Review: R5SDHC (Sky3DS clone)
I am writing this review with mixed feelings. Everyone who’s come here more than once knows our stance against piracy. The Sky3DS and R5SDHC are specifically created to play 3DS “backups”, and have no pretention of letting people play homebrews. As such, I have classified those as “piracy devices” so far.
You might remember that I have contacted the Sky3DS team several times as an attempt to review their device, but they never replied. Some retailers of the Sky3DS and R5SDHC, however, immediately contacted me after reading my article about the Sky3DS, and sent me an R5SDHC for free. As such I feel I owe them this review. Additionally, the fact that these cards indirectly run homebrew through the cubic ninja exploit also makes it a valid homebrew option moving forward, but I’ll get back to this in the review.
So, first of all, many thanks to /talk member jackmax for sending me the device for a review. You can get an R5SDHC from their partner site here. (or the Sky3DS here). I want to emphasize that I am not affiliated with these sites and cannot judge the quality of their service as I have never used them.
TLDR
Let’s get the cat out of the bag: the R5SDHC (and, I assume, the Sky3DS) does what it claims to do: the device lets you play 3DS roms on a 3DS running the latest firmware (9.2.0-20 as of writing this review. It’s safe to assume the next firmware will attempt to patch this). In theory, this is advertised as a backup device, letting you play 10 of your 3DS games without having to carry 10 cartridges with you, and risking damaging or losing them. In practice, most people will use this device to play pirated games they download on the intertubes.
Unboxing and first impression
The packaging for the R5SDHC is as simple as can be: a piece of cardboard enclosing the device. No manual, no complimentary Micro SD, you’ll have to provide your own. For a device which averages at $110 on retailer sites, I felt an effort could have been made by the team here, but hey, piracy is a “for profit” business with not so much interest for returning customers, so be it. At least we can say this is some frustration-free packaging here. Open the box, get the R5 out, done.
The R5 itself feels reasonably solid, but I wouldn’t expect less from a tiny square made of solid plastic. Basically, inserting it in and off the 3DS doesn’t feel like anything could break.
How this works & ease of use
The R5 has a slot for a micro SD. The user copies 3DS Roms (that they acquired on their own) to the micro SD on their computer, through some proprietary software (the DiskWriter). Once the files are copied to the MicroSD, it is inserted back into the R5. The R5 goes into the 3DS, and the 3DS will automatically detect the first game in the list. To switch to another game in the list of copied games, the user has to press a button on the R5. I’ve seen this on videos before and it felt awkward and slow. After using it myself, this is actually pretty convenient, especially because one cannot carry more than 10 games on the R5 (in theory. I’ll get back to that). As a result you only have to cycle through at most 10 button presses to run a specific game.
The software provided with the device is windows only, but is extremely simple to use. Select your roms, add them to the interface, and let it do its work.
Once the games are on your microSD, everything works out of the box without any complicated manipulation, besides inserting the R5 cartridge into the console, and pressing its button to switch games.
10 games limitation?
It was speculated for a while what the “10 games limitation” meant on these cartridges. It means exactly what their FAQ is saying: the Sky3DS and the R5SDHC will let you use 10 games, not one more. If you want to play an 11th game, you can’t delete a game from your Micro SD and replace it with a new one. Instead, you’ll have to buy another R5 cartridge, to support 10 more games. This is because somehow the R5 keeps track of how many games you have used with it, and has a hardcoded stop at “10”. This is not a limitation of the hack or the hardware, but an intentional limit put in place to make people buy more of the R5. It also makes it difficult to resell the device on the second-hand market.
I’ve mentioned that the device can currently be found for about $110 on retailer websites (not including shipping). This means you literally pay an average of $11 per game you pirate backup with this device. At this price point, this makes the device slightly unattractive. A majority of 3DS games can be purchased for less than $25, and a significant amount can be found today, used, for less than $11. The choice will be up to gamers, if they are willing to give $11 per game to pirates, or $25 to the actual game creators. I think my opinion on this subject is pretty clear.
With all the above being said, some people have found ways to bypass the 10 roms limitation, and actually install up to 100 Roms on the R5 (provided you have a big enough Micro SD). The R5 official site has admitted the bug, confirming the steps to add up to 100 roms on their device. They also mentioned the next batch of devices will probably not have this flaw. A smart marketing move, that will probably guarantee people will rush to buy the R5 rather than its competitors. From a pure pricing point of view, a 100 Roms limitation makes the device much more viable, pricing piracy at $1.1 per game, the cost of a casual game on itunes. Too bad for 3DS developers, good for pirates.
I have not confirmed the glitch that lets people play more than 10 roms. I didn’t even have access to that many roms during my tests.
Compatibility
As I’ve mentioned above, the R5 is fairly easy to use, even for a novice like me who’s owned a 3DS for less than a week. It is compatible with the latest 3DS firmware, and has accepted almost every game I’ve thrown at it. It is worth mentioning though that it is whitelist based: not all games will work on the card, they have to be supported by it. The list apparently expends regularly, but out of the few games that I tried, 1 did not work (Puzzles and Dragons). That’s not a very statistically significant amount of data, but that represented 15% of my attempts.
I am not too worried that compatibility will increase with time, at least for games that came out before the device. For future games, there’s always the possibility that Nintendo makes them incompatible somehow with the device.
I could successfully run Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, one of the “professor Layton” games, Shinobi 3D, and Cubic Ninja (more on that later). In my tests, only puzzles and Dragons refused to install. In that case, the Diskwriter tool explains you can’t install the game, and this will not “waste” one of your 10 slots.
Region Locking
The R5, Sky3DS, etc… do not remove region locking from the console. What this means is that a Japanese 3DS will only run Japanese roms, a US 3DS will only run US roms, etc…
The Diskwriter will not prevent you from copying a Rom with the wrong region, even if you have copied Roms from another region in the past (at which point it could at least ask you to confirm). But once on the R5, the game does not show up on the console when you switch to it. It is possible to delete it from the Micro SD, and I have been told this does not use one of your slots but I couldn’t properly verify that (I do not have 11 roms so I don’t know if I reached the limits). My recommendation is to be careful and not even try to copy roms from the wrong region. I did it because this was a free sample, you wouldn’t want to mess your $110 device.
Cubic Ninja and Homebrew
One of the roms I tried was Cubic Ninja. This game is the entry point to Smealum’s recently released Homebrew Launcher. and I could confirm this works perfectly: the Cubic Ninja rom, running through the R5, executes the homebrew launcher perfectly fine. Other people have confirmed that the Gateway3DS and Sky3DS also run the exploit fine through a Cubic Ninja rom. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for piracy here, but given that cubic Ninja has become almost impossible to find (and at any rate, not below $40, when the game was worth $5 less than a week ago), people should be aware that this remains an option. To help with conscience issues, it is also worth mentioning that Nintendo have apparently recalled the game, and that therefore only second-hand copies can be found moving forward. So even if you pay for the game, the money does not go to the developer anymore at this point. Just sayin’ that the possibility to do this exists, technically.
Conclusion
Thanks again to the people who sent me this sample. The R5SDHC works as advertised, and apparently does even a little bit more since its 10 games limitation can be bypassed (in the current hardware revision) thanks to a bug. Additionally, Homebrew can indirectly be achieved on this device through Cubic Ninja. It is worth emphasizing that this does not remove region locking at all. With the current price point of $110, I still think this device is 10 times too expensive for what it does. If the 10 games limitation was officially removed, then it would be much more acceptable, as far as “piracy” devices go.
110$ for a clone…. LOL…
It’s actually exactly the same device, by the way, with a different branding for some reason
Pirates.. pirating?
Sky3DS card supports 3DS V9.4.0-21 perfectly with no game limit video: http://www.r4gateway.com/sky3ds-3ds-flashcart-for-playing-3ds-games-on-3ds-3ds-xl-2ds-latest-firmware-p-42.html
yeah, its not worth the price for me, sky3ds is the best flashcart for the newest 9.4.0-21U system.
piracy should be free, when it’s not, it would be better to support the game devs rather than paying the hackers.
Compared to 10 years ago, people will now sit on piracy-capable exploits indefinitely rather than release them. Having commercial options lessens the pain of letting it go into the wild, or sometimes even encourages it.
Remember Pandora on the PSP (which in itself doesn’t support any form of piracy at all) wasn’t released until after, and relucantly at that, it started showing up in online videos of Chinese unbrick/downgrade “stores” [where they were at first trying to hide the fact they were using a special battery].
Not that it really matters; you can still buy brand-new red/black and blue/black 3DS XLs that have FW 4.1-4.5 in certain retail locations which will give you “full” Gateway capability. Once the new GW software is released, we’ll see what functionality is supported on firmware 9.x.
First) Nice review
Enough with the damn 3DS or Gameboy news now..
What’s happening on the 3DS scene is a pretty big deal right now. But if you want to skim these news, you can go to the Vita category: http://wololo.net/category/psvita/
LOL great job wololo
Let’s see some cool *working* Vita stuff. I still have a v1.69 Vita just waiting to be modded (and I don’t mean that *yawn* PSP emulator 95% of people on here get alllllll excited about) alongside my fully updated one that I actually use.
Perhaps Vitaspoit will open up some doorways, who knows, but for now the PS Vita is just as interesting as the Wii U.
The saves are stored in the micro sd or the 3DS’s SD ?
Wherever they would be stored normally…
They store on the microSD on the flash cart. A normal save would save on the cartridge, so these saves store on the flash cart’s microSD
Judy, How sweet of you to think of me too! I'm doing much better now that Robert's out of the hospital and I've gotten some rest. Doctors make rounds at such unpredictable hours, it was necessary for someone to be at the hospital most of the time. It's hard to &qoau;relox&qtut; in that setting! Robert is doing better but still has that extra dose of sleepiness so we'll be following up with neuro. Hope you are well!
R5 and the Sky3ds are just not worth it. It’s too expensive just for that 10 game limitation. I rather by Gateway now and wait til it fully supports the current FW.
All of those pirating cards are useless overpriced trash.
Hey man, you say! Useless junk cassette.
Follow GATEWAY 3DS.
Is currently the most likely!
That’s a lot of faith put into ones that don’t deserve any, but hey, if you prefer another way of doing it wrong, I’m not going to try and stop you.
Can you confirm if the R5 is supported on the 3DS Powersaves Pro device? Since the device flashes to one game at a time, I’m sure it should detect the represented game.
I tried a sky3ds on my power save pro and it said game cart not compatible. I’m not sure about the R5 but since they are pretty much the same I’d prolly say both don’t work.
Now you can play 100+ games with R5SDHC, it is very easy!!!!
Pls check how to do that here:
http://www.gateway-3ds.net/r5-sdhc-flashcart-supports-3ds-v9-2-0-and-new-3ds.html
Pls note: when you play “10+ game” , you are not able to change next game by clicking switch button. You have to eject micro sd and insert again for next normal “10 game”
WARNING! The LED keeps flashing for a long time might cause a breakdown. We are not in charge of this kind of damage.
Typo error: “so so be it.” “so so”
Although I’m an ESL myself, I don’t think it’s wrong per se, but it does look like it needs some rewording.
Now for the actual typo: “and as a hardcoded stop” should have “has” instead of “as”.
And and actual mistake: you need 9 button presses to switch to the farthest game in a set of 10 games, not 10 (which will give you the same game you’ve started at).
Thanks for the CFW, btw. Everything that contributes to the death of flash cart manufacturers is done for the greater good. GBAT mods shouldn’t have banned you either, since you didn’t break any of the rules there.
Nice try, but it’s correct.
the double “so” was intentional but did not look good. I removed. And I fixed the “as” typo, thanks for pointing it out.
For the 10 presses: you’re right. It’s funny because I thought about it, but told myself “nobody’s gonna think about that”. I tried to keep it simple
This is great news for all us pirates. What someone needs to do is clone this so we can pirate the clone and make it cheaper. Pirating is awesome!!
Here’s how to enable extra ROMS. http://www.r4depot.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/r5sdhc-10-games-295×300.jpg
Unfortunately, I have a better chance of buying the games legit than buying a flashcart, even for the DS, so the fact that Sky3DS and R5 are much more restrictive and more expensive turns me off of them. I sincerely hope the 3DS scene does not end up like the PS3 scene, where the focus is more on profiting off of piracy than softmods. I will admit, I pirate, but only because most of the time I can’t afford the games otherwise. If I have the money, I’d rather pay for the game itself than pay for a piracy device.
only about 3ds these days…looks like you have abandoned vita
What are you talking about? He barely talks about the 3DS? The amount of posts he’s made about Vita exploiting news, it’s natural for the bruh to take a break and explore other handhelds.
since the software only works for windows, is it possible to run the software through wineskin on the mac??
lol so woolly is a pirate but doesn’t condone piracy…oh the irony.i bet he is still playing those games on the 3ds and doesn’t own them.
My cuchi wet. Wana feel it?
@xoombie503
How do you know he is a pirate? He said he has had his 3DS for less than a week and was unable to test the ability to install more than 10 ROMs, to me that sounds like someone who is paying for thier software. Don’t you think someone who was pirating the games they were playing would have more than 10? I know I would have had more than 10 because I have pirated many a game.
My personal opinion on piracy is that it is a personal choice with your conscience. The official policy of this website, however, is that we don’t condone it.
I don’t think there’s any irony or contradiction going on here.
If this helps you sleep, I don’t play Japanese video games because reading Japanese bores me to death. I’m also not a big fan of Mario. I bought the 3DS 3 days ago to play with the cubic ninja exploit, and receiving the R5 sample was coincidental.
The pricing is not an issue to me. It’s the 10 game limit that almost defeats the purpose of pirating games. And after reading for 5min about enabling 10+ games, you won’t be able to save your game progress(?) on the other games.
Rediculous, as someone from europe this is a massive annoyance with the region lock.
Then again I can only blame nintendo at the end of the day.
This is good because 3DS games are overpriced. Nintendo is known for not lowering the prices for their video games and if they do is at a much slower rate than Sony video games. This goes back to the NES days when games were like $70. I’m sure I have paid at least 50% more on average for my 3DS games than my Vita games, if only looking at retail. Ironically I noticed that Nintendo does lower prices when their systems get pirated (the DS and Wii), it’s when their system don’t get pirated they have little incentive to lower prices.
I have no problem with piracy if you can’t afford the game and you’re broke. My opinion on piracy is that it should be legal and copyright law should be abolished. Piracy is a moral issue, I can pirate any game I want, but I choose not to because I want to support the developers.
i find your comment offensives…if you’re broke, how the heck are you going to download the roms? unless you know someone who don’t mind you doing these kind of things on their internet, there are NO chances you’ll be able to do it unless you can afford the internet yourself, with the exception of internet cafe and the library, but even they don’t condone piracy.
also, even if you’re broke, i’m certain there are plenty of under-the-table job you can do to earn the money to buy that game you’ve wanted to play…
and i speak frm personal experiences. my family is poor and we couldn’t afford internet. my only internet was stealing frm my neighbors or using the library. and if i wanted to get money to buy stuffs for my gaming system (NES at the time), i just went dumper diving for cans/bottle/glasses and recycle them as well as offered to help other business by being a rat. if they cannot learn how to earn money instead of piracy, then that would mean that you live in a 3rd world country that rely on piracy. but if you live in eu, china and/or usa, then it isn’t that hard. heck, go hunting and sell the meat.
Here is the gaming scene in the Pakistan
http://www.spawnfirst.com/articles/a-local-shop-owners-perspective/
In Pakistan almost every video game store sells modded consoles and pirated games. The citizens only buy legit games if they cost $20 or cheaper (and I’m talking about PS3 games). If video games were $60 retail in Pakistan no one would buy the games. Piracy is completely normal, the issues of copyright has little do with video game companies being funded. The issues with copyright has more to do with other problems like what happened to Geohot, HBO taking down websites that stream their PPVs at a much cheaper price, the government forcing DVR manufacturers (like TiVO) to remove the features to that skip commercials and things like that.
Also your situation doesn’t apply to everyone the case in Pakistan being an example. Just because someone has the internet or access to the internet connection doesn’t mean they can afford $30-60 retail video games. And in this economy when it’s in the *** you would be lucky to get a under the table job.
Oh and one more thing, I think it’s safe to say not to buy a 3DS flashcard until there is a significant price drop and the 10 game limitation is removed.
I’m surprised you didn’t completely light a fire under their ***. I mean a 10 game limitation purely because they want to make more money? That’s about as greedy as it gets. I loved flash carts for the fact I didn’t have to carry all my games with me but now if I wanted one of these, i’d still have to carry multiple carts if I wanted more than 10 games? That completely defeats the purpose of these devices in the first place.
Unfortunately, money makes the world turn. I won’t be getting one of these devices either until they remove the 10 game (INTENTIONAL) limitation. I have 15 retail 3DS games now but I’d love to be able to have my entire collection on one cart for when I travel. I have one of those NDS Adapter Pluses so I can backup my game saves for compatible games although it did corrupt my Super Mario 3D World save somehow.
We are living in age where people are hacking a device made for hacking.
Lmao, but $110 is pretty steep. I wouldn’t pay more than $40 unless they set it to be capable with an unlimited amount of roms and it bypasses region locking.
110 $ for a clone, nothing to care about it
Either this card or sky3ds will lower its price after some months later. May we can have one in that time. For some guys want to buy each one now, here is an Australian reseller rev3ds.com.
I have received my r5 from usa official store http://www.modchipwarehouse.com/r5sdhc-flashcart-runs-3ds-games-on-3ds-latest-system-firmware-or-any-n3ds-console-p-19.html last week, followed the guide the customer service provided,run without any problems, though the price is a little expensive,yet, it is really very cool in hand.
It’s funny how they keep preaching “we do not support piracy on this website” yet they post *** like this showing people how to copy “backups”.
well also saposed to be a psp site lol.
isthe limitcuzofvisa jus wandering.so if i wana play the nija game ihave to get the japaneses version of the r5. sokinduf hard to find usa roms with my r5 and acecard i had to use eu games. still cool though wish i could get one always like the r5 cuz the name.
the site say its 69.99 cool.
i like the new 3ds looks cool wish nintendo hurry up with it for the us. last time i couldent get the vita tv i *** downsnp up jus saying.
The r5sdhc function was similar to sky3ds that allow our users play 3ds games on N3DS V9.2.0-20 and following are more details. http://www.r4gateway.com/r5sdhc-3ds-flashcard-supoort-3ds-roms-on-all-3ds-system-version-p-43.html