It’s been a long time again… Just like the last time and the time before and before and before… How am I ever going to get loyal readers if I don’t post any more often? I guess that the only way to get loyal readers is by writing stuff that they might like which brings me to today’s topic: the N5 which is a Micro SD card reader for the Nintendo DS which is made by some Chinese company. It’s homepage can be found by clicking here.
The N5 enables you to use ROMS of DS games that you download somewhere. These games van be official games which would be illegal or homebrew. The device comes packaged with a USB Micro SD card reader and a software cd. On the software CD you’ll find Moonshell which is required to be on the Micro SD card if you want the DS to boot when the card is inserted. Besides the ability to play ROMS the N5 supports MP3 playback, movie playback in some formats, textfile reading and a calculator through moonshell.
I allready had a 1GB Micro SD card, but if you don’t have one yet, you’ll have to get one seperatly or find a store that sells a bundle. I primarily use the N5 to be able to play games that I can’t get around here. It’s really annoying when a game is released, but then the only way to get it is through import, because not a single store here sells them. I think that I’m also going to use it to check a game out before I’ll actually buy it. Buying games always comes with the risk that you don’t like them. Because there are hardly any demos and if there are any demos they’re pretty much impossible to get then downloading a ROM to try the game and then buy it if you like it is quite a good way to be sure you get your money’s worth.
But for some people the most important reason to get a flash card reader for the DS would be homebrew. There are some really interesting homebrew titles available for the DS like this Quake and Quake 2 port and this OpenTTD port. And this is one that I find very interesting, Warcraf Tower Defense, but I have yet to try it.
A lot of homebrew software for the DS (and also for the PSP) can be found on homebrewwelt, but unfortunatly for those who don’t speak German, this site is in German.
