GBA X-ROM Review - MyRoms.com

Arround a week ago we at MyRoms.com recieved a package containg GBA X-ROM from EasyBuy2000.com . After playing with it for a couple of days I think I am ready to write a review about this interesting little GAMEBOY ADVANCE / GBA SP ROMs device.

What is GBA X-ROM

• XROM Linker is a blue coloured box with a cable attached to it. USB male plug at one end (conects to the PC) and a box with a plug that fits into Game Boys Mutiplayer Link port [EXT.1]
• GBA X-ROM Flash Card looks exactly the same size as an official Nintendo game cartridge only diference being its color - well it's trasperant. The IMPORTANT differnce from Nintendo made carts is that istead of Read Only Memory (ROM) used in Nintendo GB game cartridges -- XROM has a Flash Memory inside and lots of it. Nintendo cartridges usualy have from 32 to 128 Mega bits of memory when as X-ROM has 512 M and the new version comes with a 1000 M bits of memory on board. This leads us to the next part of our review

What is GBA X-ROM for / What you can do with it.

Now this is the fun part.
Why would we need to connect GAMEBOY ADVACE to a PC and put a Flash Card in the GBA? So that we can use the Xrom Linker to put Gameboy Games (GBA ROMs) from the PC to the GBA X-ROM Flash card. 512M flash card can hold up to 16 games and the 1G Xrom can hold 32 games at the same time. If you use the flash card for playing emulated NES roms or SEGA roms you can fit a lot more games on to the cartridge as the old games are a lot smaller in Mb. And yes - you can use the card to put Music or even Video files on your gameboy. With Majesco GBA Video compressin 90 minits of video can fit on your 512M card (3 hours on the 1G cart) and there is software for making your own GBA video files from PC AVI, MPG, WMV and ASF files.

Use the GBA X-ROM for the following:

• Free Games and Demo roms that can not be bought in stores
• Backuped Commercial GBA Game Roms USA / JAP / CH / EUR
• Viewing Video and listeneing to the Music files
• Running upplications for reading Text, Draving, Calculator and so on..
• Developing and testing your own GB games
• [our favorite] Emulators of NES, GB, GBC , SEGA, Atari, TurboGFX, Z80, SNES roms

Xrom Flash Linker ca be used for:

• Connecting to GAMEBOY and writing GBA ROMs to X-rom flash card.
  (roms can contain games / programs / video / music / emulators)
• Backuping Nintendo GBA game cartridges to PC
  That is extracting game data from the cart and storing it on the computer as GBA rom file
• Erasing files - games from the X-rom flash card
  Note: Nintendo cartridges have Read Only Memory so they can not be erased like Xrom
• Backuping save games from both Nintendo and Xrom cards
  

Emulators

You can use emulators for different systems on a GBA Flash Cartridge. The main emulators currently available include:

• Goomba: Used to play Game Boy monochrome games
• DrSMS and SMSAdvance: Used to play Sega Master System (SMS) and Sega Game Gear (GG) games
• PocketNES: Used to play Nintendo Entertainment System games
• SNES Advance: Used to play Super NES game

Hands on

Xrom Linker installaton

Drivers / Software

LittleWriter software

Writing roms / backup games / Cheat codes / PogoShell

Technical details Come pakeged with 1 X-ROM Linker USB Cable (GBA to USB) 1 X-ROM 512Mbit or 1000Mbit Flash Card 512Mbit = 64Mbyte of space to save your ROMS 2Mb seperate SRAM memory for game saves USB-to-GBA Link programmer Unified driver that works with ALL versions of Windows that supports USB Built in RTC (Real Time Clock) for games like Pokemon XCode Cheat plugin incorporated into the software GUI program a cheat code into the ROM and transfer it to the cartridge 2 choices of client software both supporting auto-patching of ROMS Software diagnostic tools for testing the XROM hardware Supports Pogo Shell aplications 30 Day Money Back & One Year Warranty

1. X-ROM 512Mbit Flash Card :
» It works as the device to save any data or roms
» It should be inserted on the GBA cartidge slot
» Supports several emulators (GameBoy, GameBoyColor, Nintendo, Sega, etc)

2. X-ROM USB Cable :
» This cable works as a connector between your GBA and PC
» It should be plugged on the GBA Link/Multiplayer Port (GBA) & USB Port (PC)
» Compatible with GBA / GBA SP worldwide

3. Driver and Supporting Software :
Note: The driver and the supporting software (LittleWriter) must be installed on the PC prior to connecting the X-ROM USB cable to the PC.
This supporting software has the following functions :
» Transfer rom files from PC and write it to the flash card
» Automatic zip files recognition
» Convert the original GBA cartidge as rom file
» Backup save games
» Backup GBA internal SRAM
» Supports single and multiple roms
» Supports file compressions, saving more spaces
» Supports many plugins and special actions


The Good Thing :
» With 512Mbit capacity, you can store multiple game roms or save games
» You can use X-ROM USB Cable to send small games (up to 2 Mbit) to GBA built-in SRAM memory (This way you can play game without any cartridge)
» It supports RTC (Real Time Clocks), that means you can play several games which need this feature
» You can backup your original game cartridges to rom files, so you don't have to worry when it gets broken
» XCode Cheat Patch supported (using the supporting software), this way you can apply Action Replay Code Saves to the games.

The Bad Thing :
» The installation process is a little bit complicated for novice users and you should read the manual carefully before following the steps one by one.
» The developer of this product did not produce their own official supporting software, which gain the most important role for the many interesting features, but they are using a 3rd party software instead.
» X-ROM USB Cable design should be improved in the future, especially the part which connects between the cable and the GBA Link Port, it's not really convenient

Conclusion :
Our overall conclusion to this product is not other than what we tought before, it's that this product is worth to buy, especially for the current price which is pretty cheap considering you can spent about the same amount of money for buying any other GBA flash card linker with half or less memory capacity.

Buy GBA XROM at EasyBuy2000.com

X-ROM 512Mb set - Price: $139
X-ROM 1 Gig set    - Price: $199