Author Topic: Everdrive/Flashback carts for NES and SNES  (Read 672 times)

May 07, 2014, 07:43:33 PM
Read 672 times

FritzWhite

  • *******
  • Information Offline
  • Devoted Member
  • Posts: 1555
Hey guys, I was wondering if any of you have experience with these all in one carts for playing your games. Is there any real difference playing games on an Everdrive or Powerpak as opposed to the real deal? Likes, dislikes, thoughts? Thanks!

May 07, 2014, 08:04:17 PM
Reply #1

wiggy

  • The one.. the only... whatever
  • **
  • Information Offline
  • Maximum Volume Poster
  • Posts: 8241
  • Extra cheese please!
    • Rose Colored Gaming
I have an Everdrive for the TG-16.  If there's any difference between it and the real thing, then I can't tell. The SNES is a tad trickier though. Some games won't be playable at all and some will have various levels of compatibility between the various brands of flash cart.  I'm sure someone else with more knowledge of each individual cart will chime in with the pros and cons of each.

May 07, 2014, 08:07:18 PM
Reply #2

FritzWhite

  • *******
  • Information Offline
  • Devoted Member
  • Posts: 1555
Yeah, I read that Super Mario RPG and SMW2:Yoshi's Island are no go on the cart, along with some of the games that use the FX chip. I'm just wondering if I could go in and play some of the rpgs like LoZ or Chrono Trigger and if they play just the same with saves and all that.
Thanks for reply

May 07, 2014, 08:10:08 PM
Reply #3

sLpFhaWK

  • ***
  • Information Offline
  • Full Member
  • Posts: 193
    • Email
If you get the Everdrive snes cart it can't play most of the games with a special chip, i know sfx can be soldered on the board and some of those games will work. the sd2snes has alot of the chips on the board already but thats why its also $100 more than the Everdrive for the Snes.


May 07, 2014, 08:18:25 PM
Reply #4

FritzWhite

  • *******
  • Information Offline
  • Devoted Member
  • Posts: 1555
Do the games come preinstalled or do you need to go online and download them onto an SD card that plugs into the cart? There aren't that many FX games besides Starfox and Doom right? I'm sure there's some FX games list out there probably.

Do you recommend a certain type of all in one cart then? What's the best one, thanks

I found this link for the SD2SNES cart, but some of the product notes might as well be written in Chinese. I assume that if I want to store a large library of games on this one cart then it would be better to do the 64 or 32gb instead of the 8gb. What's the difference for the number of games that you can store for different memory card sizes? Do you have to download the games? Is it easy to set up, use, navigate, etc? Any good reviews available on this
« Last Edit: May 07, 2014, 08:46:21 PM by FritzWhite »

May 07, 2014, 08:43:02 PM
Reply #5

shenske

  • Nice Guy Admin
  • *
  • Information Offline
  • Omega
  • Cover Admin
  • Posts: 4975
  • In time of trouble ... He shall set me upon a rock
    • Email
Outside of compatibility there is really no difference.

I have most of them and i mainly use them for hacks and games that i haven't played before. Its more like an extended demo cart for me. I play a whole bunch of games i've never heard of or are recommended to me and if i like them then i seek out adding them to my collection.  :)




My Covers that ARE NOT hosted on TCP
https://app.box.com/shared/hbm9k6fhvy

May 07, 2014, 08:58:25 PM
Reply #6

FritzWhite

  • *******
  • Information Offline
  • Devoted Member
  • Posts: 1555
Found this review which is pretty informative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8TYIh5CWx8

Another vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnYoo2vDOk

Looks like you have to do some downloading from the puter. Maybe I'll find some tutorial on it.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2014, 09:15:39 PM by FritzWhite »

May 07, 2014, 09:13:37 PM
Reply #7

shenske

  • Nice Guy Admin
  • *
  • Information Offline
  • Omega
  • Cover Admin
  • Posts: 4975
  • In time of trouble ... He shall set me upon a rock
    • Email
Found this review which is pretty informative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8TYIh5CWx8

I've seen that video review before. It drives me nuts he didn't put the board in a shell  :-X




My Covers that ARE NOT hosted on TCP
https://app.box.com/shared/hbm9k6fhvy

May 07, 2014, 09:22:26 PM
Reply #8

sLpFhaWK

  • ***
  • Information Offline
  • Full Member
  • Posts: 193
    • Email
Found this review which is pretty informative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8TYIh5CWx8

Another vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnYoo2vDOk

Looks like you have to do some downloading from the puter. Maybe I'll find some tutorial on it.

I watched his video before I bought mine, it really wasn't informative.

All you gotta do is download the Roms on the computer and copy them to the SD card and thats all there is involved.

May 07, 2014, 10:38:05 PM
Reply #9

KalessinDB

  • *****
  • Information Offline
  • Hero Member
  • Posts: 534
I own a lot of flashcarts.  A lot of them.  I own almost all of the Everdrive line.  Couple quick points here:

Unfortunately, you can't just harvest the various special chips and put them on a SNES board.  The only one you can do that with is the DSP.  The SD2SNES doesn't actually have any of the SNES's special chips on-board, rather it uses an FPGA to recreate them also.  At this time, the SuperFX chip isn't done, nor is SA-1 (which is what knocks out SMW2 and SMRPG) or a couple other very minor chips.  But ikari appears to have started making some real progress on it, so who knows what tomorrow will bring, that's the nicety of firmware updates on the more expensive games.

The Everdrive N8 for the NES/Famicom is somewhat similar.  It didn't use extra chips per se, but it used mappers.  The majority of the mappers are working (or in the case of MMC5, working "enough", kinda like emulators, to have Castlevania be playable) at this point, but not all of them are 100% perfect.  Krikzz is working on them continually, but he does have a whole ton of other products to support.

As far as flash carts for other systems I own...

Like Wiggy said, if there's any difference between "real" and flash cart on the TurboED, I can't see it either.

The Everdrive 64 supports almost every game, with a few wonky problems with saving (and I mean very few.  Like, count on your hands few, and most of them I would call playable just slightly temperamental)

The Mega Everdrive (for the Mega Drive/Genesis) sure seems to play everything as far as I can tell, including 32x games (if you have a 32x) and Master System games (assuming your 32x isn't plugged in -- Genesis hardware limitation, not flash cart limitation).  It even works to save your SegaCD games or as a bios chip override for the SegaCD.  (Note: I have been told the bios override isn't perfect, but I have never had a problem)  (Second Note:  I am talking about the Mega Everdrive, not the Everdrive MD.  Krikzz makes 2 different Genesis flash carts)

The EverdriveGG for Game Gear has never given me a problem.  I'm told it plays SMS games, but honestly haven't tried.

The Master Everdrive for SMS, same.

Non-everdrive flash carts I own:

The Harmony cart for the Atari 2600 plays something like 99% of commercial games and most homebrew, and batari's coming out with the Harmony Encore to bump it up to 100% of existing games

The "Ultimate SD" carts for the Atari 5200 and Colecovision both appear to have 100% retail compatibility

The Flashboy+, same.  Playing Street Fighter 2 on my Virtual Boy is amazing.

The VecFlash for the Vectrex is a little tweaky, but again seems to play all retail games.

Uhh... I think that's it.  If I see any more, I'll edit later.  I'm way past what you asked about anyway, I just love my flash carts and enjoy giving recommendations whenever I can.  There's others I don't own, either because they're out of production (Skunkboard for the Jaguar, CuttleCart for the Intellivision and Atari 7800) or because I'm waiting for a better/more elegant solution to come out (FlashMasta for the NGPC, EZ-Flash 3 for the GBA, a handmade Lynx one sold on Atariage that I'm not even sure has a name -- I usually prefer SD-based carts), and I own a very respectable collection of physical carts, but for homebrews, translations, hacks, and the occasional "Dear LORD that's expensive but I'd really like to play it on the original system", you cannot beat modern flash carts.
Attempting a complete NTSC-U NES set.  Sell me your games!
Click for What I've Got.  253/677 licensed games, 39/95(??) unlicensed

May 07, 2014, 10:49:26 PM
Reply #10

FritzWhite

  • *******
  • Information Offline
  • Devoted Member
  • Posts: 1555
Thank you, this is very informative. I think I'm mainly interested in the SD2SNES cart and then I'd probably look into one for NES games too eventually. It would be nice to just be able to play everything off of one cart

May 07, 2014, 11:15:43 PM
Reply #11

KalessinDB

  • *****
  • Information Offline
  • Hero Member
  • Posts: 534
Aside from the SNES, wherein the SD2SNES (designed by ikari, manufactured by Krikzz) just beats the pants off of the Super Everdrive (100% by Krikzz), the Everdrive stuff is all top of the line, you really can't go wrong.

If you're obsessive and truly want absolute 100% compatibility, you will be disappointed occasionally, especially with the SNES carts.  Nintendo just opened Pandora's Box by letting companies add on other chips, so it's a much more difficult proposition for a flash cart to reproduce all of the chips completely perfectly.  Ikari's making a good go of it with the SD2SNES, we'll see if it ever happens (it should be pointed out, he did make it open source so in theory others can contribute if they can figure out how to make a chip work).  But even for the ones that as far as I can tell are perfect, I'm sure a fanboy of the system can find some game that doesn't quite work absolutely perfectly.

However, if you want something that plays well over 98% of all games, flash carts are generally the way to go.  And even the most expensive ones, with all the bells and whistles (cases, cart shells, stickers, sd cards included) that some resellers add on (Stone Age is a great example -- I have every Deluxe Edition he's put out, personally), it's STILL cheaper than buying 1-2 of the most expensive carts loose for the equivalent system.
Attempting a complete NTSC-U NES set.  Sell me your games!
Click for What I've Got.  253/677 licensed games, 39/95(??) unlicensed

May 08, 2014, 12:32:37 AM
Reply #12

KMSoulja

  • *****
  • Information Offline
  • Hero Member
  • Posts: 517
    • Email
I have

SuperCard DSTwo
Game Boy Everdrive
NES Everdrive
SD2SNES
N64 Everdrive
Genesis Mega Everdrive

and they all rock in terms of compatibility.

the SD2SNES has the least amount of compatibility

but its only a matter of like 12 english games and like 20 japanese games that it can't play at the moment.

May 08, 2014, 08:22:25 AM
Reply #13

TDIRunner

  • All round awesome dude!
  • *
  • Information Offline
  • Post Whore
  • Posts: 5086
    • My MediaFire Account
I don't own any flash carts yet, but I plan to eventually one one for each system that I own (which is most of them).  With that said, I hate to pay extra for the label and case with a custom cover considering that I like doing that stuff myself (surprise, surprise).  However, I'm surprised that I haven't seen any flash cart (Everdrive or otherwise) label or covers on this site.  Do they not fall under the guidlines? I know TCP doesn't host covers that can be used on pirated software, but I wasn't sure where flash carts fall under that rule.
Maybe, just once, someone will call me "sir" without adding, "you're making a scene."

My Raw Scans

May 08, 2014, 08:43:43 AM
Reply #14

Arseen

  • Amiibo lover extraordinaire
  • *
  • Information Offline
  • This one has about 10 percent of all posts
  • Oversight
  • Posts: 20562
They do = Ability to play illegally downloaded ROMs.

That said few covers can be found on the boards.

N64, SNES and NES (maybe others) Everdrives, R4 and SD2SNES come to mind.