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The Nintendo DS is currently one of the best selling handhelds in modern gaming currently with 2 variations selling over 100 million units worldwide when all combined. The latest variation, which is the Nintendo DSi, has seen success right from its launch breaking record sales in the UK. Although the DSi is highly praised with the new features that the original DS and DS Lite lack, people are still coming up with good reasons to look for a 3rd party device that would unlock the DSi to its full potential.

The DSi is being viewed by DS enthusiasts as “more than a handheld gaming device”. It physically has the potential to store multimedia files and play them and the only thing that is missing is special software that Nintendo fails to include. It also lacks the ability to play any homebrew games that are developed by fans and indie developers.

Doing a simple search for a solution to this problem reveals plenty of results regarding this certain “R4DS” device that is supposed used to enhance the Nintendo DS and recently DSi’s capabilities. With people praising the R4DS, this could be the device that solves your problems. But before buying the R4, consider these 4 things first.

1. Understand what the R4DS Does and what you Need

Because of its complicated past, it is very difficult to get any decent information on the R4DS. The R4 is a cartridge with an SD slot that enables homebrew games and applications to be played. It also comes with useful 3rd party applications that turn the DS or DSi into a more “PDA-like” device capable of reading many formats including audio and video. All of this is accomplished without modifying any of the DS or DSi’s internal components.

For this to be of any use to you, you should have homebrew games or applications that you are want to run. You can find these homebrew titles just by searching online or visiting the different communities and forums detected to DS homebrew. If the R4DS that you are getting doesn’t come with an SD or SDHC card, be sure to get one of those too as it is needed to play homebrew games or play any files on demand. If are going to stick with playing the original retail games and not using the DSi for anything else, the R4 isn’t worth the purchase.

2. Get the Right Version for your Console

If you’ve got a Nintendo DSi then you will need a different version of the R4 to the one you would use with a DS or DS Lite. If you have a DSi, make sure you are buying an “R4i”. The R4i box looks very similar to the standard version but by the white “R4” characters (on the bottom half of the front of the box), there is a small “i” in a white circle. The standard R4 as well as the R4i are both compatible with the original DS and DS Lite so it doesn’t matter which version you buy.

3. Watch out for Fakes

Once you start looking for places to buy the R4, you will be overwhelmed with results and stores selling R4s that are claimed to be genuine. Claims of genuine R4DS units should be taken with a pinch of salt because of the split of the original R4 team in 2008 that resulted to former team members creating their own version of the R4 each varying in quality. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy a “genuine R4”, you should just check that customers are happy with the quality of the R4DS units being sold by a particular retailer.

Also ignore R4DS units that have other names associated to it like “V3” or “Version 3”. Even labels like “R6”, “E7”, and other short codes give hints that it is a fake or poorly made clone. It’s not easy to know what a genuine R4 DS is but follow the advice here and you can at least improve your chances of getting a good quality R4.

Look out for fake R4DS cards

4. Don’t get ripped off

Don’t get ripped off with a cheap, low quality R4 DS which fails to work. Simply have a look at our R4 DS Customer Satisfaction Comparison before making a purchase.

As long as you have checked each of the 4 things off, you can buy an R4 with confidence. Your reward for taking your time to purchase with care will be enjoying the best experience from your DS or DSi.

If the R4DS flashcart you purchased doesn’t work with version 1.18 of the official firmware (you get a “Loading…” screen, etc), you more than likely have a clone.

If you purchased an R4 and it was advertised as supporting SDHC, you bought a clone.

If you bought some sort of R4 that claims to support the DSi, you bought a clone.

If the person/place that sold you your “R4″ told you they were selling you the new R4 or an official new version or whatever, they either lied to you or didn’t know what they were talking about. You bought a clone.

If the firmware you have loaded on your MicroSD is causing your clone R4 to give you a “Loading…” screen (or something like “Menu?” or “?Menu”), you more than likely are using the wrong firmware for your clone R4.

You can still make use of your clone, though, and a lot of people use their R4 clones with success.

However, since there’s so many cloners out there right now, figuring out which clone you have might be difficult.

The following is a list of some of the more common/popular R4DS clone manufacturers and the websites where you can obtain the proper firmware for that card. Please note, that while your card might be labeled as one “type” of R4… it might not use the firmware it’s labeled for. In some cases, we’ve heard of R4 clones shipped with CDs containing incompatible firmwares.

R4-II:
http://r4iids.com/indexe.asp

R4-III Upgrade:
http://www.r4dsl.net/index-en.asp
http://www.r4dsl.net
http://www.r4iiinew.com
http://www.r4iii.com
http://iii.phqy.net
http://www.r4-dsl.net

R4DS SDHC:
http://www.ndslr4.com
http://www.r4new.com
http://www.r4r4ds.com
http://www.r4sdhc.com
http://www.r4ultra.com
http://www.r4new.com
http://www.r4-pro.com
http://www.r4i-sdhc.com

R4-III SDHC:
http://www.r4iiisdhc.com

R4 Advance:
http://www.r4ds-a.com

R4 Deluxe:
http://www.r4deluxe.com/en

R4-DS Pro:
http://www.r4dspro.com/function_en.html

R4 Plus:
http://www.r4plus.net/

R4 Ultra:
http://www.r4ultra.com/

R4 New:
http://www.r4-new.com/

If none of these listed work for you, or if the site is ridiculously slow or not working, OR you bought one of the myriad number of R4 clones advertising DSi support, you can try going to Linfox Domain to download your firmware… which has all of these and more in one convenient place: http://linfoxdomain.com/nintendo/ds

If you get your card functioning properly, but are having problems running certain, newer games you can attempt to use YSMenu on your R4 Clone to solve your compatibility issues: viewtopic.php?f=54&t=2377

The R4 DS is one of the most popular add-ons to any Nintendo DS, DS Lite, or DSi. The only tough part is finding a genuine R4 card. In order to track these down, you need to know the characteristics of a genuine R4 card and other traits that separate it from the rest.

It helps a lot to know the history of the R4 DS to better understand why there is no real “Genuine R4 card”. What stores tend to mean if they state that the R4 card is genuine, is that it was developed by one of the original members of the R4 team. It all started with a team successfully producing the first R4 in China where it achieved success. Shortly after, the R4 DS company disassembled with each of the owners continuing the success of the R4 by themselves. Basically, each owner put up their own factories to create their own version of the R4 DS sporting improvements like the support for SDHC cards.

The problem is that these units coming from the different factories are all being called the R4 DS with most of them claiming to be genuine. Because different factories are used, the quality of the exterior and interior could vary.

Because the R4 is such a popular name, many other developers are trying to cash in by making their own versions. These are the ones you should ignore as they look different slightly on the outside and look noticeably different on the inside. You can easily recognize these R4 products if they have other labels such as “Version 3” or “V3”. There might be other newer models that may attempt to fool people by putting other convincing labels. A real R4 DS is called an “R4” and nothing more than that.

Since finding an R4 in stores is close to impossible, people often look online using their trusty search engines. “R4” is an extremely short keyword that can lead to millions of results and a large percent include online stores while another portion includes dedicated R4 sites. Some websites that feature the R4 DS may look as if that website is the original website. But since owners split up early in the 2008, no true website can represent the R4 sold in shops today. The original official R4 DS website is still online but hasn’t been updated since the company broke up.

These websites that are disguised as original manufacturers often link to stores with some of them having scam intentions so try to stay away from these sites unless you only want to get more information about the R4. Be sure to check out the labels too because any pictures of fake R4 units may display fake information as well.

Check Reviews Before Buying an R4 DS!

Before buying from any store who’s reputation is not well known, make sure you seek customer feedback for the business to make sure they are not supplying you with the lowest quality R4 DS models availed in order to sell more units. Anything with a customer satisfaction rate of less than 90% isn’t really a well managed business and is more than likely to provide you with cheap imitations.

While there is no way really to determine whether an R4 card is genuine, there are definitely units out there that actually work. The many people that own and enjoy the R4 features are proof that these useful DS companions are still in production.

How to get a Genuine R4 DS Revolution

I’ve done a lot of research and there really is no way to guarantee you’re getting a genuine card. In fact what a genuine R4 DS Revolution is, is not clear any more since there are several separate companies who produce it and each seems to be entitled to use the name.

As you may have read on this site, the original R4 team have split up and have been working in their own factories producing their own version of R4 DS for a long time now. This means that there are no more original units on the market. That doesn’t mean you can’t still get a good quality R4 Revolution though.

It just means you have to be a bit more careful about where you get your R4 DS from. Have a look at our customer feedback table to get a better idea of where you can get a good quality R4.

Once you have picked where you want to buy your R4DS you need to chose what size of SD memory card you would like to go with it. If you already have one then you may not need to buy a new SD card but you will probably want a fairly large storage capacity to keeps all your homebrew and game back-ups in one place.

How to Tell if Your R4 DS Revolution is Fake

If you bought an R4 DS before April 2008 then it probably is real and an original model. Most units of R4 DS Revolution that have been sold since (unless it was old stock) are not made by the original team. Don’t worry though, it will likely not cause too much trouble but it could be meaning you don’t get the best out of your games if you’re not buying from a reliable source.

The best advice is simply to order from a reliable seller in the first place. Alternatively you can buy an M3 DS Real. The M3 DS Real does not have lots of imitations and includes all the same features so you can safely buy an M3 DS Real.

I would not recommend buying your DS R4 Revolution from anywhere that does not have any evidence of good customer feedback (and “customer feedback” on their own site doesn’t count, it can easily be made up). The reason for this is that as there seems to be a lot of fakes on the Internet. The fakes often work if you install the right firmware but they do tend to cause a lot more hassle than the real R4 DS Revolution. Definitely not worth the risk to save a few pound. You might end up just completely wasting your money with no chance of a refund if the business is not reputable.

There are lots of alternatives to the R4 Revolution. They all really do pretty much the same thing – act as an adaptor for the Nintendo DS or DSi to read from and write to SD cards.

The question is which one should you buy. The most well known is the R4 Revolution. As I’ve mentioned plenty of times on this site, it has a massive identity crisis, with a huge amount of imitations, some with similar and some with exactly the same name. On top of that there are different variations of R4s from the companies that emerged out of the original R4 Revolution team. Because the original company has split up, there are no more official updates of the firmware. You can however get unofficial firmware updates.

The M3 has appears very similar and the software it runs is also very similar (so similar that R4 Revolution and can older editions of the M3 firmware). As with the R4, the latest edition of the firmware for the M3 was created in early 2008.

There are a host of other cards including the DSTT, AceKard, CycloDS. Each has their supporters but there seems to be no easy answer to the question of which is best. At the end of the day they pretty much do the same job and all work reasonably well if you get a good quality unit.

Some of the most popular DS cards badly photoshoped into one picture.

The best thing about owning an R4 for Nintendo DS is the ability to play homebrew games and use homebrew applications. But you won’t be enjoying these features if you don’t know where to look for these games. Here are 10 great titles to pick from.

Essential Games

1. Puzzle Maniak

If you love puzzles, you’ll definitely get a real kick out of Puzzle Maniak because it manages to squeeze over 20 games in a 3 MB file. These games include simple games like solitaire and samegame as well as other nice puzzle games of various names. This game can also play back any mp3 files in your R4’s mp3 directory so you can set the mood of the gameplay.

2. DS Doom

Doom is one of the oldest and best first-person shooters of all time and although it came out on GBA, the Nintendo DS never got a piece of it until the R4 homebrew community came along. Perhaps the best thing about this version of Doom is the ability to play multiplayer over Wi-Fi.

3. WordUp!

Any word game executed correctly can be really addictive when you start playing and WordUp! happens to be one of them because it combines block-falling gameplay with word elements. It features nice colourful graphics that will really get you hooked.

4. Tyrian

Vertical scrolling shooters are not very common with the Nintendo DS, but now with Tyrian being ported to the DS by the R4 homebrew community, now you can enjoy one of the best arcade shooters in history. It uses both screens so you can experience gameplay without distractions and it has lots of levels to keep you busy.

5. Lemmings DS

Another game that was popular older consoles that failed to be ported in the latest Nintendo handheld is Lemmings. Now with Lemmings DS, not only you get the same fun levels from the old ports, but additional levels that were included in the original Amiga Lemmings. That’s 220 levels total for this fun puzzle strategy game where you need to lead Lemmings to the exit by assigning them various jobs.

Essential Applications

1 DSOrganize

While the DS does have some useful applications built-in, their organizer is pretty basic. This is why the DSOrganizer can make your life much easier because it comes with so many mini applications that make this one of the best homebrew applications for the Nintendo DS. It is capable of storing memos, to-do lists, addresses, and stylus drawings. A calculator and file browser is also included where the file browser has support for viewing images and playing back different audio formats and text formats as well. It even comes with an IRC client for communication. As long as you have a flash card solution, you can really put this application to work.

2. NitroTracker

If you want to create your own music, you need to get yourself an instrument or special software because most portable devices do not come with a feature-rich music creation tool. But now with NitroTracker, you can create very good music in the popular XM file format easily using the stylus and touch screen. Even the Nintendo DS microphone can be utilized to make samples. This is truly a R4 application that has commercial quality.

3. PointyRemote

Now you can see a scaled version of any PC desktop that you are remotely controlling through VNC and use the second screen as a zooming tool. PointyRemote is an ingenious VNC application that actually utilizes both screens the best way possible. With the stylus, controlling your computer couldn’t be any easier.

4. Colors

Because the Nintendo DS uses a stylus, painting applications would work very well and so Colors was developed and since November 2008, over 250,000 downloads were made. It features powerful painting tools that basically turn your DS into a drawing tablet. It can be used for simple doodling, basic painting, or advanced sketching. Colors is one of the must have applications on your DS if you want a good sketchbook.

5. SavSender

The problem that people face with their game saves is that they cannot be backed up. SavSender is a very simple backup that provides this function. It can restore these saves to the cartridge any time so you basically have unlimited saves. It also gives you an easy way to transfer save game files between DS consoles.

For under £25, the R4 DS Revolution allows your Nintendo DS or DSi to:
* Play free R4 Nintendo DS homebrew games
* Run free R4 homebrew applications
* Play back-ups of games you own (so you never need to carry or swap cartridges around)
* Be used as a PDA
* mp3 Player
* Video Player
* Web Browser
* Word Processor
* And even a Mobile Phone!