Thrills & Woes of the Super Card (GBA)

[Papajaja]

Hello. I am glad that I found you. I also have a supercard mini sd with my gba sp. It is really super. I have allready finished pokemon saphire, golden sun 1 and 2, castelvania aria of sorrow, advance wars, mario pinball land, mario super star saga, mario tennis, mario vs dk, and a lot game boy color, game boy classic games. I have started metroid fusion, but it slowdowns enough, mario kart, the same problems! I would like to make them run perfectly. It is sure that i tried prefetch or fastrestart, but no help there. I would not like to turn off and turn on in a second my gba sp in order to do the quick save method. Is there something else? Again, very glad i found you! Ps. Mario party is fully unplayable for me. Advance wars crashes at start screen. I love to play those games. I am waiting your reply, thanks!

[nightrnr]

Greetings Papajaja,

1st of all, give up on Mario Kart. It's just not going to work well with this cart (on any or no setting). If you really need to play it on a flash cart, your going to have to find an EZFlash IV or more capable cart than the Super Card. buying a used copy will be cheaper though .

2nd, prefetch will ONLY help IF you do not use reset or fastrestart (as each one would disable the benefits of prefetch). It's a tradeoff for a boost in speed.

Haven't tried Metroid Fusion or Mario Party on it yet, but I'll get back to you in a day or so.
Advance Wars works for me, but I do not have fastrestart enabled. I will try it with fastrestart if I get a chance.
Also, Advance Wars needs to be save-patched with GBATool to save correctly.

[nightrnr]

Okay,

So I tried a couple games:
Mario Party loaded up for me, but crashed at one of the games (only the 2nd mini-game I tried). No change in setting helped, so I think you are out of luck for this one.

Advance Wars works, but you cannot use fastreset nor any reset patch. You must do the quick-power-cycle to save.
A lot of games there is just no convenient alternative. It's either turn off/on to save or no play .

Advance Wars 2 does not work at all for me. It crashes at the title screen . Which is... unfortunate.
I even tried the pal release, but it has the same problem.
If anyone has a solution for this game on the supercard, please share.

It's a lot of experimentation and hit and miss with what games will work.
In any case, I am not an expert on this, and I originally created this topic so that others could share their findings for the benefit of all SC users.

[nightrnr]

Okay, so this is a bit random, but had to document it here.

I loaded up my SC cart on my GameCube Game Boy Player and noticed a couple games don't load or play nice... games that DO work more or less in my GBA SP.
examples are:
Pacman Collection: doesn't load
Bubble Bobble old and new: freezes at level load
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror: freezes part way through 1st level (still not sure if it saves even on GBA, haven't played too far or attempted more basic conversion settings).

So weird. Many other games play fine with SuperCard on GBP.

It's the fickle-est flash cart I've ever messed with. My results seem random too (I have 2 of these and sometimes a game works and/ or saves on one card but not the other). Of course there are variables, like save battery (even with QPC to save), possible different setting when converting the roms, different systems and carts may connect better with each other, etc, etc.

My results may or may not be accurate, and that's what frustrates me.

I know the cart is inferior to its competition, but I really wish I could figure its quirks out better.

[Fourch]

Dunno if this is still on-topic, but I'm also glad I found this thread.

For me, Advance Wars works perfectly fine without any patching. If I SRAM patch it with GBA Tool, it boots on a white screen.

Super Monkey Ball boots with a white screen as well, no matter what I do. So I wonder how the second poster managed to make it work (with QCP method though).

[Anapan]

I am second poster. I do not remember, but I still have all the tools, and I still have a folder with supercard pre-prepped files. I'll post the tools shortly. PM me about working rom if you wish to expedite a solution for one game.
Edit: Supercard patchng tools:
https://anapan.ca/Anapan/Supercard/
Single .ZIP
When you get the .zip, pay attention to the file dates to see which were the most recent tools. I don't remember anything about these, let alone what order I used them in but at the very least I could, on request take my final roms and create IPS patches for the modified ones. I'd still prefer a PM quick fix.
Edit2:
Created IPS for Super Monkey Ball Jr. for Supercard - Quick Power Cycle required.
Apply to rom: Super Monkey Ball Jr. (USA).gba 0A8031F0
https://anapan.ca/Anapan/Supercard/SMBJRQPC.zip

[nightrnr]

Haven't been on here on forever (due to life and stuff).
but I hit a road block and have a question:

Does anyone have a link or other access to download a version of Flashme for the DS that is compatible with the SuperCard?

The link that I found is dead:
From
https://www.1emulation.com/forums/topic ... ies-guide/
And that file was called:
FlashMe v8 SuperCard.nds

I successfully patched a DSLite with Flashme, but it doesn't run DS games from SuperCard (haven't tried my EZ Flash IV yet, so maybe I am missing something).
Apparently to use it with the SuperCard it needs to be patched with ndsloader.bin.

Anyway, I thought it a clever use of the SuperCard for DSLites that have a finicky slot 1.

[nightrnr]

Answered my own question. It's in the comments in the same link:

How to make your own FlashMe for SuperCard:



1. Download flashme.nds and ndsloader.bin

2. Put flashme.nds and ndsloader.bin into C:\nds

3. Go to Start > Run and type "cmd"

4. Enter this command:

copy /b c:\nds\ndsloader.bin + c:\nds\flashme.nds c:\nds\flashme_patched.nds
That should generate a new file in C:\nds named flashme_patched.nds which you can now use on your SuperCard!

but now I need to find ndsloader.bin

[Anapan]

One of these dslazy from ratx has it?
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/DSLazy
https://gbatemp.net/threads/passme-flas ... rk.636342/

[nightrnr]

I actually just ran into DSlazy last night.
Yes, that should work (looks like it can patch it via graphical interface) , but my experiment time will have to wait as I'm going on vacation.

There was another firmware replacement called FWNitro

https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/FWNitro

I'm not sure if I should try that one out instead. I'm not sure if it flashes to the DS in the same way. I may end up bricking this DSLite if I don't know exactly how it works (I know you can unbrick with another DSlite but it sounds like a pain).

Still, FWNitro sounds pretty neat. It has option to let you copy your DS carts directly to the SuperCard.