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R4

Retired Cards - The Original R4 (R4v2) Card

Stopped Selling From: Aug 2009

R4v2 Summary Superior Cards to the R4v2 EDGE DS - Click here to buy Stopped Selling From: August 2009 Points of Note First mass produced DS card ever made! Original R4v2 team stopped producing new firmware end of 2008 Main Advantages The first ever DS card in the world! The fastest EVER loading time DS card (even today) Main Disadvantages Could only accept up to 2GB Micro-SD cards Original R4v2 team stopped producing new firmware end of 2008 A few compatibility problems with some new games/applications (starting June 2009) Read below for more information...

R4v2 History

The original R4 card was designed and manufactured by the creatively titled "Team R4" at some point during the early part of 2007. The original looked a lot like what's known as the R4v2 today, but it wasn't called that back then. It was slightly different!

The top of the original R4DS card had a tiny groove in it. This groove was used to lock in a Micro-SD card by clicking when the Micro-SD card was pushed in to the R4. It used a spring mechanism; a second push and click would release the Micro-SD card.

This card was in production for just over a year, when quite a few R4 cards started failing around the world at the hands of end consumers. Why? Simple - the spring mechanism kept breaking! To fix this problem, they released a new version of the R4 without the spring, so that the Micro-SD would just slot in. This was released towards the end of 2007, and was called - you guessed it - the R4v2.

There were fears at first that a Micro-SD card could be 'dislodged' from the R4v2 during play, since there was no spring put into place. However, it was proven subsequently that this isn't the case. In fact, in many cases you'd actually need a fingernail to gently pry the Micro-SD card out. So stability was thankfully not a weak point of the new R4v2 card.

To this day, the R4v2 is one of the most popular DS/DS Lite cards, and is still the fastest loading DS card in history (simplicity is beautiful!). However, other factors have sadly led to them being finally discontinued from NDS-Gear.

The Famous "Loading" Problem

Being the first ever DS card, problems associated with the card were also pioneered. These days, the "Loading..." screen is famous - the black screen that you see as an error if something is wrong with your R4 card (bottom screen completely blank, top screen with "Loading..." in white letters). This was the original DS card software problem!

Of course, 99.9% of the time the problem was solved due to a software issue. Being the first DS card, not that many people were familiar with how to install the firmware, and consequently many struggled. Very rarely was there an actual problem.

These days, this is still the most famous software issue with a DS card, although several revisions of the R4 card as well as the DSTT card display an error called "Menu?" instead - which is now nearly as common. Usually, reinstalling the correct software and making sure everything is unzipped (usually using WinRAR) will be sufficient to fix the problem.

Copies / Fakes

Believe it or not, there was indeed a time before there were 'fake' or 'clone' / 'copy' DS cards! The R4 was the original, and upon its worldwide success (unfortunately due in part to consumers who used it as a piracy tool) many competitors sprung up. The first of these were the M3 team, partly composed of some Team R4 members, as well as the DSTT team. You will remember such cards as the M3 DS Real, M3 DS Simply, and DSTT. These three manufacturers combined were most definitely the largest forces in the DS card business. Luckily, these days an incredibly large number of people use their DS consoles to play homebrew applications and games (which are becoming increasingly complex and useful) as well as listen to MP3s and watch videos on the go - making the Nintendo DS console a viable rival (or even better) than the Playstation Portable, or the PSP.

However, 'fake' R4 cards started flooding the market, with subtly different packaging or design. It became harder and harder to find a real one to buy, but at the same time people started looking harder and learned to tell the difference. The result? The R4v2 actually increased popularity because of all the copies on the market! Amusing.

Why Do You Not Sell the R4v2?

NDS-Gear have religiously sold the original R4 card (well, the R4v2, but we think that term is legitimately interchangable) for as long as we remember. However, several things have contributed to the discontinuation of the R4v2 on NDS-Gear.

First, the R4 SDHC was one of the first cards offering players the chance to use bigger Micro-SDHC cards, as opposed to the R4v2's maximum memory of 2GB. Many other cards have done that since, including the M3, EDGE DS, N5, and many more (almost every card since, actually). However, the R4v2 was still the fastest loader by a country mile and rock-solid reliable, so it continued strong.

However, the R4DS team stopped providing updates to the firmware for the R4v2 in early 2009. At this point, they started to have compatibility issues with some of the latest applications and games available on the DS. For this reason, we believe that it will cease to be a popular card over the long run (as more and more games will become unplayable). The number of these applications and games that were incompatible were tiny at the time NDS-Gear stopped selling them in August 2009, but in the future it could be seen this number would increase.

The above, coupled with the fact that the EDGE DS was such a dominant force on the DS/DS Lite card scene (it's the most rock solid and reliable card, takes large memory sizes and comes in the most attractive packaging), meant it was only sensible to retire the R4v2 in all its glory. It will forever be remembered as the original and what brought DS homebrew to the world!