Thank you to Love-Gamecard for sending us this R4i Gold Plus flashcart for review!

R4. I cannot think of any two characters placed in succession that has likely given Nintendo more headaches than those two. In the height of the Nintendo DS era, they were reportedly so common and easy to find in Japan that people could find them at corner electronics stores. The laws were changed so that this is no longer the case, but their impact on the Nintendo DS, both the market (financial and otherwise), and the legacy, is hard to overstate. Nevertheless, they live in a legal gray area that often leads to shutdown orders or copyright infringement.

Given this, why is Christ Centered Gamer reviewing a flashcart? *glares at person who requested it* Honestly, that's a really good question, and there is no easy answer, but let's give it a shot.

At our house, we love Nintendo systems, and the games available on them. As a result, we often collect quite the library; we have over 40 games on both DS and 3DS, and easily over 30 on GBA as well. This is a common pattern for us; over a system's lifetime, we tend to collect most of the best games for any Nintendo system, and the DS and 3DS has an excellent library.

This is relevant both because we don't have pockets of unlimited depth, and because we have children; we cannot practically carry that many games with us in cartridge form at one time wherever we go. This is especially important since we don't want to lose said cartridges when a child (or big kid) misplaces those tiny little wedges. So, for many years now, we have dumped our own cartridges (we are very strict about this; we do not download ROMs off of the internet) and put our library of games on our DS flashcarts. This protects us from losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars of games over time, while allowing us to still enjoy them (and even back up saves, which can be very convenient). We understand why some may feel differently, but by dumping our own games, it feels like a win-win – we are still giving Nintendo our money (we purchase each and every game) while still benefiting from the convenience that these devices offer. (And backing up your own games is actually legal.)

That is why I've always loved the ingenuity in the console hacking space. While these devices (or hacked consoles) can be used for nefarious means, or to avoid buying games, what really happens for us is that we end up buying more games because of the ease of carrying them around and not having to worry about losing saved games that these devices (or hacked consoles) can do.

The R4, as one of the most popular line of flashcarts of all time, is likely quite familiar to many readers of this review. It allows you to put ROM files on a microSD card, which you then insert into the tiny slot on the back of the R4 card. It has native support for Nintendo DS games; the 3DS thinks it's an obscure Japanese game, but once you launch it, you find a menu where you can browse the list of files available on the microSD card, and launch whatever games are listed there. You can put emulators for older systems there as well, along with required ROM files, and play those. Again, violating the law is made easy with these devices; please follow your conscience and be as legal as you can when taking advantage of these features.

The performance of this device as a DS flashcart is as good as it's ever been. The menus are easy to navigate, and launching games is quick and easy. The R4 doesn't take too much battery power from your system while in use, unlike certain other cards from other brands (like the Supercard line, which works great, but impacts battery life). Honestly, this functionality is more or less time-tested, and many reviews exist online (and this cartridge is more or less the gold standard), so I think that's enough about the DS functionality.