How to make GBA Super Card SD work!

Introduction

This article will contain the information I could gather about this flash cart. It is sold on aliexpress under the label “New Version Support TF Card For GameBoy Advance Game Cartridge FOR GBA/GBM/IDS/NDS/NDSL”.

 

Basic information of the cart

  • The flash cart cand take a micro SD card of maximum 2GB in size and be FAT formatted microSD.  Be sure not to take a SDHC card.
  • With simple manipulation, this card can play GB, GBC and NES games.  And of course GBA games.
  • It can have a maximum of 64 FILES per folder.  A game count as 3 files with the save and cheat subfiles created by the Super Card software. 

EDIT 2022-09-08 : As mentioned in the comments, this flashcart work with every GBA, even GBA Sp.  Thanks to everyone who shared this information with me!

More information about the OS

To save ingame, you must use the save function of the game, and then you need to enter the ‘Normal Save’ menu, and select save.  After you can close the name or go to the main menu with a ‘Soft Reset’. 

In-game shortcut :

  • Cheat menu : L+R+A+Start
  • Real Time Save : L+R+B+Select
  • Soft Reset : L+R+Start+Select
  • Normal save : L+R+A+Select

Emulation

This Supercard SD have the possibility to play GB, GBC and NES roms.  It does so by emulation.  For Gameboy it uses Goomba Color alpha 6 emulator.  When inside this emulator, you can bring up the menu by pressing L+R simultaneously. 

 

Game Conversion

To add games on your Supercard SD, you need to install Super Card V2.71 software.  Once installed, you need to run it in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode and as an Administrator.  After opening the software, you need to click on the Add button and choose your roms.  When it is done go to the Options tab and choose the output directory as your SD card.  You can manage your games in folders.

 

Add GB, GBC and NES games

To do so you need to make the software think he is converting GBA games.  rename the roms as .gba and process them in the software.  After the creation of the SCI and the SAV files, copy those files into your sd card and copy the original roms to the same folder, do not take the patched roms.  

Update Super Card SD firmware

The lastest version of firmware of this card is 1.85.  To know the version of your card, press L+R while booting the Flash Cart it will go in test mode and after pressing a few time the A key, you will see the version of your firmware.

If you are below 1.85, you need to upgrade the card.  To do so download it there and put it at the root of your sd card.  After doing so, just boot the card and select the firmware file like if it was a game.  You will be offered to update it.

 

Example of Aliexpress announce

 

Sources

Original Aliexpress page TF Card

Youtube Video Super Card SD – Review

 

Useful Youtube Video

 

16 thoughts on “How to make GBA Super Card SD work!”

  1. Good info. So far I’ve had no luck with Tony Hawk 2, F-Zero Climax. I’d imagine many other 3d games do not run well on the cart. 2D games run pretty well though for the price. Like Zeldas which is mostly what I bought it for and Super Mario Advance. I haven’t had any lucky even booting Super Mario Advance 3 though. I am kind of curious if making a 2gb FAT 64kb cluster partition on the fastest SDHC card I could find would make a difference at all on the games, I read a youtube comment that says that making a 2gb FAT partition on the card with the rest of the card blank makes it readable.

      1. For the price, I think it is a great card. It does the job! I just got one and I haven’t had any big probem so far, just follow the guide.

  2. I am going to go ahead and save this content for my sister for a coming up study project for school. This is a appealing blog by the way. Where did you get the template for this website?

  3. Thanks for the great work! Cool blog. There are several opinions on this topic and this blog states the problem extremely great.

  4. Another tip I’ve noticed and this might be specific to my batteries or something. If you have 1.2 volt batteries like Eneloop rechargables to get the game to load when it loads extra data like 128kb or 64kb more than the actual game and sticks on a white screen, swap in a fully freshly charged set of batteries. This will fix real time saves and normal saves for awhile as well. When the battery light flickers any sort of red at all this is when saves start failing often. Sometimes though the slightest drain on a 1.2v rechargeable can really screw up the launching of games. I have no access to 1.5v batteries to test if they do better than 1.2v rechargeable, my hunch is that they will for longer than the 1.2s. I also have a IPS v3 unbranded installed on mine, with the sensor touch color palletes and brightness.

  5. I can confirm it works fine on my GBA SP AND DSi with a 2GB SD card – when they say FAT, they mean FAT16 not FAT32.
    The saves work fine on the games that support it on both GBA and DSi.

  6. How to add manual cheat on the GBA Super Card SD since the Gameshark code will not work on here I think?

  7. I am soooooo grateful that this exists. I have been scratching my head for like 2 hours, and now i found this! HUGE thank you! πŸ˜€

  8. I follow all the steps but always is the same when the GBA entry to the main screen doesn’t show me any game, just the four options. I got a 2GB micro sd.

  9. I cannot save the game progress with buttons’ combination, neither play NES games (only gba games). Anyone can help me ? ;(

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