GBA Flash Cart? NES ROMs?
Apologies in advance if this is the wrong place for this thread; if it belongs more in Everything Else I guess it can be moved there.
Anyway, recently I've seen a bunch of things on the NES and SNES PowerPaks, and how you can store hundreds of NES/SNES ROMs on them so you can basically have the entire console library on one cartridge. I've heard this is also possible with a Game Boy Advance (though not made by the same guys who make the PowerPaks) with a flash cart.
I'd be very interested in getting a GBA flash cart (I'd play it on my GBPlayer) to have a whole bunch of good retro games, but I have a ton of questions.
- How much do these things cost?
- Is it legal to put ROMs on them anyway? (I'm thinking no)
- Where do I get the ROMs?
- How much space would an average GBA flash cart have / How many NES/SNES games can I store on one?
- Is it even possible to store NES/SNES games on a GBA flash cart?
- If it is, would I be able to even store some GBA games on there too?
- For games like The Legend of Zelda that have save batteries: will that work with a flash cart?
- I can't even begin to understand how the things work so I need some explanation there.
Any answers to these questions would be great.
Anyway, recently I've seen a bunch of things on the NES and SNES PowerPaks, and how you can store hundreds of NES/SNES ROMs on them so you can basically have the entire console library on one cartridge. I've heard this is also possible with a Game Boy Advance (though not made by the same guys who make the PowerPaks) with a flash cart.
I'd be very interested in getting a GBA flash cart (I'd play it on my GBPlayer) to have a whole bunch of good retro games, but I have a ton of questions.
- How much do these things cost?
- Is it legal to put ROMs on them anyway? (I'm thinking no)
- Where do I get the ROMs?
- How much space would an average GBA flash cart have / How many NES/SNES games can I store on one?
- Is it even possible to store NES/SNES games on a GBA flash cart?
- If it is, would I be able to even store some GBA games on there too?
- For games like The Legend of Zelda that have save batteries: will that work with a flash cart?
- I can't even begin to understand how the things work so I need some explanation there.
Any answers to these questions would be great.
Comments
The powerpak though, if you head over to usbretro thats where they sell them.
Or maybe the off chance someone is selling one ont this or other forums.
Roms are not allowed posted on this site.
As far storage gose i have a 2gb card for my powerpak and i have waaaayyyyy too many games to even play lol. Yes zelda with battery backup works due to a savestate feature where you can save your games, i know its there but i havent used it yet lol.
And dont worry if you have questions there is plenty of people on this site to give you a hand. And also there is no stupid question. Oh yeah i forgot in gamers gauntlet buttheadrulesagain has an entire thread devoted to it. Thats where id start first!
Alright ive rambled enough.
Cya
Scott
It's legal to put roms you created/develop, but not legal to put commercial roms on them. As for the whole backup your own cart thing, yea, it's legal as long as your original cart isn't in use.
Not sure if a GBA flash cart exists that can store the entire library, but some exist that you can store a few at a time.
You could store NES/SNES roms (if the flash cart is large enough), but it wouldn't do you any good since the GBA/GB Player won't play them.
Saves will work.
- Is it legal to put ROMs on them anyway? (In general, if they're retail, no, unless the developer due to age allows it (there's a few) or homebrew, or you backed up your own games as you did pay for 1 license (doubtful.))
- Where do I get the ROMs? Ask google about it, all I'm saying due to the rules here.
- How much space would an average GBA flash cart have / How many NES/SNES games can I store on one? (The old ones had like 64MB of space so not much, but the ezflash4 I talked of depends on the microsd card you use.
- Is it even possible to store NES/SNES games on a GBA flash cart? (Yes, get pocketnes. Has an app with it that makes a .gba file that will boot your NES games from an internal menu. There is a pair of SNES emulators, compatibility is low, no audio, but some games run at 80-100% of full speed.)
- If it is, would I be able to even store some GBA games on there too? (Yes, because the boot 'shell' on those cards allow you to detect multiple files like gba, music, jpg, text files, etc.)
- For games like The Legend of Zelda that have save batteries: will that work with a flash cart? (Using pocketnes it will create a .sav file just like on a PC emulator for Zelda so it just works as normal.)
- I can't even begin to understand how the things work so I need some explanation there.
Any answers to these questions would be great. (And now you do at a basic level get it. I have had 2 of the small sized carts back in the day, recently off here bought up an ezflash4 and it's fantastic. While I publicly can't spell out how to go and use google to rom: search stuff and give links I can give advice on the rest.
That said the ezflash4 is the only good viable one left on the market. I'm not sure how much space the US-GBA ROM library is, I've never looked. But if let's say it took less than 2GB of space, yes you could shove them all on the ez-flash cart on a microsd card and go about your business with it.