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This review was done by Acey
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The Gameboy Color is almost dead, although there are lots of games out there which deserve to be played. This unit will operate with any Gameboy System, including the new Gameboy Advance, but this is a Gameboy Color (Classic) backup/development unit only, which means that no GBA games can be put on the cartridge or that the e-merger can be used to backup GBA games. Now that this is setteled, let's begin the review. The GB e-merger is developed by Netmars, an unknown Taiwanese company. The e-merger was released in the year 2000 and has later on received an upgrade of the bios. The e-merger can be used as a stand alone unit as it runs on both batteries, a 9V battery, or by connecting it to a powersupply, 9V 800mA - center negative, which is not included in the package, but can be supplied by Netmars. I found an old 9V 500mA powersupply which came with a Famicom clone once and it worked perfectly with the e-merger. The e-merger ofcourse also has a PC parallel port so it can be connected to a PC for uploading games and demos from a PC to the e-merger, but ofcourse also to be able to transfer data from the e-merger to the PC. Unlike any other Gameboy copier I've seen, the e-merger includes a 16 character x 2 lines LCD screen which is used to operate the unit when it's not connected to a PC. The new e-merger bios is quite easy to operate as everything is described on the screen. As for the Windows software, which is included on a 3.5" disk, is pretty simple to figure out eventhough the explanation of the buttons are in Chinese, the menu bar fortunately isn't. The software has been tested and works both with Windows 2000 and Windows 9x. Copying from one cartridge to another using the e-merger as a stand alone unit, not connected to a PC, is great and quite fast. But something happends when it is being connected to a PC, it takes somewhere around 5 minutes to add, delete or even get an index of what is on the cartridge, I'm not sure if it's the software's fault, but tend to believe it is. The e-merger is built to take advantage of the EEP parallel port mode (fastest mode), so that should not be the problem. One the games are on the cartridge, everything works pretty well as theres support for MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 and MBC5 aswell as real time clock, which means that just about any GB/GBC game will work with the e-merger. The 64mbit cartridge ofcourse allows multipe games on the cartridge. But as I wrote earlier, this is a GB/GBC copier which means that it will not work with Gameboy Advance games, but it will let you run GB/GBC games on your Gameboy Advance. The design of the e-merger isn't exactly great, it seems big and bulky, but feels and looks like high quality as it is see-though, so you can see the motherboard of the unit. The 64mbit cartridge, included in the package, is quite odd, it's 1 centimeter longer than a normal GB/GBC cartridge which is beyond me. It doesn't look too bad when inserted into a GB or GB Color, which is was intended for, but used with a GBA it just looks too big. Everything, e-merger - 64mbit cartridge - software disk - parallel cable, comes packed in a nice giftbox with a description of how to operate the e-merger on the backside. To sum up on things, the e-merger is a pretty nice, good quality, GB/GBC backup unit (copier), the bulky look of both cartridge and e-merger unit doesn't make the unit bad in my book, the slow transfer from PC to e-merger (and vice versa) does though, it's quite annoying waiting for so long. On a side note, Netmars is now working on a Gameboy Advance backup unit, which should be available soon, and we'll ofcourse try to have a review of it as soon as it's out.
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