G6 Flash with a Black Button: What It Was For and How GST ROM Images Were Actually Launched

Friends, help me buy (if you have) various old stuff: Help me buy.

I got a G6 Flash — an old flash cartridge with a black button.

I had never seen one for sale before. Thanks to Sergey, who ordered it straight from China the same day I noticed the cartridge, and then sent it to me.

And that black button just would not leave me alone.

Unfortunately, the developer could not make proper manuals. Forget manuals — they could not even make proper photos of the cartridge. I suspect this cartridge was released in two versions: with a button and without one.

My cartridge without a button is the next version of the cartridge, G6 Lite, but its design matches the third generation of G6.

In any case, every cartridge photo on the website showed the version without the button. At the same time, reviewers were complaining that the buttonless version was precisely the one that did not exist. Which is strange.

So what was that button even for? The explanations online sounded odd: supposedly, it was needed to launch GST ROM images of Nintendo DS games.

Needed in what sense was not clear. As if you just held the button down and GST images suddenly started launching.

Honestly, without an old instruction from the internet, I would never have guessed how this button was supposed to work at all.

First Problems

The oddities started right away.

I dodged the first problem only because I had a complete G6 Lite set. The G6 has no memory card, and rewriting is done with a G6 U-Disk Burner.

It is a very cool idea. You insert the cartridge into the Burner, plug the Burner into a computer, and it shows up as a regular memory card.

I was not completely sure that the old G6 would be compatible with the later Burner, because I had the latest version of the Burner. But they worked well together.

Then another problem appeared. The cartridge had the latest firmware installed, and it was Chinese as well.

And old firmware is damn hard to find. On top of that, I immediately acted in the most brilliant way possible: I formatted the cartridge without making a backup.

In the end, I somehow managed to find firmware 1.5. You can download the archive with the old files here: G6.rar.

On the GBA SP the cartridge booted, but on the Nintendo DS in regular GBA cartridge mode — it did not.

I tested it on two Nintendo DS Fat units. It did not work on either of them.

I searched for all kinds of instructions, tried different options, but found nothing useful. Then I tested the cartridge on a DS Lite — it booted. Then on an iQue DS — it booted there too.

I started having vague suspicions.

I pulled the cartridge out of the slot just a tiny bit — and it started booting normally on both Fat units.

I cannot say for sure who is to blame here. On the one hand, the DS Lite and iQue DS detected the cartridge without trouble. On the other hand, both regular DS Fat units saw it only after I slightly changed the cartridge's position in the slot.

I tend to think the flash cartridge itself is still the problem. Apparently, the shell or the PCB of the old G6 does not sit quite perfectly, and in some DS units the contacts do not land where they should.

GST ROM Images

And this is where the third problem appeared: GST ROM images.

Where do you even get them?

I am not sure they have simply survived online. At any rate, no matter how much I searched, I could not find them.

Strangely enough, ChatGPT saved me by reminding me that my own site has the program GST Universal Patcher 3.1. It can create a GST image from a regular ROM image.

Of course, that immediately raised a logical question: would such an image really be the same old GST release for which support was once made?

Most likely not.

But at some point it became clear that discussing this was pointless. I just had to try it.

Testing with Bomberman

For testing, I took Bomberman for Nintendo DS and patched it with GST Universal Patcher 3.1.

Then I wrote the resulting GST image to the G6 Flash.

I launch the game — and get a white screen.

At about this point I had absolutely no faith that it would work exactly the way some ancient little note from the internet claimed.

But there was nothing else to do. I tried that strange method.

I held the black button on the cartridge, quickly turned the Nintendo DS off and back on, waited for the Health Warning to disappear, and released the button.

And, miracle of miracles.

The game launched.

It felt like pure magic.

So the black button on the G6 Flash really is needed to launch some old GST images.

As I wrote above, without it Bomberman patched with GST Universal Patcher 3.1 hangs on a white screen.

I also tried launching it both with PassKey and with MagicKey from NeoFlash.

And in both cases the game launched, which is surprising, because NeoFlash were trying to create a kind of monopoly. So you could say that G6 hacked NeoFlash.

What It Looks Like in Practice

To describe it very briefly, the procedure is this:

1. Write the GST image to the G6 Flash.

2. Launch it through the Nintendo DS.

3. Get a white screen.

4. Hold the black button on the cartridge.

5. Quickly turn the Nintendo DS off and back on.

6. Wait for the Health Warning to disappear.

7. Release the button.

8. The game should launch.

It looks extremely strange.

At the same time, the developers wrote that this launch method would also work with the FlashMe firmware, but on my setup these games did not launch through it.

Conclusion

There is almost no practical use for this today.

But the fact itself is excellent.

The black button on the G6 Flash really works. It is not a myth.

What a wonderfully ridiculous level of hacks the early Nintendo DS scene had.