Why Do Cards Exists: R4i, R4 3ds xl

Cartridges or Cards as they are now commonly known were the sole means of playing legally bought games on Nintendo DS, DS Lite, XL, etc. Most of the gaming consoles have always relied on some form of removable media to sell games. Since internet was not wide-spread & the speed was dismal, game console developing companies found the physical media distribution as the easiest & safest mode of game distribution. However, such media posed a grave risk, that of physical media failure. In case the card or the CD became unusable, the games on the cards too would become unplayable. To circumvent the same, the courts had allowed taking backups of games in soft form or ROM image of the game. However, the courts have mandated that the soft copy can only made from the Card bought legally. In other words owners of card are the one who can own the soft copy of the game.

Herein was the grey area of ROM distribution. Many games were successfully ‘Ripped’ & saved as ROM. Later on they found their way in the internet & were available for download by anyone. Now card manufactures like that of R4i, Gold, etc saw a great opportunity to offer cards that could play games from these soft copies. However, the major purpose of such cards existed to extend the functionality of the console. If Nintendo had its way, one would only be able to play games on cartridges bought legally. With R4 cards, one can easily store the Game in the form of a ROM. A ROM is the game data or game file in soft form.  A ROM can be as small as a few Kilobytes (KB) to a few Megabytes (MB). Without these cards it would have been mandatory for gamers to play games from Cartridges only. What happens when these cartridges are damaged or lost? If the cartridge becomes unusable or inaccessible isn’t our money lost?  A game cartridge is a mere hardware unit which is bound to fail or malfunction. One has paid money for the intangible asset, which is the game. One cannot be disallowed to play the game just because the hardware on which it came malfunctioned. This grey area in the law has been long exploited by pirates of software to keep ‘soft’ copies of games on had-disks in the form of ISOs or ROMs.

Another added function that cards like R4i or R4 Gold cards can enable is running of homebrew. Homebrew is a very interesting concept. These are basically softwares or codes written by non-Nintendo employees. Often such softwares are games, apps & other utilities. By utilities we mean apps that extend the functionality of the Nintendo Gaming console beyond intended.

Over the course of the articles we will explore various things that can be done using the carts.