Hardware Review: EZ Flash Parallel for NDS

I’m going to start by being entirely transparent at the beginning. I’m reviewing a product that works perfectly fine for me. However, that is not true for everyone. Everything you read in this article from this point on is being told to you from the perspective of someone who has a functioning EZ Flash Parallel cartridge. If you Google the product and look at posts in the last 60 days, it appears that more and more people take issue with it. They recommend instead just buy one of the many affordable clones instead of this one that has a higher price point. Having said that, if you’d still like to read what I have to say (because you want to buy one in hopes that the dev team will fix the issues), proceed down below ⬇️!

Description:

Designed for serious gamers, the EZ Flash Parallel brings something new to the table. Its plug-and-play functionality and compatibility with Nintendo games make it the ultimate accessory for Nintendo fans. It integrates seamlessly with the console, allowing you to enjoy an unparalleled gaming experience.

The lightweight and compact design makes it easy to carry around. Install and switch between different games swiftly and get ready to be immersed in hours of uninterrupted gaming. The memory capacity ensures you can store a multitude of games and play them at your leisure. It’s the perfect companion for gadgeteers who are always on the go.

Apart from its exceptional features, the EZ Flash Parallel stands out for its sturdy and durable construction. This is the real deal for those who want to maximize their Nintendo DS gaming. So, don’t wait and step into the future of Nintendo gaming.

Features:

• Play Nintendo DS roms on Nintendo DS/3DS and all derivatives, included iQue products.
• Driven by independent FPGA chip.
• Power saving design.
• WOOD kernel maintained by EZTEAM, with community support.
• Compatible with community-made WOOD skins.
• Support FAT32, 4GB – 32GB MicroSD card.
• Cheat support
• Softreset support
• Kernel included NTRBOOT support.
• No TimeBomb.More features are under development.

Unboxing:

Pros:

• Not Emulation. What is often a debate nowadays is if something that is FPGA is emulation or not. Flash cartridges especially, since they’re running on native or original hardware. In this instance, the way that FPGA is leveraged, you can bet your lucky stars that this is not an emulated gaming experience, providing perfect performance just like official cartridges. It loads the game into it’s on board memory and then convinces the DS that the cartridge in the slot is real. The rest of the process is handled by the DS to play the game as it would any cartridge. To be clear, I didn’t test every game under the sun, so I can’t tell you that your favorite game will work flawlessly or work at all. But I will tell you that the games that I tested felt the same way that they did when I play them from the original cartridge.

 

• Build Quality. One thing that the EZ Flash team does time and again is make superiorly built products. If you saw my video up above you can see the quality difference between that of a cheap clone flash cartridge. Those clones have soft plastics that likely become brittle with time and exposure to UV like plastics of the 80s and 90s. But it doesn’t just end there, because the cheapies also have a wafer thin PCB inside that if you take it in and out a lot definitely can begin to chip. The same with the crappy contacts on them, they are prone to becoming oxidized since they’re not gold plated. The EZ Flash Parallel on the other hand, has a layered PCB with proper soldermasking on it with gold plated contacts. There’s also more going on under the hood, but since I’m not a technician, I couldn’t tell you if the components are any more significant. The bottom line here is that this cartridge will for sure last longer. Even just if you’re only discussing the solid (and awesome looking) external plastic shell.

 

• Storage. The core concept of a flash cart means that you don’t have to take a whole bunch of your beloved games with you. You don’t have to worry about losing the games that you spent your hard earned money on. The EZ Flash Parallel is no different. If you set it up correctly it allows for hundreds of games on just it’s one single cartridge. It allows you to get to the ROMs that you have backed up easily and gets you into the game of your choice quickly. For those wondering about capacity of microSD card that you can use on this cartridge; they officially state 32GB. But if you’re like me and have more to put on it than that, what do you do? Well, it turns out that you can just use a 64GB (formatted correctly) because it actually works. I can’t confirm any larger microSD card than that, but ideally, you wouldn’t need one any larger. Finally, my recommendation to make sifting through the list of games even easier is to put the ROMs in separate folders (I do mine alphabetically).

 

• Battery Life. While playing your games, you may be thinking that this cartridge is bound to draw more power than playing just a standard Nintendo DS cartridge. You may very well be afraid that the handheld will die sooner than if you were playing that official game. So because of this efficient power usage, with minimal battery drain, you’ll find that you can have extended play sessions when you’re on the go. More on this later.

• No Mods Necessary. The EZ Flash Parallel lives up to its namesake. It’s definitely easy to setup and easy to use overall and it doesn’t require that you hack/modify/jailbreak the NDS. All that you have to do is format your microSD card to Fat32 at 32kb allocation. Then download the most up to date kernel from here (under the EZ Flash Parallel tab). After you extract the zip file, you’ll have a folder called _ezds and a file called EZDS.DAT, you’ll copy them to the root of your microSD card. Then put your ROMs onto the microSD card, remembering to sort them into folders as I recommended before. Now just eject the microSD card, insert it into the EZ Flash Parallel, and let it boot up. The first time will take a little longer than the following times as that time it installs the kernel. But that is like 10 seconds worth of waiting at most. You may have to reboot it after that, but once you do, you’ll be set for good. Just make sure you check back one a season to see if there is a new kernel.

 

• Familiar. If you’ve used a flash cart in the past with the Wood UI on it, you’ll feel right at home here. Supports soft-resetting (e.g. in Pokemon games you can press L + R + START + SELECT to reboot the game), it supports enabling cheats right from the menu before launching the game, and it also lets you change up themes if you’d like. Honestly, I prefer the all red theme that they have on it. It matches my red Nintendo DS and red is my favorite color. There isn’t a lot to the Wood OS on the surface.  But if you want to know everything that it can do (since I can’t possibly cover it all), I have the short and sweet manual for you to look over here.

 

• Homebrew. Thankfully, the EZ Flash Parallel enables access to homebrew games and apps, including emulators for various classic/retro gaming systems. I did run some homebrew on the EZ Flash Parallel that I already had on my computer, so I didn’t go searching for anything new. So I can confirm that the older emulators that I already had definitely worked. I couldn’t speak to any of the more up to date homebrew. Newer homebrew may leverage something that the EZ Flash Parallel cannot handle. However, I really doubt that, I would assume that the SDK that is used for homebrew on the DS is not an official one, so it’s likely that the homebrew games and apps are limited and should still work on the Parallel. Having said that, wouldn’t you like a nice and robust list of homebrew for you to freely download from? I would think you’d like to get your money’s worth on the parallel since it can already play every DS game. How about this list of DS homebrew and apps right here?

 

• Times Up! One thing that keeps people from buying cheap clones is the fear of a “time bomb”. The time bomb is an older concept that has left a bad taste in people’s mouth. But essentially what it is is a timer within the confines of the flash cartridge that would use the clock of the Nintendo DS to tell it when to cease to function. Now that was more in the heyday of the flash carts and when the Nintendo DS was more alive and kicking. They wanted to make the product affordable so that people would actually buy it, but they wanted to keep customers coming back and spending more money. This was their idea of how to make that happen as opposed to just making it a bit more expensive and convincing people that it was worth their money. As I said, nowadays it’s not really an issue, but these companies making clones have to try to convince people it won’t time out on the user. However, since the EZ Flash Parallel isn’t a clone and is from a wholly unique company, it doesn’t come with any of that baggage. It’s a far more believable that it won’t die on the user.

 

• Compatibility. One thing that reviewers don’t often dwell on is hardware compatibility. Even if YouTubers are trying to stretch their video to that desired 10 minute mark, they don’t really discuss hardware compatibility, which is a valid question for the audience. Well, since I have one of each Nintendo handheld, I decided to test the Parallel in each device that can use DS carts natively. I tested it on my original phat DS, my DS Lite, my DSi, my DSi XL, my 3DS, my 3DS XL, my new 3DS, my new 3DS XL, my 2DS, and my 2DS XL. It was very boring and tedious, but on each of the handhelds, it booted up and got into Mario Kart DS. Now, I do want to say that my primary testing of this was on my DS Lite. So any pros and cons on here otherwise are on that and only for the fact that you can softmod a DSi and a 3DS to play DS ROMs, so I’m estimating that most customers will be getting it for a DS. If you use this on any of the other products other than a DS Lite, your mileage will vary on every topic I’ve talked about with the exception of setup.

Cons:

• Sleepiness. When I was initially testing this, closing the lid didn’t put the game to sleep. This was not a huge ordeal for me because I typically play until the DS dies (making sure that I save first), and then I put it on the charger until I want to play again. But I could see this being a problem for anyone who still used the DS as a primary handheld outside of the house.The resolution would’ve been to save the game, power the DS off, and load up the game when you turn the DS back on. I can imagine that that would become tedious if you play it multiple times per day. However, it received an update that primarily fixes the bug, but the LED light doesn’t know the device is asleep. So while the device drains as normal when you’re playing, it may not last quite as long across the whole day because it uses power to drive the LED when it’s asleep.
  

Overall Thoughts:

I think that this product is three times the cost of the other products that exist. But as you saw in my video, I do like the fact that the SD Card slot is on the side and not the top. This always frustrates me because I don’t want to risk the chance of the card ejecting out of the top accidentally. Otherwise, I would say for all of the other features that this card has that you can find a flash cart for cheaper with the same feature set. The main difference is the speed of loading the games. On my clone cart, it loads games about 20% slower initially, but if you can deal with waiting an extra 3-5 seconds, then you’ll be alright. If you want to be the game asap, and you’re okay with $27, it may be worth going with the EZ Flash Parallel.

Purchase Link:

Senko Games