you can't use those in newer version of the DS hardware like the DSi or 3DS)
Not seen Acekard2i issues posted here either
The SupercardDSTwo has never seen problem posts

We do from time to time get posts about how to get flash kits running to start with, because there is no flash kit that can just have roms on the MicroSD you also need to the flash kit system software on there as well also known as a kernal

[3dsgamedemon]

in short, if u wanna play GBA games get the supercard. otherwise, go for the r4i gold card. Since u don't want sth that will kill the battery, nor want to spend more than $20, r4i gold card will be more appropriate for u

[Zorlon]

in short, if u wanna play GBA games get the supercard. otherwise, go for the r4i gold card. Since u don't want sth that will kill the battery, nor want to spend more than $20, r4i gold card will be more appropriate for u

The best GBA solution for the DSLite is not the Supercard DSTWO, not even close

I have already given plenty of reasons to avoid R4 kits in general, AceKard2i is a cheap option but for GBA the 2nd best option is a GBA slot card that uses the Slot 1 card to run GBA software, the best option is a GBA flash kit

The best value for money option is a GBA slot card that requires the DS flash kit to run GBA roms

Both of those options run a lot better than the Supercard DSTWO
GBA Flash kits have perfect GBA compat for most GBA flash kits specially the M3 range but they cost a penny or two
3 in 1 GBA kits/GBA expansion runs GBA perfect as well and are a lot cheaper

both the GBA flash kit and GBA 3 in 1/Expansion also support GBA to DS link, it is a lil complicated to get working on the 3 in 1 and Expansion though but it is very possible (not that complicated but not as easy as a GBA flash kit... depends on how you set both up to be honest, this can also depend on the Slot 1 features again the M3 team done the best job here but they are slightly more costly to other kits, but not to the extent the Supercard DSTWO is.

GBA to DS link isn't featured in many games but the ones it does is used for unlocking extra content and/or trading

Myself I don't see the price as a problem as it is still cheaper than buying a new game when you get to play whatever you like and have as many as you like providing you get the best kit

P.S. Supercard do have cheap flash kits aswell it is only the DSTWO that has the higher price tag due to the custom chips made/used, a little history lesson but Supercard kits are the cheapest and started off rather small but with good compat for GBA, not the best at the time of release but grew rather quickly and became one of the best on the market, they are still among the cheapest flash kits but also have the most expensive aswell and this is from someone that was never a huge fan of Supercard kits I'm more for M3 but had to move from them for the 3DS and went with the next best thing, the AceKard2i then the finally the DSTWO (I actually had the DSTWO before the AceKard2i but prefured the Acekard2i but it was finally blocked on the 3DS so pulled out the DSTWO again)