| Acekard R.P.G. | ||||
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Introduction The Acekard R.P.G. is one of the latest in the range of slot-1 flash kits for the Nintendo DS and is also the latest product from the Acekard Team who brought us the original Acekard and later, the Acekard+. The original Acekard, while not received very well; was revolutionary at its time because it was the first flash kit to boast perfect compatibility with all DS games. Unfortunately the cart suffered from a few major user interface problems that prevented it from being the coveted cart it could have been. Buggy PC software and a proprietary file system made using the cart a chore. The team later released the Acekard+, which they offered as a FREE upgrade to owners of the previous Acekard no less. The Acekard+ resolved the issues of the original by offering simple drag and drop support and allowing FAT file systems to be used. The Acekard+ was a major improvement but it came too late, with other carts arriving on the scene, the Acekard+ was again left behind. After a ten month hiatus the team are back with their latest creation - the Acekard R.P.G. (R.P.G. standing for Real Play Gear). The Acekard R.P.G. has turned a few heads as it is the first DS flash kit to offer both internal flash memory and support for Micro SD and Micro SDHC cards; quite a feat for such a small device! The Acekard R.P.G. is also the first commercial flash cart to go open source. The team have released the source code and the build environment for the loader (not firmware) files. 
The Acekard R.P.G. is currently available with 1GB (gigabyte), or 8Gbit as they advertise it, of on-board "ultra fast" NAND flash memory. An industry standard mini-USB port is situated on the top of the cart used for managing the contents of the on-board flash memory. A spring loaded micro SD slot is also found on the cart which will accommodated either a standard micro SD card or the new higher capacity micro SDHC cards. SDHC cards will support up to 32GB of storage on a single card in the future but are currently only available in various sizes of up to 8GB. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Acekard R.P.G. is that it is open source. This means that anyone talented enough to do so can customise, add to, improve on, or even completely overhaul the team's original loader files. Let's take a quick look at the feature list of the Acekard R.P.G
Packaging and Contents The Acekard R.P.G. sample we received came packaged as you can see in the photos. Our sample came with just a replacement shell and a small paper slip warning users to be careful when changing casing. Oddly enough no mini-USB cable was included (which is absolutely required to use the Acekard R.P.G. - you'll need it to write to the onboard flash memory where the GUI loader software belongs). The Acekard team have assured us that future retail units will come packaged with a mini-USB cable. So here's a list of what is apparently included in retail boxes:- Box Contents - Acekard R.P.G. - Mini-USB cable
No CD or support files are included with the cart, but it's not too surprising; the Acekard R.P.G. does not require any PC side software. When connected via USB, Windows XP (and most modern operating systems) will recognise and install the device automatically, and from there it's just a case of dragging and dropping files. Any additional (3rd party) software can be downloaded from the net. The Acekard R.P.G. is packaged in a nice little plastic box surrounded in a cardboard sleeve. The overall package looks professional and has a nice run down of features on the front and back of the sleeve and is almost "Engrish" free... Well, it wouldn't be a flash kit if it didn't have some "Engrish" on it! Inside the plastic box are clips for holding the Acekard R.P.G. and also space for a GBA cart. No mention from the team as to whether they plan to release any GBA slot peripherals or add-ons in the future, but it looks like they've taken the initiative to accommodate the cart if that ever does happen. Moving on, we'll now take a look at the Acekard R.P.G. cart itself.
At first glance the Acekard R.P.G. is a very unique looking cart, what with both the mini-USB port and micro SD slot. The mini-USB port is used for writing to the 1GB of onboard flash memory, and the micro SD slot can accommodate a regular micro SD or new high capacity micro SDHC cards. It's really amazing how they've managed to fit all this onto one single DS cart and have managed to maintain the form factor. The Acekard R.P.G. is currently only available in black. A silver/white cart is shown on the Acekard website, but that's the only place you'll find it for now. Build quality wise, the Acekard R.P.G. seems sturdy enough. It's built from a tough feeling semi-transparent black plastic and the mini-USB port, which some people believe to be fragile, actually feels quite strong. And just like the DS-Xtreme the USB port is held on to the cart PCB by 5 separate points which should prevent it from being damaged as long as due care is taken. The micro SD slot is spring loaded, which you may or may not be happy to hear! While I doubt the spring will break if the cart is used properly and carefully, if it does manage to break, there is actually a lot of "grab" space around the top of the micro SD cart slot which should make pulling the card out manually easier. 
A shiny sticker can be found on the back of the Acekard R.P.G. and not the front, where instead you'll find and engraved Acekard logo which I must admit, looks pretty darn nice, which is more than can be said for the sticker. The team have opted for a shiny and almost metallic sticker and in this reviewer's opinion, it's just plain ugly. Not so much for the logo design on the sticker, but its shape. It's slightly too large for the beveled area in which it lays and ends up looking slightly bent and misshapen. I opted to pull mine off after this review and haven't regretted it; the engraved logo on the "front" does a nice enough job of branding the cart anyway. The cart is held together with clips surround the 4 edges ala. DS-Xtreme. To open up the cart to take a peak at its innards you must pry these clips apart carefully. And I say carefully because if you bend them too much you'll end up stressing the plastic and will risk snapping the clips or turning the bases of them an off-white colour. Here are the innards of the Acekard R.P.G. in all its naked glory. 
The Acekard R.P.G. slots into the Nintendo DS slot-1 quite nicely and without too much friction (I think any friction that may occur will be due to the carts label). And just like all new slot-1 carts; it fits flush with no external over-hang. Unlike the DS-Xtreme, the The Acekard R.P.G. USB port is slightly receded into the cart, making plugging in a USB cable whilst the device is inserted into your DS almost impossible. So you'll most likely have to remove the cart to connect via USB. The micro SD slot is also inaccessible when the The Acekard R.P.G. is in your DS. You simply won't be able to remove the micro SD card without removing the Acekard R.P.G. first. All in all, the Acekard R.P.G. is a nice looking cart (sans the label) and it's truly astonishing how they managed to fit everything inside the slot-1 form factor. 
Help - Help is a simple small screen that shows you the button shortcuts for navigating the GUI.
The Acekard R.P.G. GUI is very much skinnable. Almost every aspect you see can be modified through simple bitmap and .INI settings files which are part of the loader package which reside on the flash memory. You can change placement of text; font sizes, colours; language text; icon animation and more... Skin enthusiasts should be very happy with this carts offerings in this department. The Acekard R.P.G. GUI, while not perfect, is brilliant. It looks very modern and clean, is highly customisable and offers some nice and well placed options. The team have obviously put a lot of time into perfecting the GUI, and it shows. There's a lot of class in this GUI and little things such as the cart resetting when you apply a new theme just shows the level of depth the team have gone into. The unfortunate downfalls of the GUI are the lack of features such as multimedia support, the delay when opening folders and dodgy touch screen control. Hopefully the team address these issues, as they shouldn't be too hard to improve (especially the last 2). Then it will truly be one of the best flash kit loaders I've played with.
Once you have enabled Cheat code support in the Special settings screen from within the Start menu, you can press 'Start+Select+UP' during gameplay to enable cheats and 'Start+Select+DOWN' to disable. Time to do some real testing and to see how the Acekard R.P.G. really performs! Most flash kits these days offer 100% ROM compatibility. That means glitch-free playback, no slowdown, corruption or incompatible games. So let's see if the Acekard R.P.G. offers that 100%. During the testing portion of this review we will put the Acekard R.P.G. to the test with various ROM images of games, from randomly selected games to games that are known to have particular issues playing on flash kits. We will also test some homebrew games and applications. We will be using the latest firmware available at the time on the cart. We will be using micro SD cards of varying brands and quality, and standard clean ROM images that have not been modified or trimmed in order to maintain fair testing. Here's a list of our testing equipment: - European Nintendo DS Lite - Full volume + brightness settings - Fully charged - Acekard R.P.G. final product - Acekard R.P.G. loader 4.05 final - USB 2.0 Micro SDHC card reader - Windows XP SP2 - The 1GB of NAND flash memory onboard the Acekard R.P.G. - Sandisk 4GB Micro SDHC card (class 2) (made in China) - Sandisk Ultra II 2GB Micro SD Card (made in Taiwan) - PNY 1GB Micro SD Card (made in Japan) Please note that due to the fact that 100% compatibility is expected these days, we no longer list every single game played. Instead we only make note of ROMs that have had issues. When launching games for the first time from inside the Acekard R.P.G. menu, the Acekard R.P.G. will check to see whether it's the first time the game has run or not and will then continue to launch. This can take anything from 1 second to 3 seconds, which is the maximum time I've encountered, but this speed will vary between micro SD cards. Launching games again takes just a few seconds. ROM Compatibility Q: Is there any game that hasn't worked properly? A: All games tested (65+) have worked fine without a hitch. There are currently no known compatibility issues. Q: Do you have to perform any ARM7 patching or modifying, such as Worms: Open Warfare 2? A: No. All games work fine without prior tampering. Q: Have you experienced any slow down and or lag in games? A: The 'Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow' introduction FMV has regularly been used as a benchmark for DS flash kit SD card read access because of the heavy compression used in the video and the rapid, extremely fast read access required by the DS to play it without lag. We tested this game on all types of memory listed above in the test equipment list. Here are the results: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow intro FMV speed test results: - The 1GB of NAND flash memory onboard the Acekard R.P.G. -- The FMV played back fine without any lag whatsoever = PASS - Sandisk 4GB Micro SDHC card (class 2) (made in China) -- The FMV lagged terribly at nearly 1 frame per second in the last half of the movie = FAIL - Sandisk Ultra II 2GB Micro SD Card (made in Taiwan) -- The FMV lagged terribly at nearly 1 frame per second in the last half of the movie = FAIL - PNY 1GB Micro SD Card (made in Japan) -- The FMV played back fine without any lag whatsoever = PASS Q: Have you encountered any freezing in games such as Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin? A: This time we turn to 'Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin' for this part of the testing, a game known to freeze on slower access SD cards during game play. We tested this game on all types of memory listed above in the test equipment list. Here are the results: Tests performed: Constantly pausing and unpausing the game, save points & portals. - The 1GB of NAND flash memory onboard the Acekard R.P.G. -- No freezing was experience in any part of the game = PASS - Sandisk 4GB Micro SDHC card (class 2) (made in China) -- The game locked up randomly during testing = FAIL - Sandisk Ultra II 2GB Micro SD Card (made in Taiwan) -- The game locked up randomly during testing = FAIL - PNY 1GB Micro SD Card (made in Japan) -- No freezing was experience in any part of the game = PASS Q: Does it matter what micro SD card I use? A: See the above questions. I recommend you buy a quality micro SD card or use the on-board memory for known problematic games. Q: Does the DS Opera Web browser work? A: If you have the patched ROM and corresponding slot-2 flash card (G6, M3, Supercard), then yes. Otherwise, if you choose to use the unpatched ROM, you'll need the official memory expansion pak. Q: How fast are the read and write speeds on the onboard memory? A: Here are our HD Tach results (using USB 2.0 controller): Average read speed: 10.4MB/s , Average write speed: 8.9MB/s. (Random access: 48.4ms) As you can see during our extensive testing, just as it is the case for most other flash carts; the PNY Japanese card is the card of choice for speed. It's a shame to see the Acekard R.P.G. fail some of these tests, as a handful of other flash kits on the market do not have speed issues regardless of micro SD card. Let's not forget though, that the onboard memory passed these tests; so whatever SD card you have, you can keep games prone to slowdown on the onboard memory and enjoy them at full speed. Good for those who fancy getting an Acekard R.P.G. but want to keep their old micro SD card(s). Multiplayer, Download Play and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support As of loader version 4.04 the Acekard Team have fixed support for Download Play in what they call the "majority" of games. Single cart download play is a problem that has plagued a large number of flash kits. Not all kits support download play, or have trouble in particular games. Download Play is when a game offers multiplayer gameplay between 2 physical DS' over a local wireless connection using only 1 game pak in 1 of the 2 DS. We have tested the following games that support Download Play, and here are our results: Pass: 42 All-Time Classics / Club House Games Big Brain Academy Bomberman Land Touch! New Super Mario Bros. Point Blank DS Super Mario 64 DS Super Monkey Ball DS Tetris DS Snowboard Kids SBK Yoshi Touch & Go Zoo Keeper Fail: None As you can see, the Acekard R.P.G. (as of loader version 4.04) has support for download play in the handful that we've tested; a rather pleasant result. Nintendo Wi-Fi connection works fine on all games, just like any other flash kits - no problem here. Battery Life Results: Test condition:
Retail New Super Mario Bros cart = 4 hours 55 minutes Results are not yet available. Please check back later. Save Game support Like most recent flash kits, the Acekard R.P.G. automatically detects save types of games and creates save game files automatically. Although, as mentioned earlier in this review, the Acekard R.P.G. does allow you to manually override the automatic save type if need be. This can be done via the File Info screen in the Start Menu. The Acekard R.P.G. creates .SAV files with the same file name as the game they were created for, inside the same folder as the ROM. The size of the .SAV file depends on the specific save type of the game it's linked to, unlike other flash kits that create a 512KB .SAV file regardless of the actual required size. During gameplay, save game files are written directly to the memory card and are not stored in a temporary memory, eliminating the potential loss of save games. I have had no issues with games with save types of all sizes, ranging from 4KB - 512KB, running on the Acekard R.P.G. The Acekard R.P.G. supports automatic DLDI patching. What is DLDI? DLDI is a recent breakthrough in the homebrew scene which eliminates compatibility issues when running homebrew on different flash kits. Simply put, the author of the homebrew makes their game or application support DLDI, and then each flash kit manufacturer releases a DLDI driver file or implements automatic DLDI patching support within their flash kit loader, which is the case with the Acekard R.P.G. This means no matter what homebrew you get, as long as it supports DLDI, you know it will work. Unfortunately due to the coding of some homebrew, some compatibility issues may remain, but this is commonly due to the coding of the homebrew rather than the flash kit itself. Because the Acekard R.P.G. has two different memory mediums, the cart is required to detect where the homebrew is running from and then patch it with the relative DLDI driver, whether it be on the flash memory or micro SD card. This works without a problem. We'll now test a variety of homebrew applications and games on the Acekard R.P.G. to see how they perform. BeUp Live 0.3 - Pass Colors! 1.05 - Pass DSOrganise - Pass IRC DS - Pass Lemmings DS - Pass Linux DS - FAIL:- Could NOT get this to work NESDS - Pass Picodrive DS - Pass ScummVM - Pass Moonshell 1.71b - Pass As you can see, most homebrew worked fine, with the exception of DS Linux that I may have installed incorrectly. Not a bad result. The majority of the most popular homebrew will work fine. If you're one of those people that would rather handle the DLDI patching themselves then you'll be glad to hear that the standard .DLDI driver files are included in the loader package. Of course, one for the onboard memory and the other for micro SD. They are used by the loader itself when autopatching, so can be found in the __rpg directory. In this reviewer's opinion, if you're going to introduce a new flash kit to the market, you should improve upon and include any major (at least) features that previous flash kits have offered (see Enhanced in-game menus, slow-motion, cheat selection etc.). Taking a step back in such areas, but then taking a step forward in non-critical areas such as dual memory just seems like the wrong way to go about things. That being said, the Acekard R.P.G. should be seen as a serious contender in the slot-1 world. It's a fine tuned piece of hardware that the team have obviously taken a lot of time into perfecting. It just feels that they've concentrated too hard in some areas such as the dual memory solution and the GUI and not enough in other places that put simply, are quite lacking (such as the scantness of features or poor implementation thereof, such as cheats). It feels like the team released this cart to the market before the bulk of it was ready. The Acekard R.P.G. offers top-notch compatibility like its predecessor, and a very aesthetically pleasing and highly customisable GUI, that is only let down by the lack of multimedia support and erratic touch screen control. The team have released some great updates to the cart already that offer "new" features such as cheat support and soft-reset. I also applaud the team for creating the first open-source flash kit and do hope (and believe) that some good comes of it. So to wrap up, if you're looking for a slot-1 flash kit with 100% compatibility and the dual memory solution, open source aspect or the great GUI entice you, and you're not particularly interested in many extra features then I see no reason not to recommend the Acekard R.P.G. Pros: + Dual memory - on board & micro SD + Micro SDHC compatible + Open source + 100% ROM compatibility + Full download play support + Drag and drop all files - no patching of any kind needed - auto DLDI patching + On-board file management & trimming + Great aesthetically pleasing and modern GUI + A few extra features have made their way in through loader updates + Easily skinnable + Good build quality, fits flush Cons: - Extra features are lacking in number and performance - No multimedia support out of the box - Slow-down in some games on slower micro SD cards - Touch control is not perfect - Currently only available in black
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