This review was written using TTMenu OS v1.07 unless otherwise stated.
Packaging and Contents
The DSTT comes packed in the standard cardboard box with plastic tray. The reflective silver lettering makes the box stand out and on the back it has a list of features. The presentation looks and feels very professional.
The DSTT card itself conveniently comes with a sturdy plastic case which is great for protecting the card when not in use.
Box Contents
This is one of the best flashcard packages as far as freebies are concerned. The package includes a USB MicroSD reader that is SDHC compliant, which is great for people who have just bought one of the new high capacity cards but don’t have a compatible reader. The reader is also backwards compatible with normal MicroSD cards. This is the first flashcard I’ve seen that includes a USB DS Lite charger; a very useful product many people would even consider buying separately. It has a DSTT brand mark displayed on it and works great. Also the inclusion of an installation CD is always helpful for first-timers, although you can still get all the latest files you need from the official website. The packaging and freebies are all very nice but they mean nothing if the card itself is not worthwhile.
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Cart & Linker Design
The DSTT card is white and is the same size as an original DS card; it is strong, study and is a flush fit. The review sample I received has a raised bump in the front of the card due to a chip underneath the shell; this makes the card stick when inserting it and taking it out. However it appears this problem is only with early builds of the card as the current build has no bump and is entirely flat. Overall I’m very impressed with the quality of the card and the reflective sticker doesn’t go amiss either.
The MicroSD slot is spring-loaded and accessible from the top of the card. From my experiences it works perfectly fine however with cards such as the R4 recently removing the spring-loaded mechanic it brings to question how the card may hold up in the long run. There have been reports of the spring breaking on a lot of R4’s, although this problem may be limited to the R4 as there isn’t any indication that the spring is of low quality on the DSTT. An added benefit of the card being spring-loaded is that you can safely remove the MicroSD card while the DSTT itself is still inserted in the DS. This makes it a breeze to manage the files on your MicroSD.
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Setting Up & Using
Initial Connection & Firmware
The DSTT (like most slot-1 flashcards) is extremely easy to use. All you need that is not included in the box is a MicroSD card. Since the DSTT is SDHC compatible you can use any of the high capacity cards (6GB, 8GB etc) if they strike your fancy, although normal MicroSD’s work perfectly fine as well.
Using the included MicroSD reader (or another reader) simply copy the latest TTMenu OS to the root of your MicroSD. The latest OS (or ‘loader’, ‘kernel’ etc) can be found on the official DSTT website. It’s recommended you download the latest version rather than use the potentially outdated version included on the CD. There is no firmware to flash to the card, the DSTT simply reads the menu files when booting up so as long you keep the files on your card it’ll boot up fine.
As far as .nds games and homebrew are concerned you can place them anywhere on your MicroSD and the DSTT will automatically detect them. There’s no rigid file structure you need to a heed to.
GUI (OS)
When booting up your DS the DSTT will override the menu screen and jump straight into the DSTT’s OS. It takes about 4 seconds to load the OS. When it’s started up you will immediately be presented with a list of games and homebrew on the card.
Each game has a number of different icons underneath their names, these are very handy as they represent what additional features are turned on, such as soft reset, download play fix, cheats present and cheats active. I particularly like the icon that shows up gray if cheats are present for a game and then illuminated yellow if the cheats are actually turned on. This automatically lets you know if your game has any codes available or not. It’s really nice to have these visual prompts present in the GUI.
The top screen is particularly useful as it displaying further information about your selected game including things like gamecode and savetime. The gamecode is a special four letter code assigned to a game and is particularly useful to know for PC side apps. Savetime is also a great feature because it tells you exactly when the last time you saved the game was right down to the second, effectively telling you when the last time you played the game was.
Under the system options button on the bottom screen you have a number of useful things to select. You can enable soft reset as ‘on’ for all games by default, enter passme mode (to boot a slot-2 flashcard), enter the DS’s GBA mode, power the system down and change the DS Lite’s brightness setting.
You can press the plus button next to any game (or press SELECT) to access further game options, like soft reset and cheats, which you can select on and off. Press right or hit the cheats tab to access the list of cheats.
There isn’t any file browser of any sort which is a bit of a disappointment. The only list you’ll be seeing is a list of all the games on the card, which I imagine would become quite unwieldy if you had a 6GB or 8GB memory card. A simple folder browsing function would at least let you segregate your backups from your homebrew games instead of throw them all in together in one big list.
The OS also doesn’t allow you to organise your games alphabetically for the most part. When you copy a big bunch of games over they will stay in the same order that you copy them over. But if you add a single game later on it will always be displayed at the bottom of the list. At the top of the game list are the words ‘icon’, ‘name’ and ‘size’ representing the columns. It would be great if you could actually click name or size to organise your list.
Another mild annoyance is that the slider on the right hand side of the game list is very laggy. If you slide it from the top to the bottom it will take about two seconds to load the list again. Also when just pressing up or down on the d-pad once it will still lag slightly. I hope this will get addressed in a future update.
It is also important to note that the Neoflash version of the Top Toy OS can be loaded on the DSTT and vice versa. The OS’s are practically identical.
Additional Features
Cheat Support
The DSTT uses Action Replay codes built into a usrcheat.dat file. A normal cheat.dat file (used with the R4 and M3) can easily be converted into a usrcheat.dat file using the R4 Cheat Code Editor and deselecting ‘encrypt as cheat.dat’. This makes the DSTT compatible with range of cheat databases. Using a cheat code editor it is also easy to add your own cheats.
To enable cheats select the game of your choice and press the plus button on the touchscreen or press SELECT to be taken to the game options menu. Select to turn cheats on and then select the cheats tab or press right to access the list of cheats, once finished save your selection. It works really well; the feature is simple and intuitive.
[update 07.01.08] Cheats can be enabled or disabled in-game using the following button combinations. There is however no in-game menu.
L+R+START+UP = Cheats on
L+R+START+DOWN = Cheats off
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Soft Reset
Soft reset can be performed by pressing A+B+X+Y+L+R in-game. This will boot you back to the DSTT OS menu. This feature worked perfectly for every game tested and is a must have feature. You can turn soft reset as ‘on’ by default in the options menu.
Multimedia Support
There is no native multimedia support on the DSTT. Moonshell will work fine though. Unfortunately there is no easy access menu like on the R4 or M3 Simply. Moonshell will be just another game in the game list rather than a prominent button on launch. Depending on whether you use your DS for a lot of multimedia or not this may or may not be an issue.
Micro SDHC Support
The DSTT has support for SDHC cards. I was however unable to test this feature as I don’t have a SDHC card. But it is nice to know that when SDHC becomes more of the norm the DSTT supports it. Most new DS flashcards have SDHC support.
DLDI Auto-Patching
DLDI auto-patching is a great idea and wonderful feature on any flashcard. Gone are the days of manually patching all your homebrew. This feature makes homebrew very newbie friendly. It worked great from my testing.
Languages
The DSTT officially supports English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. However language packs made by users are available on the official website. The only one available at the time of reviewing is a Dutch language pack. It is very easy to customise the language as all words are found in a separate language.ini file for you to edit. It really is simple to customise.
Skinning
The OS is easily skinnable by replacing a series of .bmp’s and editing an .ini file. Anyone with a bit of photoshop skill can create their own skins. I myself have made a GBAtemp themed skin which you can see below. The skinning is nice but it is not as customisable as some of the other flashcards.
Also the OS file structure seems to indicate that multiple skins are supported as the normal skin is located in a folder called ‘default’ underneath the ‘skin’ parent. There is no such support. You will have to replace the files in ‘default’ to get your skin to change. It is a pity that a skin selector isn’t part of the OS.
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Performance
Now down to the nitty-gritty of how the DSTT actually performs. All the features in the world are useless if none of them are implemented particularly well.
All tests were run by me using a 1GB Kingston (Japanese made) and using TTMenu OS v1.07 unless otherwise stated.
ROM Compatibility
I’ve tested many different games but I won’t bore you with a big long list.
Every game I’ve tried has worked perfectly except for Contra 4. A single game stops me from saying there is 100% compatibility, which is a shame. Contra 4 fails to boot due to an error in creating a save file. The OS will then freeze and tell you to restart the system. With any luck this can easily be fixed in an update however so far it hasn’t been addressed. Considering every other flashcard can run Contra 4 just fine it certainly is an oddity.
Aside from that issue all other games I tested worked fine. I did not experience any freezing or slowdowns in any games including the Castlevania titles. I did not have another MicroSD to test with but as a general rule I suggest always buying a high quality and high speed MicroSD such as the Japanese made Kingston. The back of the DSTT box does state that it supports any MicroSD card speed with no in-game lag. I have yet to disprove that.
Both FAT and FAT32 are supported as expected. I ran into no issues with either mode.
It is important to note that games boot incredibly fast. It takes only about 2-3 seconds to start a game, which makes the DSTT one of the fastest booting flashcards out there. The reason for this is talked about under ‘Save Game Support’.
(A look at the GUI + game loading and soft reset)
Download Play
Now for the moment of truth for a lot of people; how does Download Play stack up? There are many cards that don’t feature full download play support and only a handful that do. I was unable to test download play myself however fellow staff member Sinkhead was able to conduct the tests and the results are extremely positive.
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