Special thanks to the EDGE team who supplied the EDGE for this review.
- Introduction -
The EDGE has received an incredible amount of praise from many people in the scene. It is dirt cheap, and fully functional. It was relatively unknown, the release was sudden because no one has heard of this cart and the team is completely unknown.
Nothing much on the site or the back of the box.
Early on, before its release, the initial response to the EDGE was incredible. The GUI looked exactly the same as the increasingly popular CycloDS Evolution, the case looked the same, and even the chip was almost identical. However, the pricetag was slashed down by almost half. Needless to say, it was sold out almost immediately, and is still in general shortage.
Both carts are somewhat similar.
Of course, there was a reason for the price cut, it certainly wasn’t the CycloDS Evolution, it certainly did not have all the features that the CycloDS Evolution has, but on the other hand, it is faster, it is more user friendly, and it is a whole lot cheaper.
This costs about thirty bucks. - Design -
The EDGE has one of the most unique packages I have ever seen. It comes in a triangle made of 5 sheets of thick cardboard, and inside are two notches made perfectly for the EDGE and the freebie MicroSD reader. By removing the EDGE branded band, you can slide the first sheet sideways to reveal the inside contents.
It's a great design, I didn't like it at first though.
Inside the two notches were a MicroSD reader and the EDGE flash cart. The MicroSD reader seems awfully familiar because it was shipped along with many other flash carts. It works fine, and supports MicroSDHC. Although I’d highly recommend getting another MicroSD reader, seeing as the quality of this reader isn’t all that great.
It seems that shipping a cart with a MicroSD reader is now standard.
Onto the EDGE, it took a bit of yanking to pry it out of the box, I think the notch made for the EDGE was a bit too small. Anyways, the actual flash cart’s build is quite good. The sticker felt really nice, and the design takes a bit of getting used to, but is really nice overall. The plastic covering the EDGE seems nice and solid, although there is a chip sticking out, but it is barely noticeable.
I don't understand the notches on the side. What's the point?
The EDGE takes in MicroSD cards, in a non-spring loaded slot. When I first got it, the slot was so stiff, I literally had to take ten or fifteen minutes trying to take out the MicroSD, but it got much looser after a few tries, and seems reasonable now. Unfortunately the MicroSD sometimes sticks out of the EDGE, depending on your luck. There are reports of users having a huge problem because it just can’t be pushed all the way in. My card however seems to fit pretty well, sticking out no more than half a millimetre or so.
Sticks out just a bit, not much of a problem.
- Software -
The EDGE runs clean roms, and automatically patches homebrew. There is no need for software, thus there is no software at all for the EDGE. If you are looking for save converters, keep in mind that the EDGE uses the same save files as the CycloDS Evolution, the R4, and any other cart that uses 512kb files.
Save games are easy to transfer, so upgrading from an R4 is a good idea.
This section has slowly evolved from talking about patching software to kernel updates. The EDGE has had several updates, increasing functionality quite a bit but nothing spectacular. The EDGE hasn’t had the need for an update seeing as how it still worked perfectly fine with the latest problematic roms. One of the recent updates unlocked skinning support, which was supposed to be supported from the start, and after that there have been no new features.
Command and Destroy is a new game, and it works perfectly fine.
- Use -
The EDGE is often regarded as a budget cart, that it has few features, but can play games flawlessly. I agree that it is a great cart for playback of roms, but the features aren’t all that bad either.
It can change into this many languages!
The EDGE boots instantly unlike the CycloDS Evolution. There is no need to look at the DS menu ever again, you just get a quick screen that says booting at the start. When it is on, the boring 3 icon menu that seems to be way overused presents itself. The 1st icon is for games, the 2nd for multimedia (booting MoonShell), and the 3rd is to control the settings.
The settings lets the user toggle cheat codes, brightness settings, language, the skins, as well as booting a slot 2 cart, using the EDGE as a passcard. Other than the cheat codes, the rest is pretty self explanatory. Enabling cheat codes makes it so that each time you boot a game, if there are codes for that game, it will pop out a window asking you whether you want to turn cheats on or not. It is fairly quick, so I generally leave it on, even if I don’t plan on using cheats.
Hmm, where's the originality?
The actual game menu gives you a list of games. Pressing X gives you several different views, you can look at the full icons as well as the information you would see in the DS menu, the full icon with the given file name and size, or simply a list of all the file names. Normally the list of names would drastically speed up scrolling, but the EDGE’s menu is incredibly fast and responsive. Often in other flash cart’s menus you get a bit of lag if you scroll too fast. But the EDGE is perfectly smooth, you can go up and down, using the stylus controls to speed up the process and it will still be perfectly smooth. Obviously a click of the A button will boot up the game.
Which one should I choose?
- Functionality -
This would be a quick demo of the EDGE DS.
The EDGE DS is a budget flash cart, but even budget flash carts are expected to run games at 100% compatibility, perhaps a few problematic roms can slip by, but that is about it. Thankfully, the EDGE does not disappoint. Sure it doesn’t have many fancy features that seem to plague the market now, such as slow motion, real time save, etc, but it does what most people want out of their flash carts, nice and easy plug and play style of running roms, but also 100% compatibility with no lag.
I was using a 2GB Kingston MicroSD to test the EDGE.
Of course, from my tone you can already tell, the EDGE ran every game I threw at it. This includes the recent game, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates, which has had issues with many flash carts including the R4 (which was then fixed in a later patch). The EDGE had perfect compatibility, even with the release of this game, there was no need to update to fix the issue, unlike many of its competitors.
It ran games just as well as the CycloDS Evolution!
The EDGE is also able to run games with no lag. Generally Castlevania games have been the benchmark, and I have ran it through the EDGE and it worked perfectly, the introductions ran smooth, and the 2 hour Castlevania: The Portrait of Ruin gameplay test showed no freezes.
I could put another picture of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, but it's getting redundant.
The EDGE uses auto-DLDI patching to use homebrew, which means that most, if not all should work fine. And I haven’t met with any problems yet. There’s nothing really special, nothing to bash either.
The center icon is to run MoonShell, and obviously that would be a homebrew file that runs fine.
Download play has also been an expectation for flash carts of late. They are supposed to have full download play support, and once again, the EDGE doesn’t miss out, from my dated catalog of download play roms, the feature works fine.
Working
Tetris DS
Mario Kart DS
New Super Mario Bros.
Club House Games
Big Brain Academy
Bomberman Land Touch
Elite Beat Agents
Super Mario 64 DS
Meteos
Quickspot
Mario Hoops 3 on 3
Nanostray
Metroid Prime Hunters
True Swing Golf
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer DS
Not Working
NONE
- Conclusion -
With so many flash carts out in the market, why are there still more carts coming out? It is because the makers believe they have something that can compete in the market. The EDGE is definitely able to compete, it blows away the other budget carts. Not to mention that it carries a lower price-tag than pretty much all of its competitors. There is a reason that the EDGE is sold out almost everywhere.
With packaging like this, who wouldn't want one?
The EDGE doesn’t have a lot of features, but what it offers is great compatibility, and a menu that just works well. It can take skins from the CycloDS Evolution database, so it already has quite a few skins, not to mention that it can probably pass up for one. It is highly polished, and very professional, and that is what impresses me the most.
Quick loading time also makes everyone happy!
The EDGE doesn’t have any flaws, everything it claims to do is done very well, however, what I would like to see is more major updates, and definitely more features. The EDGE has pretty much been stripped down to the most basic uses, and that just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore in the market.
Cheats and soft reset are about the only features on this flash cart.
Overall, the EDGE is a great product, and certainly one to pick up if your aim is only to pirate games. It is easy to use, and definitely one of the best budget carts. I’d highly recommend this over other popular carts such as the DS Top Toy or the R4DS.
