Which Flashcart Should You Choose for Nintendo DS?

Nintendo DS Family

The Nintendo DS family includes four systems:

1. Nintendo DS;

2. Nintendo DS Lite;

3. Nintendo DSi;

4. Nintendo DSi XL.

At first glance, it may look like these are just different versions of the same console. But with Nintendo DS, things are a bit more complicated. Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite were built around the standard Nintendo DS library, while Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL are tied not only to that library, but also to a separate set of games and apps made for DSi.

So from a game support point of view, flashcarts can logically be divided into two categories:

1. Flashcarts for Nintendo DS games only;

2. Flashcarts for both Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi games.

Usually, when people talk about flashcarts for Nintendo DS, they mean classic DS games, even if the cartridge itself will later be used on a Nintendo DSi XL. The Nintendo DSi library is almost always ignored. And that is a mistake: it may not have many world-famous hits, but it still includes more than a thousand games, so it should not be dismissed completely.

And that is not the whole story. Flashcarts differ not only in the games they support, but also in which systems they work with. Some only run on Nintendo DS and DS Lite, while others work across the whole DS family, including DSi, DSi XL, and even 3DS.

Because of that, the market has some fairly odd combinations. For example, a flashcart may run DS games, but only on Nintendo DS and DS Lite. Or it may run those same DS games on both DS and DSi, but stop working on 3DS.

What Should You Choose?

During the Nintendo DS era, there was a second boom in flashcart production. Although, if we take one step back, it would be more accurate to say there were actually three booms. First came PassMe and NoPass devices, then all the major players released their own flashcarts, and after that the cheap R4 hit the market. It was so simple to manufacture that clones flooded the market almost immediately.

As a result, the number of Nintendo DS flashcarts became absurdly high, and by now it is almost impossible to understand who borrowed what from whom.

So let us immediately set aside all the outdated, unsuccessful, and simply strange options.

For example, all the devices that launch Nintendo DS games through the Game Boy Advance slot — things like PassMe, NoPass, and slot-2 flashcarts — were already outdated by 2006.

There is not much point in buying old flashcarts either. They come with plenty of problems of their own: writing games may require a weird reader, they may only work with old memory cards up to two gigabytes, or they may simply fail to support part of the library.

On top of that, older flashcarts often work only on Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite.

For example, if a Nintendo DS flashcart is detected at startup not as a normal game, but specifically as a flashcart, then you can be almost sure it will not run on Nintendo DSi or Nintendo 3DS.

So today, these cartridges only really make sense as collector's items.

What current options are left, then? In practice, the choice comes down to the following:

1. Ace3DS X;

2. EZ-Flash Parallel;

3. DSPico;

4. Clones disguised as R4 cards (with TTDS and AceKard firmware);

5. Clones disguised as other cartridges (DSTWO, Wos Mini, CycloDS).

Clones

For a while, clones were basically your only option. And it would be unfair to say they were all terrible.

For example, this AceKard clone in a multi-game format was my main Nintendo DS flashcart for years.

And I cannot say that it was fundamentally worse than other options.

In general, these flashcarts can have three main drawbacks:

• a poor-quality shell that differs from the original;
• unknown firmware that can be a pain to track down later;
• a time bomb that eventually makes the cart tell you it is outdated and that you should buy a new one.

My multi-game cart had none of those problems. But overall, buying this kind of thing is still a lottery. For example, my R4 clones did have a time bomb in the firmware.

And that is the main issue with these cartridges: you never know in advance what exactly you are going to get.

As for clones disguised as DSTWO or CycloDS, there is not much reason to buy them either, because the market now has far better options.

EZ-Flash Parallel

Now let us talk about EZ-Flash Parallel.

When EZ-Flash Parallel first appeared, I was genuinely happy about it. It seemed like a cartridge had finally come out that I could recommend without reservations.

But it turned out to be the exact opposite.

First, a lot of people complain about poor shell quality. I noticed that too: my cartridge fits very tightly into the console, especially compared with other DS cartridges.

Second, sleep mode does not work on this cart. Most likely, that is an engineering mistake: they simply did not connect the two contacts responsible for sleep.

Third, EZ-Flash Parallel ships with an old version of Wood firmware — 1.25. Meanwhile, the last version was Wood 1.62. Just imagine how many fixes never made it into EZ-Flash Parallel.

And all of that came with a price roughly three times higher than a cheap clone using that same Wood 1.62 firmware.

The truth is, players had long been waiting for a simple, solid Nintendo DS flashcart, even if it cost twice as much. But EZ-Flash Parallel failed to fill that role.

Ace3DS X

Now let us move on to the cartridge that I completely overlooked for quite a while.

Back in 2017, the Ace3DS X flashcart appeared on the market. Some people even believe it was made by the same team behind AceTeam.

It is hard to say whether that is true, but the cartridge itself turned out well.

It also uses Wood firmware, but it avoids many of the problems that often show up in clones running that same firmware.

On top of that, this flashcart has a mode switch. On one hand, it can work as a normal flashcart, and on the other, it can boot in NTRBoot mode.

In the end, it feels like a kind of improved EZ-Flash Parallel. I would even call Ace3DS X the king of clones. Put simply: if you want the best option based on Wood firmware, this is the first cartridge you should look at.

DSPico

And finally, the last flashcart is DSPico.

In 2025, the LNH-Team released its own DSPico flashcart. To be more precise, they created an open-source project, but Chinese sellers picked up the idea almost immediately and started offering ready-made DSPico carts.

At last, after a full 19 years, we got a genuinely new flashcart instead of yet another Wood-based clone.

And the cartridge itself turned out well. Remember how I said at the beginning of the article that everyone forgets about the DSi library? DSPico can run not only DS games, but also DSi games from the DSiWare shop. That is genuinely impressive.

Yes, at the moment this cartridge only runs games. It does not have cheats, and it does not have an in-game reset back to the menu. But in my view, a cartridge that opens access to the separate DSi game library deserves attention either way.

Especially since it also supports NTRBoot, and it works across the whole family: DS, DSi, and 3DS.

Final Thoughts

So what conclusion can we draw? Broadly speaking, if you throw out all the outdated, odd, and compromise-heavy solutions, there are really only two current options left for Nintendo DS today: Ace3DS X and DSPico.

If you want a flashcart mainly for standard Nintendo DS games, then Ace3DS X is the more logical choice. It is probably the clearest and most successful option for anyone who simply wants to run DS games without diving into the endless world of clones, time bombs, and questionable firmware.

If you care not only about the classic Nintendo DS library, but also about DSiWare, then DSPico becomes the more interesting option. Its value is not that it is yet another clone, but that it truly opens access to a separate DSi game library. Yes, it still has limitations, but that capability alone makes it a very important and unusual cartridge.