Nintendo DS Mods and Modchips: Why I Like the NDS R4 The Most

July 20, 2009 - PRLog -- The reason I like the R4 the most is not just its attractive price point, it's the fact that it played every game I threw at it. The R4 is so popular that in china they are making fake R4's with cheaper internal memory. I've been told that the fake ones have a high risk of bricking your Nintendo DS so make sure you get a real one from a reliable source such as ModchipCentral. One thing that I liked about it over the DSTT was that it put my games in alphabetic order. This is very important to most people as well as me because it can be a great pain if you have a large collection of games. Al through its missing online play or lack of good support for it I don't use this feature so it made no difference to me. I liked that I could watch movies and listen to mp3s.  Although the R4 comes with a disc to install you can still easily install games by drag n drop in windows. The R4 DS is a slot 1 DS flash kit designed primary to play ROMs. I may be stating the obvious here, but the point is; that's what it's meant to do, and it does this task very well. From my testing, so far we can confirm that the R4 DS is almost 100% compatible and doesn't suffer any slow downs in game. A very nice result! (As with all flash kits, the claim of close to 100% compatibility may change if an incompatible game is discovered).

The only thing about the R4 DS is the GUI; it feels like they could have put in a whole lot more work into it compared to its rival carts. Hardware wise however the build quality of the R4 DS is top grade and the fact you can remove the micro SD from the R4 without removing the whole cart from the slot is awesome. They even bundled the R4 with a couple of sick extra toys the cart case, the USB micro SD card reader and colour shell are great freebies that help further justify the purchase..

If you're looking for a flash kit with a ton of extra features and options to tweak in every possible way to you blow your eyes out, then unfortunately the R4 DS will not make you happy. It really doesn't offer any extras. If however you're looking for a slot 1 flash kit with no more then 2gb of storage and close to 100% ROM compatibility, “excluding some brand new games” complete "drag 'n' drop" ease-of-use then I definitely suggest the R4 DS.

Benefits
+ Almost 100% ROM compatibility (from current tests)
+ No slow-downs or glitches in game (from current tests)
+ Completely drag 'n' drop, no software needed
+ Supports clean ROMs
+ Can Take out the microsd card easily and put in new one
+ Supports FAT and FAT32
+ Great build quality
+ Fits comfortably in your DS
+ Nice toys in the package
+ One of if not the cheapest!

What It Lacks
- Basic, dated GUI
- Lacking extra features
- English firmware updates slow if not stopped
- poor homebrew compatibility
- didn't have full if any download play support
- It won't work with the new Nintendo DSI

In conclusion although a lot of people complain that the R4 didn't have the online play or the fancy GUI to me it plays all the games I want and is simple and easy to use. That is good enough for me it weird to me that marketers think people is attracted to more features. If the features aren't useful then the people will not brother buying the more expensive product. If I go to buy a DVD player why do I need one with 3 second faster pausing or any other nonsense? I just need a DVD player that works well and is high quality. The R4 is like a good quality DVD player in my eyes.

Modchip Central currently has the R4i SDHC (R4 i) Revolution in stock. The R4i model is specifically   for Nintendo DSi, DS Lite, DS.  Supplied with Free NDS Screen protector. http://www.modchipcentral.com.  This new R4i card is well built with high quality. It is the next generation of R4 Revolution card. Mod Chip Central currently has the DriveKey mod-chip in stock as well for a limited time period - use the coupon code drivekeyhalf and get 50% off shipping! ModChip Central ships worldwide

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