SuperChis Prime for Game Boy Advance

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

Upd. Please note that some sellers try to sell SuperCard disguised as SuperChis. To avoid mistakes, read this guide first: How to Tell SuperCard and SuperChis Apart?

In 2026, something happened that many people had been waiting for for a long time. A full-fledged “SuperCard killer” finally appeared on the market — the SuperChis Prime flash cartridge.

In retro gaming, it’s genuinely hard to get by without a flash cartridge. And the better the cartridge, the higher the price. That’s where the unpleasant part starts: buying a device that costs several times more than the console itself is a waste not everyone is willing to accept — especially when the goal is simple: to play just one game you remember from childhood.

Add to that the fact that the consoles themselves aren’t exactly cheap anymore, and you get a funny but very real situation. Sometimes it’s easier and cheaper to buy a modern “retro all-in-one” with a proper backlit screen, a battery, and other comforts than to rebuild everything “like back then”.

That’s exactly why SuperCard stayed afloat for so many years. It had one very strong side — an extremely low price that forgave almost everything. And that “almost everything” is a whole pile of problems that become harder and harder to ignore:

1. Slow memory (so games noticeably lag);

2. It required a very old memory card — strictly microSD up to 2 GB;

3. Before launching each game, you had to patch it on a computer;

4. Some games didn’t run at all (Pokémon, Doom);

5. Even the games that did run took forever to load.

All these limitations basically killed the fun. Yes, SuperCard remained the cheapest way to run GBA games for a long time, but calling it comfortable was difficult.

At the same time, the cartridge could theoretically be brought up to modern expectations. The architecture allowed a lot — but at some point the SuperCard developers simply stopped developing the project. And the many clone manufacturers that kept stamping boards for years had, in practice, neither access to the sources nor any real ability to change things seriously.

And then in 2025 something happened that, a couple of years earlier, sounded unlikely. DavidGF — the author of custom firmware for SuperCard — and ChisBread — the creator of the Chis line of flash cartridges — joined forces and basically rebuilt the SuperCard concept from scratch.

And they didn’t just “tweak” the old cartridge. They fixed its key shortcomings while keeping the main advantage — the low price. And price was the only truly strong argument in SuperCard’s favor for years. When a device appears without those technical compromises and with a similar price tag, the idea of buying an old SuperCard stops making sense.

Where to buy?

You can buy SuperChis on AliExpress.

Demand for this cartridge is very high right now, so it regularly disappears from listings — and then shows up again later.

What else to buy?

Please note: depending on the “bundle” you choose, you will most likely need to buy a memory card and a card reader separately.

According to the official information, SuperFW supports memory cards from 4 GB to 128 GB, as well as FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT file systems.

Still, in practice I recommend using a 32 GB card formatted as FAT32. It’s the most stable and predictable option, and it saves you from extra compatibility experiments.

Package contents

SuperChis Prime is an open-source product (at least, ChisBread says the project will become fully open in the future). Right now it’s a bit different: because only a limited number of chips are available, production can be easily monopolized, so the sources haven’t been published yet.

Because of that, the package contents depend directly on the seller.

For example, one seller offered only a “bare” cartridge — without a box or any extras.

Another one, on the contrary, made a full set with very nice packaging:

As you can see, this one already includes a box, stickers, and even a card reader.

So before buying, it’s worth carefully checking the listing description — the final set can differ noticeably.

Versions

At the moment there are two versions of this flash cartridge: one with an SRAM chip and one with an FRAM chip. You can tell them apart by the presence (or absence) of a battery.

In terms of actual gameplay, the difference is minimal. The key difference is how save memory works: SRAM needs constant power from a battery, while FRAM doesn’t.

SuperChis supports several save modes. The simplest is direct writing to the memory card (DirectSave mode). In this case, the save is written straight to microSD, bypassing any intermediate memory.

However, the cartridge also has other modes. For example, a save can be written to the built-in SRAM chip first, and only then copied to the memory card.

The developer recommends using SRAM mode for games that originally used SRAM. At the same time, for games designed for Flash or EEPROM saves, it’s better to run them with DirectSave enabled — i.e., with saves written directly to the memory card.

In theory, you can use SuperChis even with a dead battery. But then after each play session you’ll have to manually copy the save to the memory card, or it may be lost. In practice, that’s pretty inconvenient.

Compatibility

Probably one of the most interesting questions with SuperChis is how it behaves on clone consoles. This is especially relevant for GameBox — that clone has been missing a “proper” flash cartridge for a long time.

Based on my tests, here’s what I got:

1. GameBox — works;

2. !QU (basically a K1SP with a different logo) — works;

3. Revo K101+ — works;

4. Pocket XP — doesn’t work;

5. Pocket Analogue — works.

Overall, that’s pretty solid compatibility for this kind of cartridge. It runs on most popular GBA clones, although there are still a few exceptions.

However, there’s one important note. According to the developer, there is a classic Game Boy Advance motherboard revision “02” where this flash cartridge may not work.

Unfortunately, I don’t have that console revision, so I couldn’t check it personally. But if your battery compartment says “02” (and not “03” like on my console), it’s better to be cautious with this purchase.

Of course, “works” doesn’t mean 100% compatibility. It means the cartridge boots and is generally playable, but you can still run into issues. For example, sound may glitch, or some game may refuse to start.

Cartridge comparison

Since SuperChis is the ideological successor to SuperCard, the most logical comparison is with SuperCard itself. After all, SuperChis was created with a simple goal: an ultra-budget solution, but without the problems that followed SuperCard for years.

To make the test as clear as possible, the easiest approach is to use SuperCard’s well-known drawbacks as a checklist. Basically, it’s a set of issues almost every SuperCard owner has faced:

Lag in games. We’ll test Super Mario Advance 2 – Super Mario World. Right at the start there’s a level with lots of Koopas, and the game lags heavily there;
Memory card support. SuperCard only worked with microSD cards of 2 GB or less;
Some games didn’t run at all. We’ll test Doom and Pokémon. Besides launching, we’ll also check whether saves work;
Games had to be patched on a computer before launching. We don’t even need a separate test here — it’ll become obvious from the previous tests when we simply try to run the games;
Game loading speed. For this test we’ll take one of the largest GBA games — Mother 3 (about 32 MB) — and try to launch it from three cartridges. Why three? Because we’ll also include a SuperCard with SuperFW installed for comparison.

1. Game lag

For me, this is the saddest downside of SuperCard. A small memory card limit, weak compatibility, or even having to patch games on a PC can be understood and forgiven. But when the games themselves start lagging, it becomes really depressing.

It turned out SuperChis has this issue too. In that exact spot with lots of Koopas, the game stutters in the same way.

At that point I was already thinking it was a complete failure — but then I tried writing the game into NOR memory. And a small miracle happened: the stutter disappeared and the game ran the way it was meant to.

According to ChisBread, that’s exactly why SuperChis includes NOR memory — to work around the limitations of the weak SDRAM controller.

So this round goes to SuperChis. Not a perfectly “clean” win, but the result is there.

So the first point goes to SuperChis.

SuperChis – SuperCard: 1:0

2. Memory card support

The next SuperCard problem is its memory card limit. It only worked with microSD cards up to 2 GB.

I decided to test SuperChis with a few modern cards.

microSD 512 GB (exFAT) — doesn’t work

microSD 128 GB (exFAT) — works

microSD 32 GB (FAT32) — works

So it’s safe to say that SuperChis works fine with modern memory cards up to 128 GB.

And again, the point goes to SuperChis.

SuperChis – SuperCard: 2:0

3. Game compatibility

Another extremely annoying SuperCard issue is poor compatibility.

It would be one thing if we were talking about rare edge cases like Road Rush, which used undocumented CPU behavior and therefore only worked on classic Game Boy. But on SuperCard, even such basic titles as Pokémon didn’t run. For a flash cartridge, that looks pretty strange.

With SuperChis, the situation is completely different. Both Pokémon and Doom launch without any patches, and saves work correctly.

Honestly, SuperChis deserves two points here. But rules are rules — so we count one.

SuperChis – SuperCard: 3:0

4. Game patching

Because SuperCard used slow memory, many games simply wouldn’t launch without patching first. At best, you’d get a “white screen”.

SuperChis basically fixed this problem. You no longer need to “prepare” games on a computer — just copy the ROM to the memory card.

At most, in some cases you may need to move the game from the memory card into the cartridge’s NOR memory to improve compatibility.

And again, the point goes to SuperChis.

SuperChis – SuperCard: 4:0

5. Game loading speed

Loading speed doesn’t directly affect gameplay. But let’s be honest: when a game takes two minutes to load, it really gets on your nerves.

And that’s not an exaggeration. For example, Mother 3 on a SuperCard with SCFW firmware (by Metroid Maniac) can indeed take around two minutes to load.

So how did my tests end?

Stock SuperCard firmware — Mother 3 launches in 31 seconds.

SuperFW firmware on SuperCard — Mother 3 launches in 20 seconds.

SuperChis — Mother 3 launches in 19 seconds.

It’s basically a draw, but only if you compare SuperChis with a SuperCard running SuperFW. So we’ll give one point to each cartridge.

SuperChis – SuperCard: 5:1

Epilogue

The flash cartridge market has seen a real shake-up. Before SuperChis, SuperCard’s price kept climbing and got close to 2,000 rubles.

But after SuperChis launched — and it currently costs around 1,700 rubles — the situation changed sharply. SuperCard’s price basically collapsed: now you can find it for 1,200–1,300 rubles.

Still, if you look at the comparison results, it becomes obvious: SuperCard has only one realistic way to compete with SuperChis — drop the price hard. To the point where literally any school kid can afford it. That is, down to something like 500 rubles.

And honestly, I’d welcome such a dramatic price drop. Because if the market gets a 500-ruble flash cartridge — even one as imperfect as SuperCard — that’s still good for the whole retro-gaming community.

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