| Ewin Expansion Pack | ||||
|
|
Ewin Expansion Pack The Ewin Expansion Pack allows slot-1 flashcart users to play GBA games hopefully quicker and easier than than it's main competitor, the EZ-Flash 3 in 1. Ewin mainly makes slot-2 carts and they have not yet made a slot-1 flashcart, but their slot-2 efforts were generally well-received and all-round good products, therefore I have high hopes for this! Official Feature List:
The Ewin Expansion Pack comes in a small white box, with a picture of the product on the front and back, with 'Expansion PAK' in large writing. The feature list is in the top right of the front, and overall the packaging looks very plain. Down one side are some diagrams which clearly show that this product is for DS Lite only, not original DS (phat), GBA or GBA SP. On the other side are some coloured boxes so the shop owners can tell which colour is in which box. At the moment, the EEP is available in navy blue, pink, pale blue, black and white. I have a black DS so I ordered a black EEP. 
Inside the box is a clear plastic tray in which the cartridge is held, this will also protect the cart as I found out with my other, white one, because it seemed like Royal Mail had decided my parcel would make a good seat. Luckily, PSXBOY ships items in strong cardboard boxes, so my black one was safe (but I accidentally ripped the box when opening it ) Anyway, I digress, back to the review. Box Contents
The cart feels very sturdy, it doesn't bend at all and there are no loose parts inside it. It does not have the glossy finish of the dust cover but the colour matches extremely well (with the white version at least) and it does not stick out one millimetre. Other carts advertise their products as being flush when really the stick out slightly, this actually does fit flush. The cart is really easy to get into the DS, it doesn't scrape against the edges but it doesn't feel loose either. It clicks in just like proper GBA games. The sticker is a simple but professional-looking job, it's shiny silver and dark grey, clearly stating the product is the Ewin Expansion Pack. When my first Ewin arrived, I was eager to try it out, but because no disc or website address is included it's quite hard to find the required files. Eventually, I found Ewin's Official Site, which turned out to be in Chinese. Luckily, at this point, I realized that the firmware files were on GBAtemp's Download Centre, so I downloaded it and placed it on my MicroSD card. GUI (OS)
The loader included is very simplistic and basic, but it works well. It comes in the form of an NDS file you launch from your slot-1 flashcart's menu, and is DLDI compatible meaning it should work on all slot-1 flashcarts. The screen you see straight away once the loader has loaded (which takes a second or so) has an Ewin logo on the top screen, with the version number, and on the bottom screen is a file browser and a key which tells you what different buttons do. The key says the X button will give more help, and it does. A Run/Open
The file browser has no text wrapping, so if the name of a ROM is too long it just goes off the edge of the screen, but if you leave it selected for a second it starts to scroll, allowing you to see the entire name. It seems a bit silly that there is such a large margin on the left side, because if it the margin was smaller you could get more text on the screen. The loader shows all folders, whether they are hidden or not, and all GBA ROMs. NDS ROMs or other files are not displayed. Once you find the GBA ROM you want to load, you select it with the D-pad then press A to load it. Now, inside legitimate GBA carts are chips that hold the save files, so the Ewin Expansion Pack has to mimic these to get the games to save correctly, so before the game is copied from to the slot-2 cart by the loader, the Ewin has to patch itself so it appears to have one of those save chips. Patching takes roughly 10 seconds maximum, then, the GBA ROM is copied over which takes 2.5 seconds for a 32Mbit ROM, 5 seconds for a 64Mbit one, 10 seconds for a 128Mbit one and so on.
A: Game uses passwords, not save files
I was most disappointed with the compatibility bugs, as playing GBA games is the only thing this does therefore I would expect it to play them well, but hopefully this will improve as time passes (there have only been a couple of updates so far, so I cannot tell if the support will be good or not) All in all, the Ewin Expansion Pack is a really good alternative to the EZ-Flash 3 in 1 Expansion pack, and it loads GBA games really well, however that's all it does. It lacks extra features like real-time save and cheats, which the M3DS Real has, and the text-only loader is very basic and simple. There is room for improvement in this product, and I still recommend it, but at the moment it's just an easy way to play GBA games, without any fancy extra bells or whistles. Pros + Uses clean GBA ROMs + Loader supports DLDI + Good ROM compatibility + Good homebrew compatibility + Fairly fast loading times + Works with DS Browser (use patch for SuperCards) + Works with NDS-GBA linkage + Lots of colours available Cons - Basic, text-only loader - No extra features (RTS, cheats etc.) - No file-system access - No internal clock - Some compatibility problems - Only available in lite-sized cart (no DS Phat compatibility)
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 1578 Comments (0)
 Write comment
You must be logged in to post a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.
Older news items:
|
Subscribe to this comment's feed
