cracker's EZV Review
First off, I would like to say thanks to windirt and the others at EZ Flash for allowing me to test and review their next generation of flash carts.
The box is basically the same as the EZ4 Lite Deluxe and Compact but with different artwork and product descriptions. It is a far cry from the nice "collector"-style boxes of their previous products but honestly who will look at the box that much after they remove the card from it? Inside the thin cardboard box is a plastic tray that holds the EZV. That's all! Unfortunately, they don't include an SD card reader like they did with the various versions of EZIV but many prospective buyers will already have card readers from previous flash carts that use mini/micro/SD media or other devices so this shouldn't be a big deal. Worst case scenario: you'll have to buy a reader for $10 from an online shop.
Unlike previous EZ Flash products, the EZV does not necessarily need patching software to work right. Let me explain: the flash cart can run many titles without patching them at all and can simply be drug and dropped onto your media. I found that when my microSD was formatted via Windows for FAT16 it performed less than favorably with pure (unpatched) games. Keep in mind that I have a lowly SanDisk 512M microSD which is pretty much comparable to a pet rock as far as the industry standard goes. The good news is that after formatting from the command line to FAT32 (format /fs:fat32 /a:4096 drive:) all but one of the problematic games that I tested work perfectly. For the games that still have problems you will need to run them through the EZV Client. For now the interface and functionality of the client is very minimalistic. You must select games and patch/transfer them one at a time. In addition, the only option that is changeable is if you want the game trimmed or not. There is an option for save patching but it is grayed out.
Now that you've suffered through the not so exciting stuff, I'll reward your patience. The cart is made with great quality. The plastic is heavy duty -- looking and feeling just like an original DS cart. It has a slot on the back right side where the microSD slides into and fits nicely -- not too loose and not too tight. Unfortunately, there is no spring eject for the slot but I'd rather use my fingernail each time to pull it out than risk a spring mechanism breaking. I was somewhat sad that the microSD slot wasn't on the top of the cart since it would have been much more convenient when repeatedly testing/changing games. Just like an original DS game, the EZV fits perfectly in the DS slot.
The loader is mostly comprised of a modified version of MoonShell. If you have ever worked with MoonShell before then you will have no problem figuring out what to do. Upon your first bootup you might get some error messages and a freeze -- like I did. I believe this is due to the initial loader not supporting my microSD since it was solved by updating the firmware. The firmware upgrade is done relatively the same as on the EZIV. You copy the firmware upgrade (DS ROM in disguise - ez5upldr.bin) to the root of your microSD and hold down the R trigger as you boot. You will be presented with 3 options: R to Update, L to be PassMe, A to enter the loader. Hitting R will search for ez5upldr.bin and if it is found will begin the update process. Hitting L will make the device search for a GBA flash cart and if it finds one it will attempt to boot it into DS mode. When I tried with my m3 miniSD it just resulted in white screens. It's no big deal since my DS is flashed but it might be for others.
Like I said before the loader is just a modified version of MoonShell. This may be good or bad depending on who you are. It allows you to view pictures, text files, listen to music, watch video all without having to leave the loader so most people would view this as a good thing. Others, however, don't like the idea of a 'generic' loader built on top of MoonShell. Upon booting up you are greeted with a console screen-esque output of what is happening. This includes saving .savs (which happens very quickly), gui loading, etc. I should note now that you need to have a skin loaded onto your microSD card in order to start the loader. It should be stored in /shell but it will actually scan your card for a skin if /shell isn't found. This is one of the benefits of having a MoonShell-based loader -- there are already many skins available to use on it and they are easily edited since everything is stored in plain text configuration files and standard picture types.
The interface is very smooth -- as it should be. You can scroll up and down one by one or skip a few files at a time by pressing Left and Right. Upon highlighting a DS game/homebrew it will show the icon for it along with the name and save type on the lower screen. Highlighting an audio file will show you the title, artist, and album name. Hitting A on the highlighted file will open/play the file.
Image types supported: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
Audio types supported: NSF, MP3, SPC, GSM, MOD, S3M, IT, XM, MTM, OGG
Video types supported: DPG
Note that these plugins aren't just specific to this loader so if other plugins are created for MoonShell they will also work on the loader by simply dropping them onto your microSD.
As for the other controls... B backs out of a folder or drops you back into the file select if you are in the Help, Settings, viewing a picture, etc. Start brings up the Help dialog. L+X/L+Y will change the save type of the currently highlighted DS game. More than likely you will never have to touch this. So leave it alone! L+R brings up the Settings dialog which will give you the option of language to use (Chinese and English if you hadn't already guessed) and what speed to use the microSD at. If you have a slower card set the number high and for a faster card set it low. I set my turtle of a card to the max (12) and it seems to work fine. You can also choose to let the EZV decide what speed to run your card at but if it ain't broke don't fix it...
Now for what you really want to know...
HOW WELL DOES IT RUN GAMES?!
In two words: Extremely well. I took most of the problematic games of past (games that were troublesome for EVERY slot 2 cart) and tested them out and the results are as follows:
Castlevania - Dawn of Sorrow Intro
pure - perfect!
hybrid - perfect!
Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin
pure - perfect? (entered/exited menus numerous times w/o freezing)
hybrid - perfect? (same)
Pokemon Dash (who wants to play this anyway?)
pure - perfect!
hybrid - white screens
Spider-Man - Battle for New York
pure - perfect!
hybrid - perfect!
Spider-Man 2
pure - perfect!
hybrid - perfect!
Tony Hawk Downhill Jam
pure - perfect!
hybrid - white screens
Tony Hawk Sk8land
pure - suffers from slowdown due to the music
hybrid - perfect!
Ultimate Spider-Man
pure - perfect!
hybrid - freezes at 'Licensed by Nintendo' screen
Note that 'pure' is unpatched and windirt referred to patched games as 'hybrid' so I followed suit.
As you can see it does an amazing job with these (previously) unplayable games. I wouldn't be surprised if the problems that did arise lay with my media and will be waiting for others' testing results to see how they fare with each other. Even if this is the common result -- having 100% compatibility with these games between the two modes is good enough for me.
The games I tested worked fine with WFC but, unfortunately, I don't yet have a 2nd DS to test Download Play with. I will leave that to other testers/reviewers to list what does and doesn't work.
Well how about homebrew??
With the tests I did it appears homebrew that doesn't use FAT support (reading from/writing to the microSD) is very high in compatibility. Unfortunately, FAT-utilising homebrew didn't fare as well. Here is a list of what I have tested thus far for homebrew (and I wouldn't mind testing more pieces of homebrew for prospective buyers -- for a dollar):
Breakout Mania Dot Com- freezes when trying to load files via FAT
Every Extend - perfect
RebonDS - perfect
tetattds - perfect
reverDSi - screens are swapped
stellaDS - FAT load error
ds85 - perfect
snezziDS - locks up at loader speed test/loading screen
A Touch of War - perfect
Aztec Challenge - perfect
Balance - perfect
DSDoom - freezes after 'Survived graphics init'
DSGoo - perfect
DSodoku - freezes after loading the board
LumiDS - only wireframe mode works (holding L down)
Naruto Magical Drop - perfect
New Zelda - black screens
No Place To Hide - perfect
NoizDS - perfect
PicrossDS - perfect
Rush Hour - perfect
Note that you can ONLY run .nds format homebrew as GBA loader appended homebrew will not be able to load. Read why below.
What about GBA??
You're out of luck on GBA. There is no PSRAM built into the EZV and the timing has to be flawless when reading GBA or else freezes occur. That is, if it were even possible to run GBA from the DS slot (which I have heard consistently that it is NOT).
I should mention that the EZV makes having to have a .sav file for your game on the cart before it can write to it a thing of the past. If it finds that no .sav file exists for your game it simply creates the file and without missing a beat stores the save into it the next time you start up your DS. This is a sight for sore eyes since it means not having to manually create .sav files for homebrew.
Before I got started I didn't know what to expect since the EZIV has had it's fair share of problems when it came to a few titles. I thought that such an early release of the loader would surely have a lot of problems with compatibility and quirks of some type. After putting it through the various tests I must say that I am amazed at how solid the EZV is for being so 'young'. Right now it seems that the only problems are for those that 'need' to play homebrew games that require FAT access. (Which I'm sure could be easily enough corrected if they incorporated the FAT libs that MoonShell uses.) Other than that this cart is solid. If you don't care about GBA and just want a quality cart to run DS with then this should be very high on your list of carts to consider purchasing.
Pros:
