Japan court bans sale of DS homebrew-enabling R4 flash carts

by David Hinkle on Feb 27th 2009 10:46AM

The Tokyo District Court placed an injunction on the Chinese cart manufacturers who make the R4 today, making it illegal to sell the cartridge in Japan. It has already disappeared from shops and Nintendo, Capcom, and Square Enix have all come forward with their support. These companies haven't ceased their efforts yet, however, as they've vowed to continue pursuing those responsible for similar devices.

R4 carts, along with other flash carts, allow users to run homebrew (and pirated) material on their DS or DS Lite (no dice on the upcoming DSi, folks). If this is all still over your head, then check out our guide to homebrew on the DS right here.

[Via Eurogamer]

Source

Tags: DS, flash-cart, homebrew, japan, Nintendo, r4, r4-cart

Reader Comments (51)

actually, the r4 along with many other flashcarts have already created new versions that are supposed to work with the dsi

Not that I am advertising for them, but the Acekard2i is for the DSi. That is all.

theres an EZFlash Vi thats on dealextreme

It's a shame!
Of course, they have to do something against piracy, but some of the best NDS games ever made are homebrew! (not to mention all those wonderfull applications)

Good: trying to stop piracy.
Bad: trying to stop homebrew.

you take the good you take the bad.....you take them both and there you have......(ya I know, joystiq did this joke the other day)

it's not like this will stop anything. they TRIED to stop torrent servers, look where that got them. They TRIED to stop music piracy, look how that's going.

Unfortunately in a situation like this you can't subvert the bad without the good taking a hit. Besides, I don't think nintendo cares about homebrew (personally I don't, but that doesn't matter here). I mean, look at Bob's Game.

LOL Stop Piracy. I Love hypocrites. Lee.. don't even try to state that you own EVERY single movie, TV show, Book or Magazine Legitamately. Haveing downloaded any of these is Piracy and I am sure you have commited it as well just like everyone else. You got a problem with Torrents too or rapidhsare or those nice sites that stream movies through megavideo etc ast well? I bet you don't which are ALL piracy.

I think ppl should just admit that they are pirates themselves for downloading content that may not seem immoral or illegal but is. And now, deletingit after 24 hours doesn't count. Fact of the matter is EVERYONE has commited some form of Piracy and not felt bad about it. Banning the sale of these carts is no better.

No I don't. All my pc games are on Steam or Direct2Drive. My M3 only has a 128mb MSD card for lemmings and color. psp, 360, ps2, wii all unmodded. iTunes and play.com for movies, music, tv shows.

I have a job is all.

I'm not against it. i just dont do it.

I pirate porn...and I still feel bad about it.

It's wrong to feel bad about porn.

I suppose that Two Girls, One Cup is an exception. Nevermind.

Three Words: Datel Games 'n' Music
Wait... Make that 4 words. Is 'n' a word?

sadly they are too interwined.and to be brutally honest with you mate, i know about 55+ guys with m4 in real life, and none of them uses them for homebrew.So yeah m4 is mostly about piracying.if it could only homebrew, the chinese wouldnt even bother making them.

There hasn't been any r4 support since April of last year. You're better off looking into a better, creator-supported slot 1 flashcart solution anyway.

Supercard has great support, they release updates whenever a problem game arises, even for their old Slot-2 cards.

Thats odd cause I just bought the new R4 card that supports up to 8GB mem cards and that came with brand new software designed to support it. This was probably less than 3 months ago. I don't think those have been available since April.

This will make pursuing bans on other similar devices easier. Plus, the R4s have gotten major attention from sometimes even the mainstream media, and is a very good starting point.

I feel for the few honest 'homebrew' people that aren't otherwise encroaching Nintendo's turf, but that's just the way things work. If you can't live with the rules, there's a hundred other devices that's there to welcome you with open arms.

Shagi,

If you have an "r4" that supports SDHC cards and has a firmware version greater than v1.18 (4/24/08), then it is probably an "r4iii" or similar product made by a copycat dev to leverage sales off of the r4 name. If you paid

Shagi,

Sorry - my response was cut off for some reason. What I meant to say was:

If you paid

Ok, now this is pissing me off. >:|

Let's try it again:

If you paid

I'm confused...

This is my last try, then I'm giving up.

If you paid less than $20 for it, then I'm almost certain it's the case.

Don't get me wrong, though. A functioning flashcart is a functioning flashcart. If your cart supports SDHC, plays homebrew ROMS, is supported by the creators, and was inexpensive, then by all means, don't look back. :)

Sigh.

Maybe I was just really late getting the new version? I don't know, I don't have it here to check unfortunately.

@ Farseer: It's the less-than sign, man. (<) Gets mistaken for the start of an HTML tag. They should really put a warning about that somewhere; we've all had to learn to avoid pointy brackets the hard way, like this. :P

@Shagittarius: Conventional wisdom states that your product is a knockoff with a deceptively similar name because it supports SDHC; the company that made the original R4 never released an SDHC-supporting product before their website vanished and they stopped updating their firmware. But then again - with the way companies move, dissolve, and reform in the flash cart industry, I'm not sure anyone but the makers of R4 can say if something else with that name is a knockoff trying to cash in on their good name or a reseller of some new device from the original team or the original creators under a new brand. Ultimately, Far's right: If it works, doesn't brick your DS, and is getting support from the manufacturer, you shouldn't worry yourself over whether it's "really" an R4. It's not like a Stradivarius. (FAR from it...) Knockoffs are only a problem when they try to use someone else's name to sell a defective unit.

"Knockoffs are only a problem when they try to use someone else's name to sell a defective unit."

Hmmmmm - in hindsight, that statement came off way wrong from where I intended it. Let me rephrase:

"Now that the original is gone, knockoff R4s are only a problem when they try to use the original's fame to sell a defective unit."

@Arashikou

lol, you totally got it. I realized too late that the less-than sign was the hangup. My fourth post was the "lightbulb moment".

It could be a knock off , but It came packaged EXACTLY the same way as my original R4...maybe they were both knockoffs?

That's pretty stupid. Yeah it can be used to play illegal copies of DS games, but that doesn't mean you should ban it. The R4 has legitimate uses. You know, I bet a lot of people use blank DVDs and flash drives to save illegal copies of media. Maybe Japan should ban the sale of those just to be safe.

Hell, why not just ban computers while you're at it. Those can play ROMs too!

I was thinking about getting into the whole homebrew scene...any particular card/devices you'd recommend?

I would look into CycloDS Evolution. (http://www.cyclopsds.com/cgi-bin/cyclods/engine.pl?page=products-cyclodsevolution).

I'm really thinking about picking one up to replace my r4.

Cheers.

Honestly, the Datel Games 'n' Music would be good.
It's $10 and you can buy it from shops, but it doesn't support illegal games (Lack of RAM). It does have full homebrew support though!

The CycloDS Evolution is great. It gets regular firmware updates and was made by native English speakers, so no Engrish in sight!

Great! Except you forgot to mention that the r4 was discontinued months before they were banned. The only r4's left are fakes/clones. Also there are like 10 other cards that do the exact same thing:

1. Cyclo ds
2. Acekard
3. DSTT
4. Supercard ds one
5. m3 real
6. iTouch
7. Edge
8. EZ-Flash Vi
.........

Those are just carts from one online shop I listed, I mean I could go on and on! Banning one discontinued card won't help.
@nutman: Good point! Some people actually use such devices for homebrew.

i have a cyclods. i use it almost exclusively for Colors. what a fantastic app.

Well there are the cloned R4s which still have ppl making firmware for them. I'm assuming these fall under the ban as well.

Pocket Physics is awesome homebrew. Fact!

Who cares, the R4 sucks now, they're actually doing people a favor.

Its their country. I can't complain as an American.

At first I was like D:
but then I lol'd : D

Did they seriously ban the only discontinued Flash Cart as far as I know?
Oh the huge manatee!

Am I the only one that finds it Ironic that the R4 makers were really affected by piracy?

You mean imitation/counterfeiting, right?

AFAIK, software piracy does not apply to physical goods...

SORRYY mister grammar Nazi.
Why don't you go gas some grammar Jews?

And if you say that my grammar was correct and I was using the improper word (like in this post) I will rip off your balls and shove them up your ass, so every time you shit you shit all over your balls.

Dude, I wasn't correcting your grammar, nor was I suggesting that you used an improper word. I was simply questioning your comment.
I didn't think that your comment was as witty as you thought it was, because piracy and counterfeiting are apples and oranges.I felt like I had to say so, that's all.

And please, leave my balls alone. I get really uncomfortable when other guys talk about touching my balls. I'm just not into that, sorry.

Honestly, the Datel Games 'n' Music would be good.
It's $10 and you can buy it from shops, but it doesn't support illegal games (Lack of RAM). It does have full homebrew support though!

Please ignore.
It as meant to be a response to some guy who wanted a cart.

I actually own the DSTT flashcard and it's going pretty fine on y DS...i don't feel guilty using it or downloading roms...after all iallows me to test some games before actually spend money on a not so worthy game...why is that? we all know that some companies released some shitty games out there...some are the worst of the worst and one way to try it before actually buying the game is to play it on a flashcard....plus, here where i live, the average price of ech game is very overpriced if we compare them to those sold price in the us or europe, dude fuck that!!...i won't spend my moeny on an expensive shitty game if i can try it first on the flashcard....

Of course, that's how i use it, as a mere "try the game first, if it's not shitty, then buy it" sytem....I'm really aware that there are ppl who use to play games and not buying the origianl cartridge....but you see..sometime it's ot becuse they don't want to...but because games are SO overpriced and don't actully money to afford them...

I love my R4.....probably the best DS Purchase I ever made.......

If there wasn't so much crapware out for DS....I probably would have never purchased an R4

You know what else I love about the r4? You don't have to carry cartridges with you. Enable the soft reset sequence, and you can play a game until you are tired with it, then hit A+B+X+Y+L+R and choose another game. Anymore, I'll buy a cart (usually with a preorder spiff), leave it at home, and throw the ROM on my microSD. I would much rather not carry dozens of carts.

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Japan court bans sale of DS homebrew-enabling R4 flash carts

Reader Comments (51)

Posted: Feb 27th 2009 10:55AM (Unverified) said

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