EZ-Flash 2 Review

By Zelda.Times 11th July 2003

The EZ-Flash 2 (shorte EZ2, EZII) is the latest of the next generation flash cartridges. Unlike the EZ-Flash 1 cartridge this one is not designed by Borden as he designed the new EZ Flash (EZF Advance EZ3) but you will notice a few similarities from his work.

The EZ2 is available in size; 256M but soon a 512M, 768M and a 1G will be available. The linker is similar to the EZ1 linker which is connected by a USB cable (USB v1.1 and v2.0 standards compatible EZ3). The main features of the EZ2 are  Hardware Saving,   Real Time Clock and  Hardware Cheat Support and  Software Rebooting, more on these features a little further on in the review.

EZ2 Box

The EZ-Flash 2 - EZ2

packaged in a nice gift box very similar to a box of chocolates ;) With this you get the EZ2 Cart which is the same physical size as a normal GBA cartridge, a EZ2 Linker which is about twice the height as the cartridge, a PC to EZ2 Linker USB cable and also a software CD which contains the flashing program and drivers.

Installation of the EZ-Flash 2 is a straightforward standard hardware install. Install the drivers and then connect the EZ2 Linker, Windows will then recognize the new hardware and install the drivers for the EZ2 Linker. A small point to note, if you have an XG2, EZ3 or Flash2Advance previously/currently installed you will get conflicting drivers and will not be able to use either the old hardware or the EZ2 at the same time.

As you can see from the above screenshot of the EZ II-Writer everything is well presented with buttons along the top for quick use of the main functions of the program. The software requires very little configuration so within starting the program for the first time you should be able to flash the cartridge within 30 seconds. At the moment there is no english manual for the EZ2 but the manufacturers have said that an English one will be made once the software has been finalized.

Out of the XG2/EZ2/EZF/EZ3 software I have to say that the EZ2 is my favourite, you can see everything that is going on. Simple things like what type of Save the rom uses, the size of the save (which you can edit if needed) and if it supports cheats and reset features. The XG2 software also features most of these but the EZF software looks very basic in comparison. Like I said above the the software is still being worked on and there are even more nice features planned in the future.

As I was writing this review a new version of the software was released adding new features. Main additions are a new boot menu which is similar to a Windows window if you get what I mean, another feature is the ability to set the RTC date and time from within the software and finally set set a password on the boot menu so only yourself can play the games, nice for little brothers who like to overwrite your saves when sneaking a few games on your GBA.

The first feature of the EZ2 is the addition of the Real Time Clock (aka RTC EZ3) chip. The RTC is currently only used in the Pokemon games, personally I hate Pokemon so I only quickly tried the RTC feature and left it switched off overnight, the next day the clock was spot on so the RTC seems to work just fine. Like I mentioned its only used in Pokemon at the moment but there will probably be other games in the future which use a RTC and it has some potential extra uses in the homegrown development scene like a GBA PDA application or something.

EZ2 Linker and Cartridge

The second EZ3 feature is the hardware saving. This allows EEPROM and Flash type saves to be used on the cartridge without having to first patch them with programs such as FAT. I have tried a few games using EEPROM saves and they work fine. This seems to work better than the XG2 hardware saving as I ran into a few problems when using the XG2 and hardware saving but didn't experience the same with the EZ2. For your information the EZ2 has space for a very respectable 2048Kb of saves which is very good news as now the carts are getting larger that means more games and more save space is needed.

The third main feature of the EZ2 is the cheat device. I didn't have alot of success with using this as the cheats are currently in Chinese. When the cheats are translated with the english version of the software it will be alot easier to use, especially as it comes with over 200 games cheats! Basically the cheat device allows you to add Action Replay/Gameshark style codes when flashing the ROM. These cheats are available in .CHT format and you can also use the codes from VisualBoyAdvance. The cheats can be enabled and disabled from within the game by pressing L+R+START and L+R+SELECT respectively.

The fourth and last main feature of the EZ2 is the Software Reboot function. While adding a ROM to be flashed to the cart you can choose to enable this feature which allows you to reboot the game in two ways. The first is to press A+B+SELECT+START during the game which will reboot to the games and the second way is to press R+A+B+SELECT+START which will reboot to the boot loader screen. Not all games are compatible with this feature it depends if the games company have allowed this in the first place, but quite a few games do and the flashing software will check for compatibility when you add the game to be flashed. Also you should be aware that a separate program which can patch your roms is now available and can be used on any cartridge so this feature is not exclusive with the EZ2 but its good to have the feature built into the software.. 68 2 ez flash 59 advance ez flash usb 44 asus ez flash 27 2 ez flash gba

EZ2 Boot Menu v1.4 Now replaced by a much nicer Windows style screen as I was writing this review

Now onto the Ice Age speed test. I use the Ice Age move trailer as its a near full 64M GBA ROM (63.25M) so it allows me to get a good idea of speed for all the different types of cartridges. EZ3 I have some very good news as the EZ2 flashed the ROM in 77 seconds on average. If you check the comparison table here you will see that its currently the second fastest with the EZ-F being on average 6 seconds faster. But please remember that this is an average time so it may be faster or slower depending on various factors. 3

I have no major complaints for the EZ2, everything worked well and as it should. Some might see the RTC feature as an overkill as only one series of games use it but its still a nice addition in the long term. Out of the EZ2, XG2 and EZ-F I have to say that this is my favorite simply for the number of features is has, great compatibility with games and the very good software, gets two thumbs up from me :)

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