MT Card review

The emergence of the Gateway flash cartridge spawned many clones. Some of them were terrible, like 3DS Link, while others became full-fledged competitors to this cartridge. MT Card is almost the only clone of that time that stood on par with Gateway, and sometimes even surpassed it.

Even before the appearance of this flash cartridge, heated debates began on the internet, mainly related to the question of who the manufacturer of this flash cartridge was. Was it just another clone from the developers of 3DS Link?

Even the Gateway developers wrote: «MT-Card is just a new clone from the clone makers (R4i etc.), same team. Just as they can't update their old card, they make a new one under a different name as they know old customers will be upset to know they have been scammed. With a new name, they hope to scam more users. Our firmware is just a few days away, so we won't release video, it is not needed, people can enjoy all the features before 2014 anyway».

Here, the Gateway team says that MT Card is a clone from the same developers who previously made R4i Gold 3DS Deluxe Edition, 3DS Link, and Orange 3DS.

It should be noted that this statement is most likely not true.

Many users on forums wrote that MT Card is a «luxury» version of those bad Gateway clones. And this could have been true if not for subsequent events.

It's no secret that the developers of 3DS Link shamelessly stole firmware from Gateway. On December 23, 2023, Gateway released firmware 2.0b2. It was in this firmware that the code appeared that bricked Nintendo 3DS consoles. On December 28, 2013, the creators of 3DS Link released their firmware 3.1, which was completely copied from Gateway. Even the code that bricked consoles was copied.

And this malicious code worked 100%. However, the Gateway developers wanted the best, but it turned out as always. That is, not only consoles with clones started bricking, but also those with original cartridges. One can speculate for a long time why this happened, but most likely the creators of 3DS Link simply did not have the necessary knowledge to edit the firmware code.

Meanwhile, this scandal completely bypassed MT Card. Using their cartridges did not affect Nintendo 3DS consoles in any way. And considering that they modified the cartridge and added a USB port and a physical button, it turns out that they also modified the firmware. That is, the developers of MT Card had some knowledge and skills that allowed them to create something of their own.

It turns out to be a strange situation where supposedly the same developers were able to fix the code for one cartridge but could not fix the code for another. And this despite the fact that later the creators of 3DS Link took the firmware from MT Card. That is, firmware 4.0b1 from 3DS Link is the firmware for the MT Card cartridge with the menu disabled. And why disable the menu? If you already redesigned it once, what prevented you from redesigning it again?

Based on the logic of the events that occurred, it turns out that the developers of MT Card had nothing to do with the creators of 3DS Link.

But let's get back to MT Card.

Kit

MT Card came in a very modest kit.

A nice blister and two cartridges.

As with Gateway, the white cartridge was only needed to check that it was inserted, and the gray cartridge was for the exploit.

Cartridge Differences

The most interesting thing is that this is the only cartridge of those years that was modified and not just a blatant copy of Gateway.

The developers of MT Card even advertised their cartridge in a special way. Like, our cartridge is cooler than all the others because it has the ability to reflash the chip. This means it can be supported for a very long time. And the chips of clones cannot be reflashed, so they are supposedly outdated.

Of course, this statement was not true. Because the Gateway core could be updated, which happened at certain points in time.

But the fact that the creators of MT Card brought something of their own is true.

Let's look at the top of the cartridge.

Here you can see that the cartridge has a button and a port.

The button was needed to switch games. Yes, the Gateway cartridge initially only worked with one game. And only in firmware 2.0 (released on March 29, 2014) did MultiRom support appear (switching games in the menu).

Therefore, MT Card was the first cartridge where you could change games by simply pressing a button, without rewriting the memory card.

The port was needed to reflash the cartridge core using a computer. Not to say that this is a useful feature, since with Gateway you could simply write a new firmware to the memory card and it would update the core itself.

Firmware

Please note! If you flash the cartridge to a later firmware, you will not be able to roll back.

Here are 4 archives:

MT_Card_Updater_v1.4 – contains the core firmware file up to version 1.4 (MT_Card_Updater_v1.4.exe program) and the Launcher.dat file version 1.2.

Please note! Later Launcher.dat files (2.0+) will not work with core version 1.4.

MT_Card_Updater_v2.0 – contains the core firmware file up to version 2.0 (MT_Card_Updater_v2.0.exe program) and the Launcher.dat file version 2.0.

MT_card_Ver2.1 – contains the Launcher.dat file version 2.1. Works only with core version 2.0.

MT_card_Ver2.3 – contains the Launcher.dat file version 2.3. Works only with core version 2.0.

The last working version of EmuNAND is 9.4!

New Design

On March 15, 2014, MT Card announced that from that day on, cartridges would be sold in a new design.

The old and new cartridges are completely identical except for the cover design.

The packaging design has also changed.

Epilogue

The last firmware for the cartridge was released on December 25, 2014. That is, the cartridge support lasted almost a year.

But in the end, the Gateway cartridge completely surpassed MT Card. Even its support lasted until September 22, 2016 (that's when the last firmware was released).

Unfortunately, the MT Card cartridge made a bright splash but died very quickly. It is only remembered for the fact that it could have become a full-fledged competitor to Gateway, but it didn't work out.