AceKard 2 First Impressions

I would just like to start off by thanking the AceKard team for providing me with the AceKard 2, as well as their support for DSDatabase in the past.

There are 2 videos at the end, but for those of you who want to just watch it now instead of reading this long post:

I got ahold of my package sometime early this morning, surprisingly, the AceKard team has packaged in a huge array of protective bags, boxes, wraps, etc.  I am happy to say that my AceKard 2 is in perfect condition, even the box is in perfect condition.  It would make my job a lot easier if all the teams took a bit of effort in protecting their products, even if this was a bit excessive.

The package includes a MicroSD reader that works great with SDHC cards, as well as the actual AceKard 2.  The MicroSD reader is quite small, but fully functional, and pretty good for a freebie. 

The AceKard 2 seems to share the little clips design as with the AceKard RPG:

The actual AceKard 2 has a chip sticking out, by quite a bit actually, but it seems to slide in and out quite well.  The sticker seems thin enough to make up for the chip’s thickness.

The idea behind the AceKard 2 is to provide an alternative to the high end AceKard RPG.  The AceKard RPG offers many features that made it somewhat of a success, but it was in short supply, and the pricetag was a bit too steep for many users ($75), it quickly became a cart that everyone wanted, but no one really went to buy.  The AceKard 2 is the remedy to this problem.  By cutting down on the internal memory, but keeping the functionality of the AceKard RPG, it seemed like a good idea.

The AceKard 2 is also spring loaded.  It seems a bit tight, but it has a nice bit of force behind it, and I’ve clipped in MicroSD cards perhaps 40 times today, it doesn’t seem to get any looser, or show any signs of snapping, but usually it takes a bit longer than that.  For now it seems alright, definitely a bit tighter than I would like, but not a serious issue at all.

I have been fiddling with it for a good 5 hours, and have a pretty good feel about what the AceKard 2 is like.  Along with my experience with the AceKard RPG, I got into it quite quickly.  It might be that the menu is eerily similar to the AceKard RPG that makes me feel right at home, or perhaps just because the menu is so great.

The menu is completely skinnable, objects can be moved around, and 3 great skins are shipped with the AceKard 2, and there are plenty more because skins designed for the popular AceKard RPG can be used on the AceKard 2 with no need to port or convert anything.  The menu can be controlled completely via buttons or the touch screen, both are very intuitive and easy to use.  The Start button has all of the options that the AceKard 2 offers (Pretty self-explanatory if you watch the video that is also in this post):

Booting up a game takes the same amount of speed as the AceKard RPG, however, upon start up, the AceKard 2 no longer needs to write the save onto the cart, which frees up quite a bit of time, making the AceKard 2 seem a lot faster than the AceKard RPG, in fact, it is now comparable to many of its competitors.

I was using a brand new, just opened, Made in Japan 2GB Kingston MicroSD card that was freshly formatted to FAT32 for a quick lag test, and was shocked to see that Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow’s intro did not run smooth. 

It is acceptable, but at this point in time, pretty much all flash carts can play this video without lag, it is odd that the AceKard 2 cannot accomplish this, instead it shows minor stutters.

I’ve tested about 50 games in one of my test memory cards, and all of them seem to perform fine, they can all soft reset perfectly fine, the cheats worked out quite well, as it is able to take an R4 cheat database and convert it to its own format (.cc) inside the menu or with an external program, I have yet to test download play.  I figure a nice video would answer a lot more questions than text, so here is my usual memory card running with the AceKard 2:

And there’s my first impressions.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment on my blog, or email me at PharaohsVizier@gmail.com.

And remember to keep your eyes out for the full DSDatabase.org review of the AceKard 2.