Flash cartridge

A Game Boy Advance flash cartridge is one of several cartridges containing flash memory have been developed for use in the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. These cartridges enable homebrew applications and games to be used on a GBA. The capacity of the cartridges ranges from 64Mb up to 8Gb. Sizes of cartridges are always measured in megabits or gigabits.

These devices have been criticised because they allow people to make illicit copies of Game Boy Advance games. However, since most flash cartridges have cheating features, people will copy their original game image onto the cartridge in order to beat it faster, make the game easier, etc. In addition, these cartridges remain the best-known way to create and distribute homebrew games for the GBA (the other being the GBA Movie Player, which can run specially designed homebrew programs but cannot run illicit copies of commercial GBA Game cartridges due to the lack of onboard RAM for fast data access).

Linkers

Extreme Flash Advance, USB port built-in

Games are written to the cartridge with a device called "linker". Depending on the brand of flash cartridge, the linker either connects to the GBA and writes the cartridge through the GBA, or has a cartridge slot that allows the user to insert the cartridge directly into the linker. More recent cartridges have built-in mini-USB jacks which plug directly into a PC with the appropriate cable.

Flash card adapters

Recently a number of devices have been released which use popular flash memory cards such as SD and CF for storage. These have proven popular since the development of techniques to run Nintendo DS software from a GBA cartridge, due to the large size of DS games and the low price of these cards compared to conventional GBA flash cartridges. Examples of such devices include the M3 and Supercard.

Emulators

There exist emulators for different operating systems on a GBA flash cartridge. The main emulators currently available include:

• Goomba and Goomba Color: Used to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games
• DrSMS and SMSAdvance: Used to play Sega Master System (SMS) and Sega Game Gear (GG) games
• PocketNES: Used to play Nintendo Entertainment System games
• Pocket SNES and SNES Advance: Used to play Super NES games

Brands

There are many brands of Flash Cartridges available, including:

• X-ROM
• EZF Advance
• XG Flash 2
• Flash2Advance
• EFA-Linker 512M Flash Set
• EZ-Flash

Software

Most Flash Cartridges use a program called LittleWriter to write games to the cartridges. However, some people (especially people with older computers) use other software to write games to the cartridge. An example of this software is X-ROM Frontend by DanSoft Australia.

Some flash cartridges use specialized software designed for the specific cartridge, such as Power Writer and USB Writer software for the Flash2Advance Ultra cartridges. This presents several conflicts in regard to homebrew, as Power Writer uses a large database for proper naming and saving of games. ROMs that are not in the database (such as emulators or any other GBA homebrew) are prone to saving issues, and editing the database manually is difficult and involves the use of a hex editor. Such cartridges often have a proprietary interface, making it difficult or impossible to use operating systems other than Microsoft Windows for writing to the cartridge.

External links

• PHWiki:GBA Flash Cards
• EZF Advance.com - EZ-Flash Advance 2 GBA
• GBA Public Domain Roms
• Public Domain Roms
• Information about backup units @ supermagi.com
• GBA Compatibility List for Supercard
• ExtremeFlashAdvance
• powered by supercard