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We are finally ready with our next flash cart review, as we about a week ago we got our hands on a NEO2 SD device. Flash carts for the Nintendo DS has come a
long way by now, unfortunately we have yet to see a "real" NDS cartridge sized flash cartridge, but lets take a look at the NEO2's advantages and disadvantages.
PACKAGING
The Neo2 packaging is a blister packaging, which nicely displays what you are buying. Fortunately the packaging is easy to open, unlike the ones
Datel comes up with. The package we got out hands on included MK4-Mini and NEO2, both of these will be described in detail later, and a CD with drivers
and other information included.
MK4-MINI SPECIFICATIONS
Which is short for Magic Key 4. It is the the latest of Neo Team's NDS boot carts. The biggest change is that it no longer has to boot the flash device
before reaching the NDS menu. Instead it is now displayed in the NDS user interface (menu) as a Nintendo DS game (cartridge), very cool if I may say so
The MK4 has a small switch, which allows you to boot either from the DS cartridge slot or the GBA cartridge slot. Booting from the DS cartridge slot will
allow you to boot the old MK2/3, which is nice as it isn't really that great at booting itself. But as I'm reviewing the NEO2 here, I'll just let my
MK4-Mini boot directly from the GBA cartridge slot.
 
The MK4, when switched to NDS mode, is shown in the NDS menu. The NEO2 is displayed as an option pak :-)
NEO Team claims that the MK4 is the ultimate boot card for NDS/GBA flash carts, and that it will boot any cartridge. So I decided to make a small test :-)
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SUPERCARD SD - OK
No problems booting this one in NDS mode, and the cart worked as it was supposed to.
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MOVIE PLAYER (M3) - OK
No problems booting this one in NDS mode, and the cart worked as it was supposed to.
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G6 FLASH - OK
No problems booting this one in NDS mode, and the cart worked as it was supposed to.
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I think it's safe to say that the MK4 does indeed boot any flash cart.
NEO2 SD SPECIFICATIONS
The NEO2 is a Gameboy shaped cartridge which is compatible with both the old DS and the new DS Lite, though a Neo2 Lite version also exist, which fits
nicer in the DS lite. The Neo2 specs are:
· 8K Cache
· 2M Save
· 16M Menu
· 128M Zip
· 256M Rom
· Real Time Clock (RTC)
Most of these specs are pretty useless for the common gamer though. The Rom size of the cartridge is no longer important as a SD/MMC flash cart is used
for storing the game roms. A SD cart is not included in the package, but is quite easy and cheap to come by these days, so I'm kinda glad they didn't bother
to include one and instead keep the cost down.
No software is needed to operate the NEO2. You simply drag and drop a NDS file to the SD cart when it's attached to your PC, and you're ready to go. Even the
NEO2 menu is upgradeable, by placing a new menu file on a SD cart and then loading the file in the currect menu, you'll be asked if you want to upgrade, sweet!
When a game is selected to be played, it is copied from the SD cart to the internal memory of the NEO2. This only takes a few seconds though. The savegame of
the previously played game is automaticly saved to the SD cart when a new game is being loaded.
The SD card stick about 1 centimeter out beneath the NDS, it doesn't look great, but isn't exactly bulky enough for me to be bothered about it.
USER INTERFACE
The user interface for the NEO2 is very basic, but it does the job well and looks okay. But if you're looking for a fancy GUI, NEO2 isn't quite there yet.
Version 1.1 of the Menu (OS) has been released just recently and it fixed a lot of non-working games.
One thing I can't understand though is why you, when pressing up on the D-pad, is going to the bottom of the list, and when pressing down on the D-pad you move towards
the top of the list, it seems unlogical, press down and you move down the list please :-)
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T
As said, with the release of Menu 1.1, a lot of non-working games were fixed, though these games are known to have errors:
· Bomberman (saving doesn't work)
· Shrek Super Slam (white screen when booting)
· Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead man's chest (freezes in-game)
Other websites, such as GBAtemp, claim that homebrewn games/demos doesn't work. This isn't completely true though. Yes a lot of homebrewn games doesn't work,
somehow the NEO2 doesn't recognize the file format of most of them. I was able to select "Super Pang DS", but it failed when loading the rom. However I was able to load
and boot OMalone. So the NEO2 is capable of booting homebrewn games, but yes, the compatibility is very poor.
It is not possible to load GBA games either, these are not supported (unknown file format).
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PROS:
· Dedicated developer, lots of updates
· No patching required
· Good SD support
· Easy to use (no software required)
· Menu easy to update using SD cart
· Great improvement compared to MK2/3
· Loads and boots a ROM quite fast
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CONS:
· Very poor support for homebrewn games
· Odd manoeuvring in the menu
· Lacks a little game support
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NEO2 along with the MK4 is a great improvement from the old MK2/3 which was pretty useless, but I'm happy to say that the NEO2 works nicely even with a
few non-working NDS games, non-existing homebrewn and GBA support. It's definately worth it, and as soon as a problem arises, the developer is working hard
to correct it, bravo! :-)
Rumors say that we can expect version 1.2 of the menu soon.
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