[Archived] R4, R4i card

[Iceman]

Can anybody shed more light, on this R4 card. I understand its illegal, but what exactly is its purpose? Going off the pics, it looks like a card reader or something, where you can insert a micro SD card? Is this capable of doing photos and video?

Ta

Isgak

[dazmaz]

Actually the R4 isnt illegal. Its the way some people that use it that illegal.

An R4 or onething similar is basically a ds cartridge that reads data off SD cards or similar. It is usually used to play homebrew games or game roms**** I think that can also be used for photos and videos.

**** Note to be able to legally play ROMed games on a flash card you must own a retail bought copy of the game, if you do not own a retail version of the game it is illegal to own a back up copy of the game***

[Iceman]

Just on this, my buddy has backed up his games onto the R4. However, I had to keep switching the DS off, to play another game. Is there a way to rectify this, by switching to another game, without having to turn the DS off. It would make more sense, to end the game, and then exit to the main root menu on the sd card.

[BangkokRover]

Which version of the R4 card do you have and what version of software is it running?

[Hughesy]

The R4's are used to hold about 30-40 copied/ downloaded games, rather than 1 game per cartridge

[M-K]

The R4 was ruled illegal by the High Court last year, wasn't it? You can't sell or advertise them in the UK now.

There's really no legitimate reason to have one anyway. People might claim it's for running homebrew or 'backups' of commercial games, but the DS homebrew scene has been stagnant for ages and there's no need to make a backup copy of a game that comes on ROM cartridge.

They're purely for piracy. You can find and download any DS game in a matter of minutes.

If you're going to get one, be prepared to do a lot of messing around with firmware and patches to get the latest games to run. There are loads of different variations of the R4 card, usually cheap Chinese knock-offs, and some don't work as reliably as others. The contacts on cheap cards wear out quite quickly (I've gone through three or four of them)