Hi Having read a few posts on here I am now a bit concerned about my R4 card. I bought it at www.zentu.co.uk and paid £15.98 for the R4 and a 2g sd card. It all works great but im concerned its going to kill my DS. How can I tell if its fake or a real R4 please. Can I find out just by looking at it? Thanks in advance.
You can tell very easily by just looking at it. If it says R4 on the sticker then its a fake. The R4 team is long gone, all R4's on the market are fakes. That said though its very unlikely to hurt your DS. The problems with the R4 are mostly related to game support and lack of feature updates.
Thank you for the reply and putting my mind at rest. It does say R4 on the sticker. I have gone on to read a bit more and realise they arent fakes as such but a clone. I was just reading stuff about it killing the ds and I didnt want that to happen. I was looking to purchase another one of these but im not sure if im better off going for something different now or just getting the same again. I guess I have lots more reading to do before I make a decision based on the information I am gleaning from this forum. Im doing pretty well considering I had never even heard of these things until last weekend
Clones and fakes are generally the same thing. Various competing teams tried to copy the R4, with varying levels of success. Some are pretty good and even improved on the design, others not so much. There have been cases of flashcarts shorting out a DS and causing problems, but they're pretty rare so I wouldnt worry too much about it. Anyway, your current R4 cart you have is fine to use, but I wouldnt buy another one. The R4 is no longer getting updates. This has already caused problems with alot of people, as is obvious from just looking around on this forum. More than half of the people asking about problems they have are related to R4's. If you're buying a new cart I'd go with a CycloDS or an M3 Real. They're more expensive than the R4 carts but offer many more features. For true future-proofing though you want to go with a card with 'i' at the end of the name, like the Acekard 2i. Those cards are the only ones that support the upcoming DSi.
To be honest, the original R4 and the following clones/fakes were all manufactured in China, possibly even the same factory! It doesn't look overly difficult to reverse-engineer one of these boys and replicate it in short order. The R4 is still a good buy. I have about 20 friends who have one with the latest firmware update. None of them have cried about it so far. I'm still recommending the R4 to people and so far everyone's happy.
Wow. Are you serious? R4 is probably one of the worst buys right now. Why bother with the hassles of clones and fakes to get basic features to work right (example: using cheats). If you really on a budget then go get a DSTT. It cost half the price of any real or fake R4 and does twice as much without any of the hassles. You and your friends have yet to try real DS carts.
Thank you for all these replys. Theyare all very helpful. Ive had no problems at all with my R4 but then I dont know any different anyway I think I will try something else so will have to look into the CycloDS and the DSTT and decide which to get. Thanks again.
