Verdict

What I Liked . . . Drag-and-drop games Very fast game loads 32MB PSRAM Cheat support ExFat support NES/Gameboy Emulation built-in What I Didn't Like . . . Direct Saves can cause filesystem corruption Real Time Saves are hit-or-miss Gameboy Color Emulation is hit-or-miss Patching mostly works but could be improved

8.7 out of 10

Edit (2018-05-14): It's been over a month and most of the issues and concerns havebeen addressed as of Firmware 4 Kernel 1.02, so this review has been updated toreflect these changes.Note: As a starting disclaimer, I received a review copy of the EZ-FlashOmega for free. Even without the free copy, as a long time fan of theEZ-Flash 4 I was planning on purchasing the EZ-Flash Omega just to seeif it would be a worthy successor to the EZ-Flash 4.The promise of near-instant starts and direct saves definitely deliver.While total time game load varies a little on the speed of your microSDcard, whether a save file needs created, and the size of the game itself,the average time for me was in the 3-5 second range even on 32MB games.In comparison, the EZ-Flash 4 and EZ 3-in-1 can take 30 seconds to load16MB games or over 5 minutes for 32MB games that have to be written toNOR to be used. Afterwards NOR games can be loaded instantly from NORbut with only 32MB of NOR and the slow write speed this obviously discouragesfrequently loading different games to NOR.Compared to a NOR-only flashcart like the Flash2Advance and the resultsare still comparable to the EZ-Flash Omega. The NOR is written earlier, sogame launching should be instantaneous. However, many games requirea soft reset to function properly, bumping up the start time to 3 seconds.If you so desire you can write up to 64MB to NOR on the EZ-Flash Omega, butthe 32MB PSRAM has made the NOR space entirely redundant for me--as ofthis review the Original GBA can't properly use NOR.The save file itself (and Real Time Save (RTS) if selected) are created atgame launch in respective \SAVER and \RTS folders and written to assave/RTS is updated File extension are .sav for GBA games, .esv forNES/GB/GBC games, and .rts for GBA real time saves. As noted in themanual, there's a time delay before saves are fully written to the microSDcard and personal experience has had me counting to five before resettingor powering off the system. For NES/GB/GBC games this means firstpressing L+R to open up the menu and then counting to five before choosingexit or powering off the system.Resetting or powering off too quickly will cause some pretty substantial filesystemcorruption and likely require a reformat if done more than a few times. Sincecarefully counting to five for each save, I've had substantially less problems. However,on an exfat formatted card I experienced errors while launching a game and myexfat required reformatting. I've yet to reproduce this problem, and I'm unsure ifit's limited to exfat or the microSD card. This is a real concern for me as it's not always100% clear when a game is saving.For the filesystem itself, you have the options of FAT16, FAT32, and ExFat(if using a 32GB or larger microSD card) on a separately purchased microSD card.Having tested all three, they all work equally well. Realistically the entire GBAlibrary from all regions combined is less than 32GB, so there's really little reasonfor even most hardcore collector to need a microSD even half that size.Folders with the archive bit are hidden from view and files without the archive bit areinvisible; I'm uncertain why but on my Linux system folders on exfat are created withthe archive bit set which definitely caused some confusion at first. File listings are veryresponsive. Pressing Select allows you to toggle a display of the current gamestitle screen with virtually all included in EZ-Flash's thumbnails archive. Games need to becopied over uncompressed and can be arranged in nearly any folder arrangement you like.The EZ-Flash Omega is incredibly close to just drag-and-drop. The few counterexamplesare games that require patching to support a solar sensor or a gyroscope. Some notoriousanti-piracy protected games seem to work without any special patching, but YMMV. TheEZ-Flash Omega thankfully has a Real Time Clock (RTC)--like the more expensive EverDrive--so those games are drag-and-drop as well. The EZ-Flash Omega can "Boot With Addons" tosupport their built-in menu/reset/sleep/rts/cheats and by default has a database of virtuallyall games making their fast engine patch near instantaneous.If you're more adventurous or have a game that needs manually patched (the previousmentioned odd-ball games, translations, or other romhacks not in the database), you candisable the fast engine patch on the options screen. Instead of using the fast patch defaults,each game will be scanned on first start which can take from 4 to 30 seconds. A .pat PATCHfile will be written for current and later used. Later loads take virtually the same time asfast engine patched games.If you like, you can also choose to do a "Clean Boot" to have no patching applied. This shouldeliminate any possible GBA link or other patching compatibility issues. Direct saving will continueto function. The generous 64MB of included NOR can be used for "Clean Boot" or "Boot With Addons".As all GBA games are 32MB or smaller, loading through PSRAM for most games should be sufficient.A little experimenting with cheat support and it works decently well. I did notice a very slightclicking/skipping sound not unlike other software cheat engines on the GBA . It was only audiblewhile cheats were on and I presume the severity of it will vary by game. It wasn't at all distractingto me, but it is something to consider.The one major addition to the EZ-Flash Omega that I cannot recommend is Real Time Saves (RTS).Due to the nature of the GBA, it's not possible to save or restore a perfect copy of the state of theGBA at any given time. As such, it's very hit and miss on whether a state will load or even freezethe system. Also, the manuals note of "Sound turn to noise after load game states" seems like anunderstatement with my testing of Metroid Fusion. Ninja Five-O seemed to load saves okay but theaudio was a bit muted. Mega Man Zero 3 simply locked up on loading a state. The suggestion"change a scene should get the sound normally" from the manual did work for Ninja Five-O but wasineffective with Metroid Fusion. RTS reliability is a known issue, and I'm uncertain if we can see morethan little improvement in future firmware.The final part to consider is support for directly running NES and GB/GBC games. This is achievedthrough the built-in inclusion of the (as current) latest versions of PocketNES 2013-07-01 andGoomba Color 12-14-14 emulators forked by and heavily improved upon by Dwedit. While the built-inPocketNES emulator is very decently compatible with many games (but compromising with squishedgraphics and texts on the lower resolution GBA) with a few games like Punchout not working quite right,Goomba Color is a little bit more hit and miss. The latest version of Goomba Color is definitely asignificant improvement on games like Shantae, Megaman Xtreme 2, and others with very fewgraphical glitches or slowdowns. But other games, like Lufia - The Legend Returns have much more inthe way of graphical glitches. This picture shows the first island...sort of.This is by no means a criticism of Goomba Color or the EZ-Flash Omega. There's very little wiggle roomto support GBC emulation on the GBA, and I've found using older reset patched (so exit in the menu works)

versions for the EZ-Flash 4 to work reliably on the EZ-Flash Omega. Going into building compilations isoutside the scope of this review, but it opens up supporting emulation of various other systems like theSega Master System, Game Gear, and Colecovision. If your focus is on NES, GB, and GBA games, thendrag-and-dropping the vast majority of them uncompressed will work near flawlessly. It's really onlyGameboy Color where it's more hit and miss. I would honestly recommend getting a separate GBC flashcartif you're very interested in Gameboy Color games unless you're willing to tolerate this. For my purposesGoomba Color is more than sufficient most of the time.First, I would seriously recommend reading through the entire EZ-Flash Omega Manual . It does a reasonablygood job of explains the ins and outs of using the EZ-Flash Omega along with a few caveats here and therethroughout. As stated in the manual, make sure you download the latest Copy the ezkernel.bin, CHEATS, and IMGS folder to your microSD card. Hold R at startup to update with theezkernel.bin. If your firmware is older than the current version, it will also have you update it as well. Once done,you can delete the ezkernel.bin.From here, you can start making folders and adding your gba, gb, gbc, and nes games. Repeated again here,always wait at least five seconds after saving in a game before resetting to the EZ-Flash Omega menu or poweringoff the GBA. For GB/GBC/NES games, wait at least five seconds in the L+R menu before choosing "exit" or poweringoff the GBA. If you want to enable RTS/Cheats/Sleep--the builtin sleep in most/all games won't work--you can gotwo screens over with R, R. The middle screen is where all NOR written games can be launched.For nearly every game, I start with "Boot With Addons" to use the menu/reset/etc. The menu will only show up ifyou enable RTS or Cheats are enabled and some are. In all other cases, pressing the menu key will reset to theEZ-Flash Omega menu, so be careful when saving. The menu seems to take the gamma/palette of the screen fordrawing, so be aware that the menu may appear dark depending on precisely when you open the menu. In oneinstance the system froze on the title screen while trying to access the menu. I have also had to Clean Boot oneromhack for it to boot. A quick test of a Classic NES game and it appears the games built-in menu interferes withEZ-Flash Omega's menu opening.Overall, I've quite impressed with their patching system. Hiccups like the above are to be expected, so it's niceClean Boot is an option.The EZ-Flash Omega is quite a snug fit into my GBA SP. The actual electronics are only about the size of a NDS Litedust cover and the GBA-size front shell leaves a T shape that is easy to scrape against if you have the bad habit ofpushing GBA carts out at sort of an angle rather than pulling them directly out. The microSD slot on the side is alittle bit big so it'd be easy to accidentally drop your microSD card inside. The microSD slot is flush with the backshell, so pushing at an angle is can damage your microSD card. Pulling straight out in both cases might require abit of force but shouldn't result in any scraping or damage.