Nintendo DS R4 Revolution - Mod Review

About eight months ago cash was low and boredom was high, whatever was a gamer to do? One day while playing a wifi game with friend on my Nintendo DS i started to get curious why he always seemed to have dozens of games at all times, but i never saw him carting around the bulky plastic cases or even swapping games out at all. As it turns out he had managed to get his hands on an adapter which allowed him to easily load DS roms, pictures, music, and even movies onto a Micro SD memory card which could be read by the DS system. This adapter is called the R4 Revolution for DS and cannot be purchased in stores, but is easily located on the web. I found mine on amazon.com for about fifty-five American dollars, with that i also ordered a two-gigabyte SanDisk Micro SD card for about twenty bucks.

The R4 is not just about being able to play downloaded games, in fact most users don't condone downloading licensed games at all as it hurts the industry. The R4 Revolution is about home brew software, which is home made games and applications that can amuse or serve a legitimate purpose. You might be asking yourself why would anyone want this sort of software? Well the answer is that it causes gaming technology to grow. Companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have teams of people dedicated to scouring the internet for the latest ways that their fan base has found to not only modify their system, but software as well. The information they find is detrimental to how their next system might be designed, one great example of this how a lot of newer gaming systems offer backward compatibility so that their users can play games from the previous generation system.

The R4 kit comes with the R4 adapter cartridge, a lanyard, a plastic cartridge case, a Micro SD card to USB adapter, and a mini CD containing the software interface for the DS to boot to and instructions for installing it. The first part we really deal with in this kit is the Micro SD to USB adapter, the concept itself is cool, it allows you to use your Micro SD cards as a thumb drive. The included Micro SD to USB is kind of tricky as the memory card has to be slid in just right for it to read properly and it lacks the locking and spring ejection system that most card readers have. It also has a tendency to get fairly warm if left in the USB port for an extended period of time. The good news is that it can also be replaced by a more high tech version that you can find at most computer stores for fairly cheap. The CD that comes with the kit is a mini CD which means you have to have a tray CD-Rom in order for your computer to read it. However do not despair as the software is also available on their website http://www.r4ds.com/ I recommend that you pretty much skip the CD and just download the latest version of the software so that you get fewer bugs and more functionality. After you have downloaded your software its very simple to load it onto the memory card. Just plug your adapter into the USB port with the memory card already inserted, the thumb drive should auto read if using windows and work just as a thumb drive would. From there you just drag and drop the folders onto the memory card. One really great thing about the graphic user interface on the R4 is that you get to use your own method of organization when it comes to files. Unlike the PSP where everything has to be saved in a specific file in order for it to work, on the R4 you can create your own folder names and subdirectories.

When locating applications and games it is very easy. just go to a search engine such as google and do a search for something like DS homebrew or DS applications, you should turn up tons of websites and forums where you can download the software and also learn how to do a lot of other stuff with the R4. After you have downloaded games and programs just drag and drop the .nds files from those applications and games onto the memory card. From there you just disconnect your USB adapter and remove the memory card, then slide the memory card into the R4 adapter until it locks in place, then insert the R4 into the Nintendo DS and power it up. The DS should automatically boot to the memory card and display a calendar on the top screen and the options game, multimedia, and boot slot 2 on the bottom. Applications and games can be ran from the game option, music and movies can be ran from the multimedia option, and boot slot 2 will allow you to play a GameBoy Advance game that is plugged into the GBA slot. The interface is very similar to Windows, just highlight and select what you want to activate. Most applications come with instructions on use, but putting movies on the DS is sort of complicated and drawn out, it requires converting the DVD two times, first to AVI format then to DPG which is the format that the DS can read. For more information on playing video on your DS see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-W7xIyk9b0 for a great video by Gaminchic.

Over all I would have to say that the R4 Revolution for DS is probably the best thing to happen to the Nintendo DS system, software is easy to come by and if you run into any problems it is also simple to locate the information to fix it. I really enjoy having movies and pictures at my fingertips as well as being able to explore new and innovative homemade software. I would have to rate this product as a nine out of ten, a must have for gamer geeks everywhere.