Hacking Flash Cart Link/Multiplayer Compatibility

[Tane]

I was able to play with two EZ Flash ODE's and see how nice the multiplayer/link works between the two. Tried Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland and it worked a treat.

So my followup question to this is... can you do multiplayer/link/trading between different Flash Carts? Say an Everdrive and an EZ Flash? Or is the emulation different enough between the two that it won't work?

Apologies for the newbie question - I'm new to flash carts! Trying to learn!

Thanks

 

[FAST6191]

Flash carts as a rule don't emulate things, they function as an original cart would give or take what they do for saves (which does not matter for normal link stuff, for GBA-GC link or GBA-DS link things that is a different matter).

Now there have been flash carts in the past that with various combinations of patches (soft reset, sleep, save,...) have meant link play is harder because of timings issues (the link cable being mightily sensitive here) and might have wanted extra patches (I had some around here for the EZ4 using patches derived from the EZ2).

As a general principle though then should be fine, certainly would not be in any way surprised to hear any combination of flash carts and real games played link play all night long and only fell over when someone tugged on a cable and unplugged their GBA. The trouble will come with various combinations of patches and what you might need to do to mitigate them on a given flash cart.
At the same time while I will confidently say anything that is not a supercard or supercard clone or some of the very first era of GBA flash carts will be able to play just about any game that fits ( http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 being the list of trouble games and workarounds) then I can't be as confident on link play working out of the box or with minimal hassle.

 

[Tane]

Flash carts as a rule don't emulate things, they function as an original cart would give or take what they do for saves (which does not matter for normal link stuff, for GBA-GC link or GBA-DS link things that is a different matter).

Oh wow OK! I was thinking there was some emulation happening for GBA! This is excellent. Thank you for the information. Very very helpful. So when I read about the "Goomba" emulator, are we just talking about GB/GBC/NES stuff on a GBA?

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah anything that is not GBA is emulation. While the GBA, GB player and SP do feature GBC backwards compatibility it is hardware based* and only a couple of flash carts with an even more rare bridge device can use that. Everything else playing GB/GBC is on a GBA cart (certainly anything modern) is using emulation. Obviously anything else is emulation as there is no hardware at all for that.

*if you look in the GBA slot you will see a little black slider. This is what triggers it, if you ever turn on your GBA and see it squished screen like it is booting a GB/GBC game but in fact is a GBA cart then check that has not got stuck somehow.

 

[Tane]

OK that's what I figured. Omega's are emulating GB/GBC games. But then something like the EZ Flash Jr is not doing emulation for GB/GBC games on the DMG and CGB.

*if you look in the GBA slot you will see a little black slider. This is what triggers it, if you ever turn on your GBA and see it squished screen like it is booting a GB/GBC game but in fact is a GBA cart then check that has not got stuck somehow.

Now that is fascinating about the black slider, I had no idea. Learn something new everyday... thank you for that.