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[Zipdrive]

Hey all

I'm thinking about getting a CF Supercard for my GBA SP (backlit model AGS-101) and I have a few noobie questions so please bare with me. I've read through the forum posts but I just want to make sure I read everything right that pertains to the Supercard and the GBA.

1. I take it the SuperCard works fine with the newer backlit SP's, aside from the odd GBA game slowdowns. I checked a compatibility list  at http://www.rothmans.joskeonline.com/supercardsite/ and the carts/roms I have either work fine or haven't been reported yet.

2. Speaking of slowdowns, do the homebrew games have any slowdown or save issues like some of the retail games.

3. Does PocketNES and/or NES games have any issues. I think I read it works fine.

4. I plan on leaving the SC in my GBA SP for the most part and just swapping out the CF cards themselves. One for homebrew and the others for backups. I'm kind of nervous about damaging the CF pins inside the SC as it's so small. Any concerns.

Total noobie question time.

5. Can a converted SC rom run in Visualboy advance (for testing purposes). I'm thinking it's not suppose to hence the reason for converting the rom in the first place. If it will run I'm in trouble as the few I have converted just display a white sceen and messed up sound.

I think that's all for now, damn brains not functioning properly this morning

If you have any more info that I may have not asked about please share or post a link.

Thanks

[jmr]

imho if you are only gonna use it in a gba i would not bother with the supercard unless your gonna get a DS in the near future

[dai_uk]

Yes the SC isn't as good for the GBA as it is the DS.

But I got mine when I had an original SP and was happy with it (I did read about the slowdowns).

I have a CF version and always left it in the SP just removed the CF when putting it in case etc. I do the same now I've upgraded to a DS :-)

homebrew seemed to run fine, main stuff with probs seems to be anything with lots of 'Mode 7' like sprite scaling (i.e. Mario Kart)

also all the mario games were a tiny bit slow (yoshi's island awfully) but for the cost and because most people have a CF lying about from a camera or can get one really cheap it's a good buy.

If you ever plan on getting a DS it's great as it will grow with you, and yes the DS compatability surpases the GBA! quite good for something which costs less than 1 game full price!

look at it in this way and even if you hate it we've all wasted money on rubbish games, the SC isn't rubbish and I love mine for both GBA and SC use.

Nes and gba emulator compatability are pretty good and in my opinion worth the price alone (I know other carts can do this but isn't SC still the cheapest!)

[victoreris]

If you're planning on sticking with your GBA SP and not getting a DS in the near future, you will be MUCH happier with the M3 than with the Supercard.  Trust me on this - GBA compatibility with the Supercard is OK but not great.  Most GBA games play fine on the Supercard, but there are many quality games with frustrating slowdowns that make them either unplayable or very irritating to play.  The M3 suffers from none of these problems.

On the DS side, Supercard is a great value and works almost flawlessly.  But for GBA only, save yourself a lot of hassle and frustration; spend the extra $30 and get an M3.

[meangreenie]

Spend about the same as on a SC and get an EZ-IV (going really cheap at the moment) .. I got an EZ-IV (reader/writer included) + 1GB mini SD card for £50.00 !!! In rip-off UK thats some deal.

With GBA games EZ-IV>M3 and cheaper, but if you plan on getting a DS at some point then the M3 maybe the best choice depending on EZ_IV software development. EZ-IV has 4 DS games (non japanese) that don't  work at the moment... Pokemon Dash, Tony Hawks, Ultimate Spiderman (don't work properly on SC or M3 either) and Prince of Persia (card game)

[Zipdrive]

Thanks for the info fellas. I'll look into the M3 and the EZ-Linker type devices.

[JLsoft]

...for PocketNES/GoomBA/SMSAdvance/etc, the Supercard is perfectly fine, and nicely low-priced

The only 'issue' with emulators and the backlit GBA SP"2" I've seen is that the screen is a little -too- good, and the speed of the screen's refresh affects the Flicker scaling effect used in PocketNES/etc, and so pixels that alternate between a dark and light color will be darker than on a normal GBA/SP.  Single-pixel flickered lines in text can make some stuff a bit harder to read, for example.

Black seems to 'overpower' everything else...it's the only way I can describe it.  A good example of what I'm talking about is when you play a game that has mostly light colors, but with characters/tiles that have black outlines...when you scroll the screen, those outlines look 'thicker' until the movement stops.  Also, games that have a solid black background and use small semi-brightly-colored sprites can be 'darkened' out almost completely during movement...see the emulated Tron and Discs of Tron in Tron 2.0 Killer App for an example of this.

Anyway, you get used to it pretty fast though, and it's a very small price to pay for the SP2's otherwise awesome screen


As for GBA games, the compatibility isn't -that- bad, I've ran into just a handful of games (that I'd actually play) that ended up either not working at all, or have major slowdowns...minor slowdown I can live with (Prefetch-patched Super SF2 Turbo Revival for example).

Of course, if one of the games you were hoping to play is one of the ones that ends up being unplayable, choosing the Supercard would hurt that much more

[dai_uk]

The problems you've described with the emulators would apply to any of these running on any other flash cart as well, like you said must be that better screen showing up what the old one cannot  

[JLsoft]

Err yeah, wasn't blaming the SC at all for the described graphical 'problems'...I just went off on a tangent about what to expect from emulators on the newer backlit SP