Compatibility/Performance

My initial review was about GBA games on the SuperCard, and the second one, the SuperPass review, was about the NDS side of things. Now, I'll have the chance to combine both in one, and give it the note I feel like it really deserves, overall.

The software has stayed basically the same, and has seen a number of updates, which have made it quite great. While the GBA games support isn't perfect, as is often mentionned, I have to stress the fact however that the NDS games almost all work perfectly. There's said to be only Ultimate Spider-Man which doesn't work perfectly, where you have to press start at the start of level if you don't want it to crash. There really isn't much to say against its NDS support, it's really great all around, with an obviously working Nintendo Wifi support too.

However, in GBA land, things are not as they have always been. Since the saver wasn't battery-backed up, patches needed to be made to the games to allow them to write them back to the SD card. However, that's exactly where something comes in : the SuperCard miniSD has an internal battery for the saver. Thus, you don't need the patches as much as before, and you can try using the software without using the "Restart" function (which is what adds support for shortcut keys) for games which have slowdowns, as an incompatible game with the Restart function might be the exact reason why it doesn't work as it should. I can also confirm that this isn't just "marketing speak" : it can really solve problems, as it did with Road Trip - Shifting Gears and Gadget Racers, for instance.

As far as emulation goes, it's been made even better than before, as they've recently updated the emulators, which also means adding Game Boy Color support. This is a great addition, which makes it only a matter of a drag-drop and copying an exisiting save file to the proper name ("game name.sav" for instance) to have them playable everywhere you go!

Also something nice to note is that it uses the same suite as the SD did. If you are moving from SD to miniSD, you will not need to patch everything again, the only thing you should do is update the new cart's firmware with the current SD version.

Conclusion

The SuperCard was already a good solution, and now it's become great. The improved GBA support, alongside the smaller form-factor, both make it better, but they still do not make it perfect. The battery also gets drained a bit faster, but I have tested it, and have been able to let my dogs play together for a whole 5h30 at full volume, which I don't find all that bad honestly. To those that do not need a perfect GBA support, but will mostly use it for NDS gaming and music/movies, this just might have the best bang for their buck, while also staying incognito inside the handheld.

Pros :

+ Great value for the price

+ GBA-sized

+ Nearly perfect NDS support

+ Improved GBA support

+ NDS games start instantly

+ Uses the same software as the SD version

+ Emulation support : NES, Game Boy AND Game Boy Color, PC Engine, Sega Master System and Game Gear

Cons :

- GBA support isn't perfect...

- Battery goes down a bit faster than with real carts