Full transcript of “Nintendo DS: Legend Of The R4 Cartridge”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 [Bobdunga Intro Playing] Last week was the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Nintendo DS. And fun fact: I wasn't even aware the anniversary was coming up when I wrote the script for this video, so the timing was pretty perfect because your boy was struggling to come up with a solid intro. I had so many memories on this handheld dual screened device. The release of the Nintendo DS was revolutionary and a huge leap from the handheld generations prior-- It came with a heap of upgrades and it allowed for games to really evolve into something more interactive and innovating, it just changed the gaming experience and expanded the possibilities of what developers could do with their games. This thing blew up to the point that it even went on to outselling the Wii.
0:47 And if you want, you can hear me gush more about that in my last video, Looking Back at Nintendo Handhelds, which you can find in the info card up top. And with the success of the Nintendo DS came a slough of licensed and unlicensed games, we saw a ton of great releases like Mario Kart DS, Nintendogs (which really utilized the features of the DS), Pictochat, Cooking Mama, and even Animal Crossing. There were so many cool games that dropped for the DS, and just not enough time and money to really play them all. On top of this, lumped in with all these cool games we had a pretty equal amount of shovel ware, a lot of games based on movies, and even some homebrew stuff, most notably, a little device known as the R4. I feel like everyone knew at least one kid who had one of these. Many Christmases ago, I was gifted three simple things that completely changed my life: A
1:36 Nintendo DS, Mario Kart, and the elusive R4 Cartridge. I didn't grow up rich, and games were expensive, so the R4 was such a godsend for people on a tight budget. The R4 Cartridge, also known as the Revolution for DS, was a flash memory device that allowed you store music, save game files, and run homebrew applications that could be booted onto the DS using a tiny little micro SD card. Most R4 set ups came with two micro sd adapters including one usb adapter and an SD card reader, along with a user setup CD. The main selling point of this device was that you could use the R4 as an emulator and store ROMS onto it. Anything from being able to run old NES and SNES titles, to even current Nintendo DS ROMS of the time. This was mind blowing, I was only 12 years old and I felt like I won the Golden Ticket
2:25 to Wonka's factory. I felt like a god. So you're telling me, I can put any Nintendo game I want onto this little device, and I don't have to beg my parents for games anymore?!?! To be fair, and contrary to what most companies would have you believe, A lot of kids used this but still bought Nintendo games, especially if it was something they absolutely wanted. The R4 was fun because you could switch up the games all the time. You could play Rayman one week, and then Taiko: Drum Master another week. Just switch out games if you ran out of space, it was just as simple as that. It was Fun being able to experience all these different roms, especially since DS games weren't region locked, so this tool allowed for you to play games that were exclusive to Japan. This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the R4 cartridge for enriching my childhood. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to play games like New Super Mario Bros, Cooking Mama,
3:12 Rayman: Raving Rabbids...Taiko: Drum Master... I even got to experience arguably my first survival horror game, Dementium: The Ward. And this game always stuck out me because I could never seem to equate Nintendo with scary, but somehow they did it, and it was a whole lot of fun. In fact, my fondest memories on the DS were probably playing Dementium: The Ward during lunchtime, in my high school cafeteria with my best friend Vanessa. This game legitimately gave us jumpscares! I even played Power Blade on this thing! Which just goes to show you, people weren't just using it to emulate new stuff. I fully had a physical copy of Power blade on my Nintendo, but being able to play it on the R4, a handheld device, that was a game changer! The portability function is what really set this apart from playing a traditional ROMS off of a PC emulator.
3:58 Now you could play a vast collection of games on the go, and if ever you ran out of space on your micro SD, you could just transfer both the game and savefile over to another folder on your pc, in order to make room for a new game! Like I said, I didn't have a huge collection of Nindendo DS games growing up, but I'm pretty sure before I got a 3DS, all I had was Mario Kart and like...Nintendogs....But with the help of this little device I was able to experience so many different Nintendo classics, I otherwise would have missed out on. And I know that with devices like this there's always that huge moral grey area of whether or not it was ethical to have homebrew devices like this that could boot up ROMS, and I feel like personally, my stance on the whole thing kind of teeters somewhere in the middle. In my personal experience, playing new games on the R4 was always fun, but in all honesty,
4:44 as someone who really loves video game box art and physical tangible copies of games, if I really enjoyed played something off the R4, odds are that the next time we hit up Gamestop I would actually try to purchase it, so it could be something I had for my own. Now, I know not everyone operates this way, but I've always been somewhat of a collector, and if I really wanted a game I'd pick a physical purchase over having to constantly swap out ROMS to make room for other games, so I wouldn't be in a constant worry of accidentally deleting all my saved data on a computer. That's why I purchased a physical copy of Animal Crossing and any Pokemon game for the DS I ever owned. They were just too important to me, and I know that must resonate with a number of people because in the long run, the sales of the R4 were never so overbearing that they were ever were ever a huge threat to the sales of physical cartridge games, in the same way emulators
5:32 on the PC aren't that much of a detriment to the gaming industry. But you know, it is still kind of not so cool to game developers I guess...? We probably shouldn't be playing games for free that people worked very hard on... So Nintendo DID something about it! Because they LOVE to do something about it. Similar to the attempted take downs of online Rom and emulator sites, like EmuParadise and even RomUniverse, a site recently hit with a multimillion dollar lawsuit from Nintendo for copyright and trademark infringement, the R4 experienced multiple shut downs and bans worldwide....Nintendo was doing all they could to try and shut down the service and by late 2007, began legal crackdowns and raids against R4 merchants and distributors. They got em, they really got em. R4 flashcards recieved outlaws and bans in places like China, Germany, France and Italy,
6:20 and even the UK, where Nintendo seized over 100,000 R4 devices leading up to 2009. Nintendo claimed that these cards were not only banned for the benefit of their company, but for the numerous game companies who depend on the sales of their games. And with Nintendo bumping up their security, adjusting their firmware, and releasing new handheld devices better suited to counteracting any mods, the R4 slowly became a thing of the past. Nintendo has definitely upped their security since the release of the Switch, and a lot of people advise against running any homebrew launchers or loading custom ROMS into Switch Online, because of the increased risk of facing a ban on your account should those custom ROMs be detected. The world of homebrews , fan translations, and romhacks have only increased as the years have gone by.
7:06 Roms aren't just a way of playing games freely, but they're also a form of game preservation, so as much as publishers try to find ways of removing them completely, they'll still find a way to exist in some way shape or form, whether it be on the internet, or on a little Micro SD cartridge. I don't know all too much about that world but I do know that if not for devices like the R4, kids like myself, who didn't grow up with the luxury of getting games frequently, would have missed out on a lot of exciting gaming opportunities. This tiny little cartridge allowed me to remain in the know, and allowed me to still be apart of the fun with my friends, without having to break the bank, and for that, I'm truly thankful. Do you think Nintendo will see this video and sponsor me?? Or do...Do you think...You know... I'll get a copystrike because of the whole 'R4' thing?...
7:51 So this holiday season, what things in gaming are you guys thankful for? Let me know in the comments below, and if you guys have fond memories with the R4, lemme know what kind of games you guys use to play on it! Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Holidays! I hope you guys stuff yourselves silly with food That's not a vore joke... And I'll see you guys next week! Bye bye!! [Funky Rayman: Raving Rabbids music playing]
