I have received a MK5 Giga 8Gb, the lastest Nintendo DS flash cart from NeoFlash, maker of a lot of backup units for many systems, and want to share my review of it with you guys.
The MK5 Giga is a Slot 1 Nintendo DS backup device with 8Gb (= 1 Gigabyte) of onboard Flash memory, there’s also a 16Gb (= 2 Gigabyte) version available.
FEATURES
* Supports clean ROMs, no need for patching, just drag and drop
* Build in 8Gbit or 16Gbit memory
* USB 2.0 high-speed data transfer
* USB disk function, compatible with any operation system
* Built in Moonshell v1.5, upgradable
* Supports homebrew
* Built in SMS multi save function, and auto save
* Menu upgradeable, just drag and drop the new core to MK5
* Multi ROM support, media play support
* MK5 turbo engine, 100% full game running speed, without any delay
* Built in PassMe function, can boot most GBA flash cart perfectly
CONTENT
MK5 Giga comes with the cart itself, a GBA cart with an USB interface to connect to the PC, an USB cable and a 8cm CD-R with docs and more in a shiny, colorful plastic packaging. It fits perfectly into Slot 1, the Slot 2 USB connector sticks out a bit since it is the size of a standard GBA cartridge. That doesn’t really matter, though, since you need that only to connect your MK5 to your PC.
SETUP
The MK5 Giga is ready for action once you take it out of the box, it has several games and programs on it by default. If you want to put your own Roms on it, just put the 8Gb cart in Slot 1, the USB interface cart ind Slot 2, then connect it to a free USB port on your Computer. Now turn on your DS and start the MK5 Giga. If you have Windows XP, it should now see it as an external drive, for other OS, there are drivers on the CD-R. Now just copy and paste your Roms over to the cart and you’re ready to go. I was able to fit a whopping TWENTY random games on the cart, if you got the 16Gb version, you even have twice that much space.
USAGE
Every game I tested worked like a charm. I can’t test the other 850+ Roms as well, but it is said that EVERY Rom released so far works on the MK5 Giga!
The unit can’t detect the savetypes of Roms and gets its information from a databse saved on the cart. Since not all games are in there yet, you sometimes have to test all different settings (you can change save types by holding select and pressing left or right) until saving works. A bit annoying, but you can always get the latest savelib here, where you can also find a compatability chart.
When you boot up your cart, you’re going to the cart menu after a short loading pause, where you can select between 3D blocks, which represent the games on your cart, while you can see additional info aboout the highlighted game on the top screen. It’s not beautiful, but it does the job.
If you have a Slot 2 (GBA) flash cart as well, the MK5 Giga can also act as a Passme device to boot those. All you have to do is run the Passme image from the MK5’s main menu.
CONCLUSION
The MK5 Giga is a very good choice if you don’t want to play GBA games, and don’t need rumble or extra RAM which for exaple the EZ Flash Triple pak offers. Compared to other units it is very cheap with around 60 EUR for the 16Gb version, which it is definitely worth.
+ Very high compatability
+ Easy usage
+ Pretty cheap compared to other units
– No GBA support
For more info on the MK5 Giga and other NeoFlash products, visit their website:
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