I didn't want to be the 300th person to write a review on GBATemp.net so I started and be the third one.
The other two reviewers, Pong20302000 and CollosalPokemon, already started a blog post for this to reserve theirs.
Non of us have received our actual dongle at this moment. But they are on the way.
So for now this will be a "By the looks of it" and "As far as I know" review. Enjoy!
Photo's will follow soon!
Rating the transfer speed, and posting a compatibility list here:
The other two reviewers, Pong20302000 and CollosalPokemon, already started a blog post for this to reserve theirs.
Non of us have received our actual dongle at this moment. But they are on the way.
So for now this will be a "By the looks of it" and "As far as I know" review. Enjoy!
Photo's will follow soon!
Dongle Design and Build Quality:
For now only by the looks of it, I looks decent. But the rounded design might be eating a USB port or two, if you don't use a extension cable or so. Not necessarily a problem though. As you probably don't use all your USB ports at the same time, if ever at all.
By the way.. It's a gold plated USB plug!
Installation, drivers, applications:
Before you do anything, you should go and download the latest drivers and applications for your (3)DS(i) game cartridges and Save R4i Dongle Firmware.
You can get them from the official R4i website: http://www.r4i-sdhc.com/SaveDongle.asp
The drivers.rar will include two more installation files besides the drivers, namely dotNetFx40_Full_X86_X64.exe and vcredist_x86.exe.
You might already have installed those before for another purpose. But it can't hurt to check out if you did so, so double click them and go through the setup.
Now you've installed the drivers, we should go and open a application to do something with the Save R4i Dongle.
First of. get the SaveDongle_Firmware_Uploader.rar which includes the application to actually even update the firmware of the Save R4i Dongle.
Which is really cool as this way we can have support for later 3DS game titles too, and may even new features, and of course bug fixes.
Then we go and get R4i_SaveDongle_v1.0.rar which includes the application to do what the actual purpose of the Save R4i Dongle is.
Dumping save files! And from there share, edit, backup and restore them.
It's probably possible to edit your save file and change a few things like coins, cheating.
But you might also be able to change your save file name!
And of course keep your save files save on your HDD. Such a little (3)DS(i) cartridge could easily be lost or damaged.
And might the most fun part is to start a community and share our 3DS save files.
Though, we must keep in mind while sharing, we better keep out our Wifi and Streetpass/Spotpass data private by removing it or blanking it.
Also, this might be far fetched, but it has happened before.
If your game process gets messed up because your saved on a specific location, like in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the famous Cannon Room Glitch.
We can just have a save file just before or right after that part of the game and continue our game without a sweat.
How to work with the applications:
As this is actually just a review, I rather go and link you guys to the official how to from the R4i website, besides it kinda speaks for it self:
Obviously you just first go and check if you can update your Save R4i Dongle Firmware, which is always a good thing.
And than you start and transfer your save files to your PC!
Photo's and Video of usage:
As soon as I receive my Save R4i Dongle, I will make some pictures of it, including the boxing. (And also rate it.)
And post a video of the process of transferring a save file of a 3DS game to and from my PC.
Rating the transfer speed, and posting a compatibility list here:
For now I can't think of much more. I'll finish the review once I get the actual Save R4i Dongle.
Edit:
For some reason the layout of 'enter/spaces' I used messes up. :S
I can't get a space between lines of text.