M3 vs. Supercard: or both?

[Shortsord]

I'm trying to choose between getting an M3 or Supercard device, and have already reviewed the big old complete comparison list, and it was very helpful. It didn't, however, solve my problem.

What I want to be able to do is run gba games well, snes games well, movies well, and homebrew apps well. Music and ds games would be nice, but is secondary to the above. From reading around it seems that the M3 will do gba and movies well, while the supercard will do homebrew and ds games well. Overall, it looks to be more in favor of the supercard, but the poor gba quality is a big turn-away.

To solve this, I was wondering if there was a separate homebrew gba emulator I could use on the Supercard, so that everything could be consolidated onto one device. Does such a thing exist, and work well?

Or am I better off getting both? And if I do get both, will either the Passcard3 or Superkey work with both?

Finally, I haven't heard about snes game performance on either, how is it? Any input?

Sorry for the long-windedness, and thanks for any input or consideration at all.

[Jesster]

I'm trying to choose between getting an M3 or Supercard device, and have already reviewed the big old complete comparison list, and it was very helpful. It didn't, however, solve my problem.

What I want to be able to do is run gba games well, snes games well, movies well, and homebrew apps well. Music and ds games would be nice, but is secondary to the above. From reading around it seems that the M3 will do gba and movies well, while the supercard will do homebrew and ds games well. Overall, it looks to be more in favor of the supercard, but the poor gba quality is a big turn-away.

To solve this, I was wondering if there was a separate homebrew gba emulator I could use on the Supercard, so that everything could be consolidated onto one device. Does such a thing exist, and work well?

Running a GBA emulator on the DS would be pointless since the DS natively supports GBA games. It would be like trying to run a playstation emulator on a playstation. The supercard's poor performance with GBA games is due mostly to the speed at which it accesses the game data off the flash card/internal memory. That said, the vast majority of GBA games do work on Supercard, and many even work flawlessly. However, some suffer varying degrees of slowdown.


Or am I better off getting both? And if I do get both, will either the Passcard3 or Superkey work with both?

If GBA performance and homebrew are both that important to you (and you can afford both), then sure. Any nopass device (Passcard3/Superkey) should work for both.


Finally, I haven't heard about snes game performance on either, how is it? Any input?

I don't think any cards on the market have their own SNES emulator built in, so for that you'd have to get a homebrew emulator. There are two SNES emulators in development for the DS: SNESDS and SnezziDS. I haven't tried either personally, but from what I've read, rom compatability is still fairly sketchy on both.

-=The Jesster: Gatchaba Goose=-

[MR_COW]

My suggestion, flame me if you want.

Get a PSP. For 300 dollars you probally can get a new 1.5 PSP on ebay and a 2GB memory stick. For get perfect SNES and near perfect GBA. There is a perfect GBA emu out for the PSP(It runs GBA games 100% speed) but it is in beta and is buggy. And another 4GB card would be $100.

So for 400, you would get movies, PSP games, SNES games, NES games, Genesis Games, GBA games, music, and 6GB of memory. All on a 16:9 Screen.

[pte]

There is actually no real answer to that, do you have enough time to play GBA games and NDS games so that you need an almost perfect support? If you have the money and want a very good GBA support I would pick up an M3 Lite. I don't know why you would pick up both unless you are some sort of a dev.

Also what you asked about movies... people use this homebrew software called Moonshell to watch movies, even the m3 owners do that. The software m3 has for the movies is for the GBA movie format, so if you have a GBA and use an earlier m3 product you might wanna go for that. For other than that Moonshell is the way to go and it doesn't matter which card you own. What I have tried for movies and series, you are better off with a handheld dvd-player than an NDS. It really isn't the choice for movies, I googled for various encoding settings and all of them turned out to be bad in some way...

Why the hassle for GBA instead of NDS since its a DS afterall?

[Shortsord]

Haha, thanks for all the replies.

Basically, I don't want to use the device for ds games because I plan on simply buying any ds games I want. It's kind of a I-want-to-support-them thing and I figure it's not a lot of money anyways. GBA games, however, are old and still cost a lot of money, and, altogether, since they're small enough I'd rather stick them all onto a cartridge instead of having an individual cartridge for both. Consolidation, basically.

As for the PSP idea, there's no need for an asbestos warning, you're actually dead on in concept. The fact is, I already have a psp and run those things on it. Thus, my need is not for a separate entity player, but rather imply a way to play these on my dsl as well.

Basically, when I'm in the mood to play psp games, I take my psp and then have gba, snes, moves, internet, and whatever else on the side.
What I'd like, is to be able to take my dsl when I want ds games, and have all that other stuff available as well. (waiting diligently for Opera)

So, I'm already doing overkill, I know. I just was wondering if I'd need to go overkill again for the dsl specifically.


Simply put, is the Supercard performance on gba games poor or buggy enough to warrant having an M3 as well? Or, is the M3 poor enough in homebrew support to warrant a Supercard on the side?

Thanks for all the help, and thanks for letting me know I only need one nopass card.

[MR_COW]

Ah! Ok.

Well, then I think the M3 is your best bet. The G6 would be great alternative, but you want music and movies, which it cannot do well due to the lack of space on it.

[outphase]

If it comes down to GBA support, I follow along with the M3 crowd. Homebrew is equal on both m3 and SC, don't know why you would hear otherwise (except from card-bashers).

[FifthE1ement]

Well considering DragonMinded, who created DSOrganize, is stopping M3 support I wouldn't be surprised to see other homebrew devs follow suit to make their lives easier. I think until M3 makes it easier for homebrew devs the homebrew problem for M3 products is only going to get worse.

FifthE1ement :cool:

[Kradrats]

Well considering DragonMinded, who created DSOrganize, is stopping M3 support I wouldn't be surprised to see other homebrew devs follow suit to make their lives easier. I think until M3 makes it easier for homebrew devs the homebrew problem for M3 products is only going to get worse.

FifthE1ement :cool:

if that happens, M3 will probably create a version of the most popular homebrew apps for their carts themselves.

[FifthE1ement]

That will never happen as they even refuse to provide the homebrew community with the code information that they need now. I am 100% sure they will never ever take it upon themselves to port the programs but its possible a 3rd party might do it.

FifthE1ement :cool:

[Kradrats]

That will never happen as they even refuse to provide the homebrew community with the code information that they need now. I am 100% sure they will never ever take it upon themselves to port the programs but its possible a 3rd party might do it.

FifthE1ement :cool:

that makes sense, seeing as how they're less than eager to make an english pda patch. I still have faith, maybe they're busy :rolleyes:

[DaFox]

That will never happen as they even refuse to provide the homebrew community with the code information that they need now. I am 100% sure they will never ever take it upon themselves to port the programs but its possible a 3rd party might do it.

FifthE1ement :cool:

I know if i were to start coding some homebrew i would be working with supercards.

as for the GBA http://rothmans.joskeonline.com/supercardsite/ theres the Conpatibility list for the SC.