I've had my Gameboy Everdrive for a few months, and my Gameboy Advance Everdrive for about a month. Having installed a backlit screen in my GBA today I have been using the Everdrives for testing purposes, able to quickly load games from all generations of Gameboy. I'm so impressed by these little things, I thought I'd write a bit about them. It's what I do.
First the Gameboy Everdrive. €99 paid.
Initial impressions were not brilliant. The plastic of the case feels brittle, and the printing on the label is low resolution and cheap. The printed circuit board on which the cartridge is based is, however, very nice. Thick, tidy, and well put together, this is what I hoped to see. The cartridge is an exact fit for a real Gameboy Cartridge.
In use it is simple, if basic. Download the firmware from the website, place its folder on a Micro SD card, add some roms, and put it all together. That simple. Well, almost. There is a limit to how many files it can read per folder (perhaps due to Gameboy's limited memory?) so I have separated my ROMs into alphabetical groups of around 100 files per group. They are further split into USA/EU and Japanese releases.
A limitation of the firmware is it cannot automatically sort files alphabetically, so they are listed in the order they were added. There are softwares available to organise the files within the SD card file tables, which is what I had to do to achieve this one thing I thought would be an obvious function.
I haven't had any real problems with any games. I've used the cartridge in a Gameboy Pocket, Gameboy Color, various Gameboy Advances and Gameboy Player, and I've come across no real problems. Games load quickly, save games follow as you switch games. Some games glitch in ways they don't in emulators or real cartridges, one example being Castlevania Adventure in which some sprites flicker as other sprites for a brief money. The game otherwise runs fine, and it's a minor fault.
Gameboy Pocket is not a good fit for the Everdrive. It runs just fine, however in just half an hour you'll run into a problem - as the cartridge firmware boots, the screen fades to nothing. Everything still functions, and if you wish to load your last game you can hit start and be on your way. The screen comes back (usually) at this point.
People online suggest it's because AAA batteries don't provide the power to support the Everdrive. This maybe true, somehow. I've tried rechargeables (1.2v) and non-rechargeables (1.5v) and both game similar results. Removing Everdrive and inserting an official cartridge, I had hours of playtime left in the batteries so it's definitely an Everdrive problem.
Used with Gameboy Color or GBA, this is a wonderful thing for carrying a large library in one cartridge. The price is great, and considering the lack of competition in the market today, be happy that the one option is awesome.
Everdrive X5 for Gameboy Advance. €109 paid.
The X5 was a long time coming. Months ago there was no way it was ever going to be a thing. Then suddenly it was going to be a thing. The internet went crazy. I eventually tracked one down.
It's built a lot better than the Gameboy version. The plastic has a firm feel and a nice satin texture. It feels premium in your hand. You'll notice that it pokes out of the cartridge slot, being around halfway between a GBA and GB cartridge in height. Using a classic GBA it's not noticeable, as that is the one and only Gameboy Advance model to have top loaded carts.
I use it is much the same as the Gameboy version and has the same limitations in its file system. It is essentially the same thing - except this one plays GBA games! It also plays NES, Gameboy and Master System games using freely available emulators, with mixed (but mostly good) results.
I've experienced no problems with games so far, with one caveat. I am using ROMs from a GoodGBA complete set, and some of them have not detected the correct save type. It is easy to change this within the file system, and a quick bit of trial and error will fix the problem. Games that I've had trouble with this are: Go Go Beckham, Yoshi's Island and Super Mario World. In the case of the Mario games I was created with a save file corrupted error. Go Go Beckham launched to a black screen after the release team's intro.
Compare the Everdrive X5 to a previous flash cart I owned (EFA Linker II) and it's another world. That cart had space for approximately 5 games, which had to be transferred to a different portion of memory before being played - which took AGES. Contrarily, the Everdrive holds all of the games you'll ever want on a Micro SD card and loads whichever one you want to play in around a second.
And about the SD cards. I have every GBA game released, minus Japanese ones, on a 16GB card. The Gameboy complete all regions set takes a matter of Megabytes. I almost felt wasteful using a 4GB SD card for it, but couldn't find one smaller.
So - both are great cards. The X5 is naturally the better choice given that it supports the fantastic GBA library and does a fair job of supporting Gameboy and other systems. If you absolutely must have the most authentic experience, the Gameboy Everdrive is also a solid piece of kit and well worth a purchase, even if they are a little expensive.
No comments:
Post a Comment