Special thanks to the EZ Flash Team for providing the review sample.
- Introduction -
The EZ Flash team has been around for about 5 years. They dominated the GBA market, creating two of the best options available, and to this day they are still creating new products. In the age of the Nintendo DS, the EZ Flash team hasn’t met much success with their slot 1 cart, the EZ Flash V, but have been relatively successful in churning out the best slot 2 expansion, the EZ Flash 3 in 1.
These carts are selling like hotcakes because they work with any flash cart.
The EZ Flash V was and still is the EZ Flash team’s slot 1 solution to the Nintendo DS. Almost a year old, this cart is as old as any other cart on the market, and it has endured. This review deals with the new and improved EZ Flash V Plus. In essence it is the same flash cartridge, the only improvement over the cart is that it now has support for SDHC MicroSD memory cards. The review of the EZ Flash V at DSDatabase is a bit outdated, so this review will serve as an update.
Supposedly the only difference is the added SDHC support.
A year ago, the EZ Flash V was priced at $50-$60, now the EZ Flash V Plus is priced as low as $25, and it comes with lots of freebies. With the slot 2 expansion, it totals to $40. Seems like quite a deal.
Definitely a steal at $40.
Please note that I will be covering a bit of the EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion Pack in this review. This product has already been reviewed, and if you are clueless about terminology such as NOR and PSRAM, please refer to DSDatabase’s EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion Pack review for more details.
The EZ Flash 3 in 1 plays an important role in the EZ Flash line.
- Design -
I received my sample a week back, thanks to the nice people at DHL, it was completely crushed. I had a pretty hard time removing the plastic tray from the cardboard box. When I meticulously crushed the box back into its rectangular shape to remove the tray, I noticed that the box is fairly large. The quality of the box isn’t top notch, and the design, a marked improvement from the EZ Flash V New Years Edition, was still pretty dry.
At least there weren't any English errors.
Of course it took me two seconds to notice that this box is at least three times larger than the cases storing other flash carts. We all know what this means, freebies! So sliding open the box, completely agitated by the thought of freebies, it was definitely well justified.
Freebies are always a good way to increase value.
Out of the box, it comes with a stylus, a thumb stylus, a cartridge holder, a MicroSD reader, and depending on which bundle you buy, perhaps an EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion Pack. Let’s start with the styli. The first stylus is an extendable stylus, with the EZ Flash logo sticking out. The logo sits comfortably outside the DS shell, and doesn’t bother me much, but is a clear sign that the EZ Flash team wants some free advertising. It is a little thick, but the quality is really quite good. It certainly beats the Dragon Extendable Styli that I have had my hands on, the tip definitely runs across the screen smoother, but sadly the thickness of the metal part makes it difficult to insert and remove from the slot, and when you take it out, you extend it.
Not perfect, but certainly useable.
Next we have the thumb stylus. I can’t say anything other than it is a piece of plastic with a stretchy band across it. I have heard others praise thumb styli as a great tool, but I am not such a huge fan. The idea of seeing a huge thumb on my screen while playing a game is beyond me, I guess it is designed for usage with games such as Hotel Dusk where the stylus is in continuous use, but frantic movements aren’t necessary. Once again, the tip seems nice and smooth (the extendable stylus is better). It doesn’t feel like it’ll fall apart, and it has the words MADE IN CHINA printed on the front.
Hmm, I don't see the point, it is way too big for the screen.
The MicroSD reader has already received criticism. Apparently a few users received completely broken readers or have cases that fall apart. Thankfully, I am not one of them. I’ve been tugging at it because of my tight USB port and I’ve dropped it a few times, still sturdy as an ox. The speeds are decent, I didn’t expect anything better or worse. But it is one of those MicroSD readers that are pretty much impossible to remove the MicroSD from. I spent an hour trying to rip my MicroSD out before it gave in.
These MicroSD readers are getting smaller by the day. At least now you can attach it to the DS.
The clear plastic case holds one Nintendo DS cart. It is a nice and simple product, very clean, the logo is placed nicely, I have absolutely no complaints.
Hard to mess up a piece of plastic. Most people are only going to have a single cart inside their DS anyways, and no extras seeing the EZ Flash V Plus' capabilities.
The EZ Flash 3 in 1 that shipped with my EZ Flash V Plus is black, it stuck out of the DS Lite by no more than a millimetre. It is pretty much the same as all the other EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion Packs I’ve used; there is no glossy front, it feels heavy and sturdy, etc.
You can see the sticking out issue better with the white one.
Held inside the clear plastic case is the EZ Flash V Plus itself. The cartridge is as solid as a brick wall. I can’t bend the plastic at all, it feels thick. At first, it felt like the chips didn’t stick out as much compared to the original EZ Flash V, however, it seems that it only felt that way because of the new sticker, that is thicker, slicker, shinier and better designed. As a result the cart feels a bit thicker than the original, sliding in and out of the DS slot clearly shows the case. Even though it is a bit thicker, because of its smooth surface, it didn’t pose much of a problem, it feels better than carts with a chip sticking out because it doesn’t have that eerie grinding feeling anymore.
This cart is built better than most tanks.
At the same time I felt a bit disappointed because another difference I noticed is that the EZ Flash V Plus doesn’t seem to have the teeth sticking out where the pins connect to the DS. Of course, it creates zero problems, in fact it makes cleaning the pins a joy, but it just feels odd. The last few EZ Flash V carts I had gave me a horrible time when I tried to pry out the MicroSD. For the first few times, I was literally about to give up. Thankfully the EZ Flash V Plus’ MicroSD slot seems to have loosened up a bit, making it considerably easier to remove the MicroSD. As well, I should note that the EZ Flash V Plus’ slot is side-loaded, which has both pros and cons. On one hand, your flash cart no longer has the obvious slot at the top, and it looks almost like an original cart (the color is a tiny bit off, and the sticker doesn’t have the Nintendo DS logo), on the other hand, you have to remove your cartridge every time you wish access to the MicroSD.
While both versions have pros and cons, I'd probably go with the Plus.
- Software -
One of the beautiful things about the EZ Flash team is that they aren’t afraid to release applications. Because they have been around the GBA era, they are fully experienced with applications that deal with patching, designing skins, etc. The EZ Flash V Plus doesn’t need any software to run. It can match any of its competitors, clean rom support, drag and drop your system files and you are done.
Who needs anything other than the basic skin and support?
On the other hand, they have software that add a great deal to the EZ Flash V Plus experience. First, they have an amazing skin editor. As much as I would love to design a skin to prove my point, I have absolutely zero creativity. But I hope the single screenshot below is enough to encourage to boot it up just to have fun. You can move the buttons and the icons around, of course, you can change the pictures, and add things like the temperature and the time. I have seen some impressive skin editors, most notably from the AceKard team, but I feel that the EZ Flash V Plus’ skin editor, although in its BETA stage, is a good balance of ease of use and customizability. You can move enough buttons around to comfortably design skins without having too much trouble, but it doesn’t give you a whole truckload of options so that average users are confused.
As promised, a beautiful screenshot of the default skin that I was trying to edit.
Another great software is the one designed for use with the expansion pack, named 3in1 Tools. It is clearly a blatant rip of their EZ Flash 4 software, but it does what it should. It patches EZ Flash 3 in 1 roms quickly, and the most important part is that it allows EZ Flash V users to cheat on their EZ Flash 3 in 1. However, you absolutely have to use the EZ Flash V to activate or deactivate cheats, and they can only be toggled when booting.
Apparently the very latest open BETA allows for GBA roms to cheat without the need for patching, by adding a CHT file into the CHT directory. Unfortunately I was not able to actually get it working. It would load up and say that it was activating the cheats, but I had zero results. It could be that I was using a fairly dated CHT library, or even the fact that I was using a pretty unofficial CHT file.
I like the orange skin rather than the default silver one, you can change it in the config section.
In this section, I will also be talking about the firmware. The firmware of the EZ Flash V Plus is simply one BIN file and a moonshell folder. Being based on the popular homebrew application, moonshell, the EZ Flash V Plus is able to play DPG files and music straight from its menu. It is really quite nice to be able to boot them straight from the menu if you use your DS as an MP3 player. Unfortunately it isn’t running the latest engine, which could be a problem for running DPG files, they run slightly slower. It didn’t pose much of a problem for me, and definitely not for the casual movie watcher.
I'm not sure if you can make it out, but the red file in the center is a DPG video.
Speaking of firmware updates and considering the length of time that the EZ Flash V series has been released, I thought it might be worth while to know that the EZ team has backed the EZ Flash V up with a lot of firmware updates. They are always on top of the latest games. It seems that they have a fairly standard track record, they haven’t added all that many features until recently. With the EZ Flash V Plus’ release, it seemed to ignite a new passion for the EZ team, they have implemented new cheat support, their new skin editor is amazing, and most impressive is the amount of attention they’ve been putting on the EZ Flash 3 in 1. At the moment, most of the features are in the BETA phase and seem to be only proof of concepts, semi-functional, and full of bugs. But seeing the progress, I can almost guarantee that a few weeks after this review is published, you will see a fully working cheat engine for GBA games, and the multi-boot function come into full fruition.
These are supposed to be English cheat options, they turned to giberish for some odd reason.
- Use -
This quick video should show you how well the EZ Flash V Plus works.
The EZ Flash V Plus is booted by clicking the nice icon on the DS’s original menu. I suppose that this is a good option as it gives you quick access to the EZ Flash 3 in 1. Once again, I need to mention that the EZ Flash V Plus runs on a modified moonshell engine. So when the EZ Flash V Plus does boot up, it has an EZ Flash splash screen (quite a nice one actually), and a ton of white words on a blue screen indicating all the things being loaded. It takes only 2 to 3 seconds to get into the EZ Flash menu, and once you are there, you are home free.
And the icon is pretty professional too.
I don’t know about you, but I thought the default skin looked pretty ugly. The top is fine, but the bottom is just horrendous. I didn’t bother getting another skin as I could live with it, but just browsing the selection on NDSThemes.com will show you that the EZ Flash V Plus can look pretty. Especially now, with the release of the skin editor, you can definitely make things look better. When I fiddled around with the editor, I moved a few of the icons around, and it looked better instantly, at least in the preview it did.
Bleh, that is one ugly skin. If the EZ team reads this, please change the default skin that the EZ Flash V Plus ships with and the upgrades change to into a nicer skin. Lack of color, design, the predictable location of the buttons just makes for one horrible skin.
As you can see, you navigate with the d-pad on the top screen to scroll up and down, with big icons enabled, left and right skips one icon, with small icons, five. Clicking A when you are over a file runs it, in the case that you have cheats enabled, it will prompt you about the cheats you wish to enable. It takes another 3-5 seconds to load the rom, which is a little slower than usual, but forgiveable.
Take your time, I'm in no hurry to game.
The bottom screen has a series of icons. The sun (at least on the default skin), allows you to change the brightness settings on a DS Lite. The icon with two arrows activates cheats and soft reset. If the button is blue, then they are both activated, if it is orange then neither of them are activated. The question mark button is merely a list of commands, and the hammer and screwdriver brings up a settings menu, letting you choose menu, rumble strength (if you have an EZ Flash 3 in 1), icon size, use of CHT (traditional EZ Flash cheat files) or AR (use of action replay codes in DAT format), and the new option for writing multiple or single roms into the NOR section of the EZ Flash 3 in 1. The red button can shut off your DS system. The arrows help you scroll up and down the list, and finally the launch button launches games.
The buttons are functional, and the touch screen accuracy is pretty good.
When running GBA games, it seems a bit complicated. With all the new features, it seems they didn’t implement the best control schemes yet, and most likely will be changed later on. At the moment if you have Single Rom checked off in the settings menu, you will be prompted with NFlash, Cancel and PsRam when you click a GBA rom. NFlash being write to the NOR section of the EZ Flash, which after being burned onto the cart, can now be run straight from the DS menu. PsRam writes to the PSRAM section of the EZ Flash 3 in 1, this 16MB section can’t hold some of the GBA largest games (32MB or 256Mb), but loads a lot faster (10 seconds in comparison to 30). It erases itself after you reboot, and probably isn’t for RPG games but more if you like to swap between fighters or puzzle games. If you want to boot a game that is already on the cart, you hold R+A, if you click the GBA rom, it will simply erase the rom inside and repatch and rewrite the game regardless of the fact that it is the same game.
It might be that I'm missing something, but it seems that you have to touch the screen to choose, and there are no button combos.
Multirom seems to be a little trickier. Obviously multirom has to be activated. Then you can burn one rom, then another. You can keep burning until you fill the 32MB of NOR. However, you can only delete the last game you burned. You can run the games on the EZ Flash V menu by clicking a GBA game. Then the bottom screen turns into the 3in1 ROM OPTION window, which lets you boot and delete roms, as well as manage the saves.
Keep your eyes out guys, this will be one killer feature!
The other nice touch is that if you boot the EZ Flash 3 in 1 without the use of the EZ Flash V Plus, perhaps on a GBA console, you get a really simplistic loader, which seems to be very fast. One little gripe about it is that it uses the GBA rom’s internal names, which had me a bit confused.
This is what I like, simple loaders with blazing fast speeds.
- Functionality -
I guess I should start this section by confirming that SDHC did indeed work with this flash cart, I used an AData 4GB Class 6 (Made in Taiwan) MicroSDHC as well as a 2GB Kingston (Made in Japan) MicroSD.
Well I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of my AData MicroSDHC.
It seems today that everyone needs 100% compatibility, and have absolutely zero tolerance for lag. Thankfully the EZ Flash V Plus is a great flash cart that lives up to the EZ team’s reputation. It ran all DS games perfectly with zero lag. One of the things about the EZ Flash V in its early days was the Hybrid Engine, by patching problematic roms, you were able to eliminate some, if not all the lag if you have a cheap MicroSD card. I don’t think there really is a need any more, seeing as high speed MicroSD cards are actually cheaper than the regular ones. On the other hand, I found that the soft reset wasn’t implemented well. When soft resetting, I would encounter freezes in the main menu perhaps once every ten soft resets I do.
As usual, Castlevania is the benchmark for these tests, and it worked flawlessly.
Cheats were implemented nicely though. With the latest codes on the GBATemp database being converted to EZ Flash’s AR format, it is finally looking up. The cheats seems to work well, and I have absolutely zero complaints so far.
With the new cheat database, every game on my list has some sort of cheat file.
Now what can I say about homebrew? EZ Flash V Plus should be one of the best for homebrew. The EZ Flash V was one of the original slot 1 cartridges that came out with the R4 and Supercard DS ONE. Having said that, most homebrew games from a long time ago were made so that they can specifically run on those three carts. Even now, the EZ Flash V Plus has DLDI files that work accordingly. It has one for regular MicroSD cards, and one for MicroSDHC cards. I’m not really an expert in programming or anything, but it seems that the one designed for the regular SD cards (which is the one I used for the majority of tests) is a little faster and a little more stable. It didn’t seem to make a difference to me, and definitely won’t make a difference for the average user.
GBAExpLoader is one of my most used homebrew applications, and it works great!
I’m not sure when it was, but I guess there was a patch that I missed that unlocked download play. In my last review of the EZ Flash V, it didn’t work perfectly, but the tests I have conducted have shown 100% support.
Working
Mario Kart DS
New Super Mario Bros.
Elite Beat Agents
Meteos
Quickspot
True Swing Golf
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
Tetris DS
Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer DS
Super Mario 64 DS
Bomberman Land Touch
Mario Hoops 3 on 3
Nanostray
Metroid Prime Hunters
Club House Games
Big Brain Academy
Not Working
NONE
The last of the tests that I have conducted dealt with random samples of GBA games. However, I didn’t need to test all that many to get to the results. We all know that the EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion Pack with Rudolph’s GBAExpLoader has pretty much perfect compatibility save the odd patch or two. The same can be said with single roms written to the NOR section on the EZ Flash V Plus. When writing to the PSRAM, it is generally perfect compatibility, but I was hit by a few freezes or glitches, when written again, or a new clean rom was used, it would work. The saving system is still a little iffy as it doesn’t automatically backup when PSRAM is used, but that is being addressed right now as I write this review. The major problem I wanted to mention was the use of CHT files, it caused corrupted roms, lots of errors, and I had about a 75% compatibility rate. I pretty much blame the patching of CHT files with the 3in1 Tools, I’m not quite sure what happens, but even if the game looks right, it might freeze in the middle of nowhere or in the menus, you might suddenly soft reset or hit a black screen. Even worse is the compatibility with the multirom feature. The games themselves don’t seem to have problems, it is the loader that freezes up. Since these features are still in the open BETA phase, I completely understand, and it will probably patch itself up in the next few releases, I’m hopeful.
TIP: Avoid using BETA features unless you are really curious and have all your save files backed up.
- Conclusion -
I bought an EZ Flash V a month after its release, I bought another one a few weeks back, and just now I have a review sample of a cart that I intend to buy another copy of. I think it says something when I have multiple copies of a flash cart. The EZ Flash V Plus is an incredibly well made flash cart with amazing features and a great team working around the clock to make it better. I also love the design of the cart, for discrete flash cart usage. Honestly it will fool almost anyone, the EZ Flash V Plus will pass up for a real game cartridge any day.
The color is a little off, but who can tell?
There are rumours of a complete redesign of the EZ Flash V menu, as well I have heard that they are currently working on Real Time Save. Even without these two features, the EZ Flash V Plus offers great playback of NDS roms. It is a cart that has endured, and still offers a very stable way of playing roms when you don’t consider the features. With moonshell built in, I feel that if you plan to watch a lot of videos of listen to music, this is a much better option than another cart that relies on running moonshell, which takes at least another 10 seconds to boot.
The EZ Flash V, a perfect media player!
The real selling point of the cart is the integration with the EZ Flash 3 in 1. It isn’t a secret that I highly admire the work done on the M3DS Real and their expansion pack, and when it was released, I felt that it was a better combination, after personally playing around with the new patches, looking at the features with my own eyes, I can say that the future looks bright for the EZ Flash V Plus bundle. It is a formidable combo, the EZ Flash V Plus and the EZ Flash 3 in 1, it offers a different experience altogether, it is lacking real time save, but offers soft reset, cheats and multirom. And the news of a new upgraded EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion Pack with more memory just sweetens the deal.
Without the EZ Flash 3 in 1, this flash cart isn't the greatest deal out there.
However, I also feel that I must say that I was disappointed with the EZ Flash V Plus because it loads a bit slower than the rest, and the sheer lack of features. When even soft reset is not done properly, I can’t imagine more complex features running well (although the cheat engine does run very well). The cart also feels a little dated, the user-base isn’t all that big, and it seems that for NDS capabilities alone, the EZ Flash V Plus is a little lacking.
This is the third generation of the EZ Flash V, and you still can't get soft reset done right?
I feel that the EZ Flash V Plus on its own stands weak, it is a solid cart that can play games well, but almost all its competitors can do that. However, when paired with the EZ Flash 3 in 1 Expansion, it is a great buy. Sure the EZ Flash 3 in 1 can be used with other flash carts through the use of GBAExpLoader, but only the EZ Flash V Plus can bring cheats and multirom to the table. As well, whatever features appear on the GBAExpLoader, it can be used on the EZ Flash V Plus too. If you are looking for a flash cart for both GBA and NDS needs, then look no further, the EZ Flash V is for you. You won’t be disappointed!
... that you'd never be able to hear about unless you get yourself an EZ Flash 3 in 1.
Special thanks to the EZ Flash Team for providing the review sample.
If you are interested in more information about the EZ Flash V Plus, including more videos, pictures, and another huge wall of text, head over to the DSDatabase blog, which was where the first impressions were done.
