– Introduction –
The Supercard DS ONE was released quite a while ago. At launch, it seemed to be a great choice. Coming from the Supercard Team, it was expected to be the best of the best, continuing the Supercard line of flash carts that seemed to have dominated the market. Soon after, many realized that there were superior flash carts on the market, namely the R4DS. It seemed obvious at the time that the R4 was a better choice, even in our previous reviews, the R4 came out superior.
Recently, the Supercard DS ONE experienced sweeping changes, with not only firmware revisions, but hardware revisions as well. These changes created a whole new name for the Supercard DS ONE, no longer is it a cheap cartridge that may get stuck inside your DS, but one that has amazing features that no other flash cart offers. Even so, it seems that other carts still dominate the market.
The Supercard DS ONE now sports a completely redesigned white shell and a new sticker, as well as an impressive new packaging. The features of this cart have also been enhanced with abilities such as cheating and accessing a guide.
– Design –
When I received my Supercard DS ONE v2, I was very pleasantly surprised. Even the previous Supercard DS ONE had quite decent packaging, however, the Supercard DS ONE v2 had, by far, the nicest design I have ever seen for a flash cart. A professional box art was put on high quality paperboard, in between is dense foam. Unfortunately, the descriptions on the back of the box still bear the terrible grammatical mistakes that appear in all Supercard product packaging.
It is as if they don’t have spell-check in China.
The box opens up similar to a book. On one side of the box there is the manual and the setup disk, which is once again full of grammatical mistakes, as well as completely outdated. On the other side, protected by foam, are the freebie MicroSD reader and the Supercard DS ONE v2. The freebie MicroSD reader looks amazingly professional with a white casing as clear letters printed on it. Also impressive is the performance on the reader.
Freebies are always nice, especially when they work well.
It is nice to see a manual, even if it is outdated.
However, the most important object inside all this packaging is the Supercard DS ONE v2 itself. The newest batches of the Supercard DS ONE v2 all come in white casing with stickers featuring the Supercard logo. It looks quite nice, and the sticker does look like it is quite high in quality. As with the previous Supercard DS ONE, this cart has a chip protruding out of the casing, and is covered up by the sticker. However, unlike the previous Supercard DS ONE, I had absolutely no issues inserting and removing the flash cart from the Nintendo DS.
It is an impressive change from the original Supercard DS ONE!
Also a nice feature of the Sueprcard DS ONE v2 is the spring loaded MicroSD reader at the top of the Supercard DS ONE. Although not implemented like the R4, where you could remove the MicroSD without removing the cart, the Supercard DS ONE v2 has a pretty secure MicroSD reader that seems quite stable and strong.
– Software –
The Supercard DS ONE has bundled software along with it. Even though it has drag and drop capabilities, some of its features rely on bundled software. Two of the acclaimed features of the Supercard DS ONE are cheating and real time guide. Both of which requires prepared files on the computer.
Cheating with the Supercard DS ONE requires creating a .scc (Supercard Cheat) file and then running it on the Supercard menu. The scc file is an encrypted file which contains the same information as any other cheat file, however, the Supercard Team had to make the Supercard only recognize these encrypted files. With a buggy converter, it is quite hard to convert cheats, and I often found myself using the Supercard DS ONE cheat database (by JMR and meangreenie) instead. Even though the Supercard DS ONE has, by far, the most impressive cheat system I have seen yet, the computer side software seems to be half completed.
The cheat code works great on the DS.
Real time guide is a feature of the Supercard DS ONE that allows users to pull up a txt (text) file at any point of a game. This feature proves extremely useful when playing long RPG games. However, similar to the cheating system, the Supercard DS ONE will not accept a raw txt file, but instead, an encrypted scb file (Supercard Book). Using the same half completed converter, you must change your txt file into an scb file, at points, some files will not even convert. However, it wasn’t all that much work, and when it does start working, it is quite an amazing and useful feature.
I don’t really like the font and resizing, but it is still a nice feature.
The last piece of software that the Supercard DS ONE v2 uses is the Supercard patcher. Supposedly it is used to “enhance compatibility”, however, I have never had a compatibility issue using drag and drop, and thus I had no reason to use this software.
– Use –
The Supercard DS ONE v2 uses a popular homebrew application called MoonShell as the base of its menu. However, after booting it up, you will notice that there have been some major changes to make the menu faster and more beautiful.
I really like the menu, especially how customizable it is.
After looking at the gorgeous menu for a few seconds, you will notice that the menu is at the top screen. Changing the global.ini file or clicking L+A buttons allows you to swap the screens for touch capabilities. The options at the top allows you to change things such as how the games are displayed in the menu, how they are sorted, as well as give options for booting a slot 2 cart, use the web browser, etc. The most important function at the top is the “Enable Patch” menu under the “Other” section. This enable patch sets up the way the Supercard DS ONE v2 runs a rom, from allowing it to reset into the main menu to cheating in mid game. When roms don’t work properly, check this menu first for problems.
These options, under the "options" menu allow you to change how the menu looks, how it sorts files, what language it uses, as well as allows you to adjust how fast the Supercard DS ONE v2 uses the MicroSD card.
The various options in the "other" menu allows you to utilise a slot-2 Supercard for RAM, GBA, and rumble purposes. It also boots any slot 2 cart.
Fiddling with these options could ruin the 100% compatibility.
In the menu you can touch or use the buttons to select a game. An interesting note is that the load time on the Supercard DS ONE v2 seems to be longer than the load time of many other carts. Once the game is done loading, given that you have selected the cheat or real time guide patch modes, you will enter a screen to toggle these cheats on and off. Although it doesn’t look pretty, the menu works fairly well and fast. Afterwards you get to play your game.
Here are the different ways you can view the menu.
When playing a game, there are various hotkeys that you can use to bring up certain menus. By pressing L+R+Start+Up, you can bring up the cheat menu and activate or deactivate cheats, by pressing L+R+Start+Down, you bring up the real time guide, where you can read your game manual or FAQ. Using the hotkeys L+R+A+B+X+Y, you are able to reset back into the Supercard DS ONE v2 menu.
– Functionality –
In terms of compatibility, it is quite expected for flash carts to run all DS games, and of course, the Supercard DS ONE v2 runs everything. Its compatibility is 100%. However, when new games are released, the Supercard DS ONE v2 may not support it, and you must manually change the saver size to allow the game to work. Although this is quite easy to do, and takes almost no time to do, it is quite annoying. Also worth noting is that the Supercard DS ONE v2 has no lag with a Made in Japan 1GB Kingston MicroSD. All games run perfectly smooth, including the Castlevania games and their intros.
When you’ve seen the Castlevania intro as many times as I have, you can tell if it runs perfectly smooth within the first second of the movie.
Unfortunately, during early tests, I was quite disappointed when I found out that using cheats and guides dramatically decreased compatibility. These features are acclaimed for the Supercard DS ONE v2, because in terms of cheating, the Supercard DS ONE v2 allows users to toggle cheats even in the middle of a game. Very similar is the real time guide feature of the Supercard DS ONE v2, it allows games to run a guide or text file whenever they wish on the Nintendo DS. However, later on, I was actually surprised at its compatibility. Pretty much every game after the first four games I had tested worked flawlessly.
As usual homebrew is a major issue with flash carts. I have tested only about a dozen homebrew files, but it is safe to say that Supercard DS ONE v2’s DLDI patch is perfectly functional, not to mention that the Supercard DS ONE v2 also supports some homebrew files that don’t use DLDI. Unfortunately, this flash cart doesn’t automatically patch DLDI, therefore you must do it manually.
This is a quick demo of the Supercard DS ONE v2’s menu.
– Conclusion –
In general, the Supercard DS ONE v2 definitely is a huge upgrade from the original. It works very well, comes at a cheap price, and the packaging looks amazing. It also is a fully featured flash cart with functions that are unique to itself. However, the Supercard DS ONE v2 does have a slight learning curve to it, considering the manual saver size changing, the patching of cheat files and book files, etc.
The Supercard DS ONE v2 is a great cart with many great features. It fits perfectly flush inside the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite, it has a very sturdy, spring loaded MicroSD slot, and the plastic feels quite strong. Also, it has stellar support for both roms and homebrew files. Not to mention the great support we have seen from both the Supercard Team and users of the Supercard.
The Supercard DS ONE v2 is definitely a huge improvement from the original and worth every penny.
Even though the Supercard DS ONE v2 seems like a great product, it does have its downsides. The software for cheating and real time guide seems half completed and not even close to fully thought out, and newer roms require manual saver size changing. However, all 3 of these problems are not overly hard to correct in future patches, nor is it much of a problem even now.
Overall, the Supercard DS ONE v2 is definitely a great cart. It runs everything flawlessly, it does its features quite nicely, and the cart looks quite beautiful. However, because of some terrible software, it is a bit hard to use when you want to use all of the Supercard DS ONE v2’s features. However, because of the usefulness of the real time guide and cheats, it is definitely worth it. If you are experienced in the DS scene, or don’t mind a bit of fiddling, the Supercard DS ONE v2 is definitely the best choice for you.
– Score –
Design – 5/5
Software – 3.5/5
Use – 5/5
Functionality – 19/20
Tilt – 5/5
Overall – 37.5/40