Taking the plunge (ever drive)

[Video]

Well, I finally did it. I ordered two of these things. An x7 for game boy and an x5 for gba.

 

Most of my GB collection is still intact, so the x7 wasn't really needed, but I got that anyways due to how awesome it could be to have all my games on one cart. But my gba stuff mostly got stolen a few years back, close to 120 games there. I still buy them as I find them, but a few I really wanted to play, oh god, wtf?! I tracked down some of the Mario's, and their ALL going for higher than release price, and then doom, heh, $100+? HeLl no, doom 2 was $150+, and final doom (when it can be found) north of $200?  Wait the f#$% up a minute, can't I get a ROM cart? For the price of any one of those games, I can get a ROM cart.

 

Anyhow, ever card I've heard good things about. I know nothing about them myself, but as long as it works I don't care, mostly this is for questions. I ordered them off Amazon, I don't know if their the official ones or Chinese bootlegs, ill find out Monday (delivery estimate) but that fast of shipping, at least its not coming from China, hopefully a good thing.

 

How big a card works in these? I got a couple 64gb cards coming, but that's a "suggested purchase" thing and may be to big, I've got smaller if I need them. I don't know on gba, but dmg, that should house every title for that system, to heck with the games I'm interested in.

 

What format games do I need? I used visualboy advance to play on computer, I think the games are .agb format (I have no dmg roms) also, can I use the.sav files? It would be nice to continue a few games, like the hundreds of hours of advance wars, with nearly everything unlocked.

 

Can I use GB ever drive on gba? I think it uses a switch to turn on dmg mode and don't know it this would cause problems.

 

Will ever drives work with game link cables? I assume as long as one copy of the game is legit it should.

 

And does the game boy cart work on pre color GB? It looked like a gbc cart (no notch) but says yes.

 

I won't ask for roms themselves, Google and all, but are there sites you guys would recommend staying away from, bad interface, add issues, worms, etc?

 

Oh, one more thing, is there a device I can buy to copy my own carts? Mostly I can dl stuff, but some games, like Mario are notoriously hard to get unmolested, for the games I have, and know work, I see no reason I shouldn't be able to rip them myself.

[Steven Pendleton]

You don't need a huge SD card for these. Would not be surprised if you can fit the entire GB+GBC libraries combined onto a single CD. I know the entire Famicom library fits on a single CD and I think the entire PC Engine HuCARD library does as well, so GB+GBC should probably be fine with 1GB or less. GBA probably needs something bigger, but you're still probably fine with like 16GB maximum for GBA.

 

They work identically to real carts except they are fake. Everything works properly, so for example, you can shove it in your Super Game Boy 2 and stuff and it all works perfectly, unless there are specific games that don't work properly that I'm not aware of. Only thing that you can't do with the GBA one is run GB+GBC games natively. It runs them with a pretty bad emulator instead, so just use the GB one for GB+GBC and the GBA one for GBA only unless you only feel like carrying 1 cart with you at a time. I know for a fact that Akumajou Dracula Dark Night Prelude's title screen and menus do not work properly on that emulator; I am sure there are more.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Steven Pendleton

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

Everdrives are the best.  It was painful having to sell a big chunk of my cartridge collection when I needed the money, and getting some everdrives helped me through that very difficult period. Krikzz is Jesus.

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

I hope it's not sketch to say, but I found loaded sd cards for all my everdrives for sale cheap on etsy of all places. I didn't want to hunt and download all the roms, seems like a pain in the ass and maybe dangerous.

Edited April 24, 2021 by NeonSpaceBeagle

[Tanooki]

Wait Final Doom gameboy?  Since when?  Speaking of Doom, someone did a port of prBoom to the GBA for #1 and #2 which created a very much accurate experience for the GBA, especially the first as it's a jag port.  I wish I could figure out how to compile it but it's over my head and you'd think something like Doom people would just stuff in that format on a rom site, so far, no luck.  The D2 one though, is more for additional fine touches as the original one is quite close.  And if you're after handheld games to tinker with, don't ignore Duke Nukem Advance either, feels like DN3D.

 

If you bought everdrives on amazon, they're probably legit, because krikzz learned his lesson a year or two back and started an official store on there considering the bank issue problems were having ordering direct from his region.  It wouldn't hard to look up who the marketplace was to know.

 

Your questions though

1) 32GB card I do believe is max.  GB+GBC would be more than happy with a 1-2GB card given you want to just load everything out, every region, every rom, even translations, hacks, homebrew with room to spare.  But for GBA given those games get larger, 32GB is required.  I have a v.2.1 construct of the old smokemonster packs and that has everything released from a couple years back plus a few gems I found since and it eats just south of 19GB.

 

2) What format?  Doesn't really come up as a concern.  As long as it's a legit dump, they work.  Usually GB (.gb), GBC (.gbc), and GBA (.gba) format is how they're found, they just run.

 

3) YES the Everdrive GB works great on a GBA, it'll just run the games like a legit old GB/GBC game would on a GBA with the same limitations against the stuff, so SGB games won't get a border or added fluff.

 

ROMS -- I won't link, but I'll make it easy enough for a toddler.   archive.org  aggressively kept active and up to date on there where you can cherry pick individual games or do a mass download of everything in said archive in 1 multi MB(GB/GBC) or GB(GBA) file.  Googling the archive org and something like 'full set (system)' or 'no intro (system)' does the trick.  The stuff on there isn't tainted with childish entitled trainers/intros or other worms etc  you worry about.

 

Copying your own, yes.  Go to BennVenn he sells a few choices in ways to dump games to the computer, his prices are super reasonable to cheap.

[Video]

Cool. The games came in this evening. Ill. Mess with that later. Yeah ill need to dig out some smaller cards and look up the latest patches. Ill try some of the few roms I've already got to test functionality.

 

Yeah duke nukem was another game I got, and dark arena, it's short but very doom like. Ill look up ecks vs sever too (never played the second one)

 

Thanks for the info guys.

[TheGameCollector]

If you're worried about computer viruses, here is a tip from my experience.

 

One thing you could always do to get roms is burn a copy of Linux (it's free) and run it from the disc using your PC without installing it on your system. Then you could download roms from any source you find to an external device such as that SD card you bought. Running Linux from a DVD or CD is completely immune to viruses because the OS is read only when using it in that way. Nothing can physically write a virus to an already burned CD or DVD. If you turn off your PC, the next time you "try" Linux none of your stuff will be saved and you will basically be starting from scratch every time (which is why you save to an external drive or card)

 

I ended up liking LxLe enough to just install it on the hard drive on an older laptop. I use that laptop for all of my downloading and it hasn't been infected once, no matter where I go or what I click on. I dont think anyone writes viruses for Linux or if they do, they're rare.

[Video]

Heh, reboot time. The thing works great. I just got in my new carts, heh, the last one got lost in my shop last month when it got hit by lightning and burned down. Heh, my luck anyhanyhow, ill need to get some dnt stuff. I grabbed the SIM city one referenced on here sometime. The weird bootleggy stuff is harder to find, so the Mario land dx games I'm having issues with (I like Mario land DC2" s color palate, it reminds me of colecovision) next on the agenda would be to find a new gba and screen mod it since I lost that too, for now my mk1 sp is my primary system.

 

Ill definitely see about one of the cart rippers, I've never been able to find a fully working stunt race (snes) online, but being fx, maybe its hard to rip, or maybe their never tested and since it crashes late in the game its just not noticed?

 

Ill have to see if one of my backups or friends has a copy of final doom, or halo, yeah just the first two levels but what I messed with was surprisingly intact and playable despite being dumbed down to a raycast engine.