Stargate 3DS

Despite the fact that the first portable console with interchangeable cartridges appeared back in 1979, it did not become an innovative device that conquered the world. However, this cannot be said about the Game Boy DMG-001, released in 1989, which won millions of fans worldwide.

When something becomes popular, people immediately appear who want to make money on the product's popularity.

The development of consoles led to a huge boom in the production of flash cartridges. Moreover, the first flash cartridges were released by Nintendo itself, and only over time did third-party manufacturers join in. Game developers were catastrophically short of flash cartridges for creating and testing games, and Nintendo, for some not very clear reason, did not want to saturate the market. For understanding: a flash cartridge from Nintendo cost about $5000, while from other companies - $150-200. That is, for the price of one flash cartridge from Nintendo, you could buy approximately 25 cartridges from other companies.

Flash cartridges have come a long way from a board with a couple of chips to a device in which a processor was installed, often more powerful than even in the console itself.

In this article, I want to tell you about the Stargate flash cartridge. It allows you to run games on all consoles of the Nintendo 3DS family.

Package

The cartridge came in a nice box.

The package included:

1. The cartridge itself;

2. A card reader;

3. Micro USB to USB A cable.

Where to Buy?

~~Unfortunately, the sale of Stargate 3DS has been discontinued. This means it can only be purchased on platforms like Avito. The approximate cost of the cartridge is 4 - 5 thousand rubles.~~

Please note!

This cartridge is most likely a counterfeit. As with the Supercard, someone started selling clones of this cartridge.

On the left is a counterfeit, on the right is the original.

If you look closely, you can see that the cover is of very poor quality. On the other hand, apart from the cover, they are no different.

What else do you need to buy?

A Micro SD memory card. Considering that the size of Nintendo 3DS games reaches 3-5 gigabytes, it is advisable to buy a memory card with a capacity of at least 32GB.

In what format should the memory card be formatted?

Strictly exFat!

Apart from the memory card, you don't need to buy anything else. Everything else is included.

How to Use the Stargate 3DS Cartridge?

On one hand, the simplicity of this cartridge is astonishing. You just need to write a ROM image of the game in .3ds format and you can start playing. On the other hand, everything turned out to be a bit more complicated.

If you look at the collections of games and homebrew programs, you can see that they are distributed in three formats:

1. .3ds (encrypted)

2. .3ds (decrypted)

3. .cia

The .3ds (encrypted) format is an encrypted ROM image of the original 3DS console cartridge. Such files cannot be used for piracy on hacked 3DS consoles.

The .3ds (decrypted) format is a ROM image of the original cartridge, but already decrypted. Usually, such files are used on a 3DS console emulator (for example, Citra).

The .cia format is also an image of a homebrew program or an original 3DS game, but it is compiled in a different way.

For many years, there have been a variety of ways to hack Nintendo 3DS family consoles. Recently, it all came down to a common result: installing CFW followed by installing FBI. The FBI program, in turn, can install homebrew programs and pirated ROM images of games on the console itself. These homebrew programs and pirated ROM images must be in .cia format. Even if you have a .3ds image of the game, you first need to convert it to .cia and only then can you install it on the console.

It so happened that initially all ROM images of games appeared in .3ds (encrypted) format. And that was logical. You took your cartridge and simply dumped the ROM image of the game, which was encrypted. Over time, decrypted .3ds ROM images of games began to appear. And when hacking 3DS consoles became a mass phenomenon, collections of games directly in .cia format began to appear. As of 2023, the use of files with the .cia extension has become widespread. Applications and games in this format can be found literally everywhere.

But let's get back to our Stargate flash cartridge. It is designed in such a way that it can only run games in .3ds (encrypted) format. That is, it cannot run .3ds (decrypted) or .cia games. Moreover, if it does not see .cia images, then when trying to read .3ds (decrypted) images, Stargate simply freezes and stops working.

It turns out that the main problem with this cartridge is finding a collection of .3ds (encrypted) games, and this is not so easy. After all, initially, only the guys from No-intro were engaged in preserving such images. This is a community that tries to preserve gaming history for future generations and maintains a database of such game images.

It is also worth noting another drawback of this cartridge. Nintendo is constantly improving its anti-piracy protection, and since support for Stargate has been discontinued, the latest games, for example, Pokemon Ultra Moon and Pokemon Ultra Sun, will not run on this flash cartridge.

Now that you understand what images this cartridge can run, let's go back to the beginning. Suppose you bought Stargate 3DS, bought a memory card for it, and found a collection of homebrew applications and games you want to play. Next, you simply copy such applications and games to the memory card and you can start.

Please note, ROM images of applications and games must be in the root of the memory card! They cannot be placed in any folders.

If you look at the cartridge itself, you can see that there are two buttons on its side.

These buttons are used to switch between the recorded games. Accordingly, when you insert the cartridge into the console, Stargate is recognized as an original cartridge with one game. Press the button to the right (or left) and another game appears. This is a bit inconvenient if there are more than 20 games, but that's how it is. There is no other way to navigate through the games.

There are no additional menus, RTS (real-time saves), or fine cartridge settings.

To exit the game, you need to press the Home button on the console and close the cartridge.

Please note, you cannot press the buttons when any game is running!

Stargate and Nintendo DS Games

If you have ever encountered Sky3DS+, you might think that Stargate is its clone. And from a certain point of view, this is true. After all, in essence, Sky3DS+ and Stargate, in terms of running 3DS applications and games, are no different: the same buttons, the same way of launching applications and games. But there was one interesting difference in the Stargate cartridge. It can work in Nintendo DS mode.

If you press two buttons simultaneously, it will switch to Nintendo DS flash cartridge mode. The icon for the game Alex Rider Stormbreaker THQ will appear.

Just don't press too hard, or the cartridge itself will pop out of the slot.

If you load the game, you will see that this is not some new type of flash cartridge, but the usual Wood R4 firmware with all its pros and cons.

But out of the box, this feature will not work. First, you need to download the sd_files archive. It contains a file and a folder:

1. _ds_menu.dat

2. sg_system

These are the firmware files that need to be placed in the root of the memory card. You also need to create an NDS folder in the root of the memory card. It is in the NDS folder that you will need to write ROM images of Nintendo DS applications and games. You don't have to create such a folder, but then you will have a mess of 3DS and DS games.

As I wrote above, when you press two buttons simultaneously, the image of a DS game appears. If you don't launch it, then to return Stargate to 3DS mode, you need to press two buttons again. But if you launched the game and are already in the R4 Wood menu, then you first need to exit to the 3DS menu using the Home button (located on the console itself, a house is drawn) and only then press two buttons.

Regional Restrictions

In fact, this cartridge has another problem - regional restrictions.

Since it emulates original cartridges, all regional restrictions of such cartridges are preserved. Therefore, for example, you cannot run a Japanese ROM image of a game on a console with a European region. It simply will not appear in the 3DS console menu.

Because of this, some oddities occur. Different retro enthusiasts make translations of games. They use some specific ROM images, for example, Japanese ones. And inside, they change the language to Russian. As a result, the game is in Russian, but the initial ROM image is in Japanese, and it can only run on consoles with a Japanese region.

However, this is also a plus, because such a ROM image can still be run on this cartridge.

On the other hand, there are still no regional restrictions for DS games.

Stargate simply cannot run DSi games.

There is another interesting point. On a hacked console, the ability to run games from any region appears. Although, it's not very clear why this is needed, since the console is already hacked. However, the ability to run DS games is lost. On all my hacked consoles, something strange happens when launching the DS firmware (in the photo below).

Custom Firmware

Also, Stargate, due to the fact that it can run with R4 Wood firmware, can help you with hacking a 3DS console. However, this feature has long been morally outdated. Now you don't need to buy such an expensive flash cartridge to hack a console.

Firmware

All Stargate flash cartridges come with firmware 1.0 installed. Therefore, they do not require any firmware installation or modification. However, the firmware itself is not on the memory card (as is usually the case with any other flash cartridges), but is embedded directly into the chip. That is why the Stargate flash cartridge has a Micro USB connector, and the corresponding cable was included in the package.

However, the main problem here is that support for the cartridge ended almost immediately. And no other firmware was released. Therefore, there is simply nothing to reflash.

Epilogue

Unfortunately, like many other cartridges, the main problem with Stargate is that its support ended almost immediately. And despite the huge potential of this flash cartridge, it does not come close to a hacked console. I would rate it a solid four.

On the other hand, if you don't want to hack your console, then this is the only way to try the games you want, and not the ones you managed to get on platforms like Avito.

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