R4 and other Nintendo DS flashcarts outlawed in UK

by Alexander Sliwinski on Jul 28th 2010 9:33AM

R4 cartridges and other flashcarts, used in some cases (if not most) to pirate Nintendo DS games, are no longer allowed to be sold, advertised or imported into the UK. According to GI.biz, London's High Court ruled that the devices are illegal -- much to the chagrin of those who use it for actual homebrew purposes -- because it requires bypassing Nintendo's security to use.

Nintendo and friends have been working hard to wipe out the R4 devices around the world. Nintendo claims that over 100,000 R4 devices have been seized in the UK since 2009.

Source: GI.biz, Develop

Tags: ds, law, lawsuit, nintendo, r4, uk

Reader Comments (61)

Would be nice if Nintendo actually went for the websites which are also offering illegal downloads of the games for the carts. Otherwise they're just centering in on 1/2 of the perceived problem. (Not everyone uses the carts for illegal use.)

And what about the NDS Emulators? If there were no illegal downloads there would be no ability to use the emulator on the computer.

I own one, I personally don't use it for pirated software though. I'm a CSE major and have used it to write basic games for it to garner experience. The software provided with mine allowed for emulation of nes, snes, gb/a roms aswell so I was able to work my way up.

Good for them.. I'm still appalled at the number of people that use the homebrew excuse for their pirated wares (if you're the type that truly does _only_ homebrew apps, take no offense -- if such people really exist), and do hope it's somewhat circumvented with the 3DS.

That's a shame. I like to use my LSDJ rom on any available gadget.

I can understand why Nintendo are doing his though, but surely putting effort into anti-piracy firmwares is a more sporting way to go about it? Hasn't Sony kinda come up trumps in the cfw war by doing that?

How do people not understand that if everyone gets every game for free, there wont be any more games made for that device. Is it that hard to understand?

@DarknessBear

Few would argue that piracy is a good thing. the problem is that people use this hardware for non-piracy related purposes, like homebrew, which expands the functionality of the devices significantly. Heck, look at the firmware war between Dark Alex and Sony over the PSP. Dark Alex created and implemented many features ages before Sony (PSx backward compatibility, web browser, etc).

Unfortunately, there's no way to enable homebrew without enabling piracy. And there are far more pirates than homebrew-enthusiasts . . . ; ;

@DarknessBear

It's not hard to understand, but it is wrong. There is a vibrant homebrew community for GBA, DS, and DSi games (although I don't know of any DSi-only content at the moment, which is okay, because I think there are only about five DSi-only games available at retail as I type this).

Additionally, just because someone can pirate a game doesn't mean everyone will pirate every game.

Is THAT so hard to understand?

What's that? It won't stop anything?

This law is rubbish. If we ban everything that could possibly be used for unauthorized content distribution, eventually, the human body will be shut down.

After all, we have eyes, ears, and other senses to take in information that we may not be legally entitled to, and brains to store it (possible exception on that last for some anti-piracy crusaders). Plus, we have legs to move that brain around, and arms and hands that can manipulate other devices that could possibly be used to break copyright.

I got an R4 (and later a DSTWO--far superior) so I wouldn't have to carry around the 40-some odd DS carts. The DSTWO also lets me play all the GBA games that I bought over the years, but which my DSi no longer supports out of the box. There are perfectly valid legal reasons to have these flash carts.