The G6 DS Real is the newest flashcard from the G6 team (who obviously made the G6 Lite). The G6 Real is a highly anticipated slot-1 card; and with good reason. It touts features such as onboard flash memory and perfect download play compatibility. However, with its high price, will it be able to overtake the competition and become the best card available? Find out in today's installment of...
by: Maximum Hashi
As always, lets first take a look at the contents that you'll be getting for your buck.
- G6 DS Real flashcard
G6 DS Real linker
Game case (holds two games)
Wrist strap
G6 Mini-CD
So all in all, you get a nice assortment of freebies for your buck. Note that the wrist strap and game case are identical to the ones found in the R4 and M3 Simply. The USB Linker has a slot to put in your G6DS and lets you plug it in to your PC via USB. Its fairly hefty so it might obstruct other USB ports on your computer. Thankfully, the G6DS comes with a USB extender, making it easy to plug in the linker. The G6DS card itself is made of a nice strong plastic and fits into the DS's card slot nicely. If you feel the label, you can feel the small chip sticking out but its hardly noticeable (unless you look for it). The cart's build quality is very nice and it feels strong and sturdy.
The G6DS features the Touchpod GUI (the same GUI as the G6 Lite, with a few tweaks). This is a wise move as the original Touchpod brought users a nice, fully touchable, easy on the eyes interface and its nice to see it return. There have been a few tweaks however; for example, the UI is fully skinnable and mostly everything can be altered, from the background to some minor buttons. Also, the G6DS comes with built-in cheat support which is a nice touch and the obligatory Moonshell is added. The UI lets you boot whatever is in the GBA slot either in NDS or GBA mode. Overall, it's a pretty nice interface and provides some nice features. And also, you can use buttons too.
Rom support is, as expected, perfect for the most part since it's a slot-1 card, so we wont go into too much detail about that. Here's a list of some games tested:
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Mario Kart DS (Works Great)
Yoshi's Island DS (Works Great)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Works Great)
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Works Great)
Daigasso Band Brothers (Works Great)
With that aside, lets talk about the main selling point of the G6DS, download play support. The box claims that it features perfect download play compatibility, but is it true? Here are some games tested:
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Planet Puzzle League (Works Great)
Sonic Rush [Sending Demo] (Works Great)
Yoshi's Touch and Go (Failed)
Mario Kart DS (Failed)
Konami Arcade Collection (Failed)
So while the G6DS claims to have perfect download play compatibility, in reality, it isn't much better than the competition. Problem games like Mario Kart DS still don't work, while games that worked on my M3 Simply (Planet Puzzle League) still worked. Hopefully this can be fixed in a future update. The R4 and M3 Simply have fixed download play in the newest firmware so lets see the G6 Team do the same.
Last thing on the agenda is the price. The 1GB version is around $64 USD, while the 2GB version is $84. Note that the DS Linker is $14 and $5 cheaper for each version. However, that being said, it does have some strong points; like the robust skin support, nice touch screen support, and the G6DS is currently the only flashcard that can connect to Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii. So if you are looking for internal storage and some nice features, the G6 DS Real is recommended; although it isn't the best flashcard, it's a pretty good one.
Ratings:- Build: 5.0 - Nice and strong build quality.
- Ease of Use: 5.0 Ð Doesn't get any simpler than dragging and dropping.
- Value: 3.5 Ð At $64, its not the cheapest, but it wont break the wallet too much.
- Compatibility: 4.0 - DS roms worked nicely, no GBA support; no DL play as claimed.
- Final Score: 4.0
Would you like one? Just come over here.
If you have any questions or want to comment about the review, then e-mail me at maximumhashi [at] hotmail [dot ] com.