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Nintendo blocks sale of R4 carts in Japan

Published on 27th February 2009 by Joe Martin

Nintendo, along with more than 50 other companies, has successfully blocked R4 sales in Japan.

Last year it was announced that more 50 different games companies in Japan had teamed up and, under the leadership of Nintendo, taken the makers of the popular R4 Revolution cartridge for the DS to court. Today those companies made their first major blow, making it illegal to sell the R4 in Japan.

The R4 Revolution cartridge is by no means unique, but is one of the most popular homebrew devices available for the Nintendo DS. It's basically a Slot-1 MicroSD card adaptor which allows DS gamers to boot their own software on the DS. It can also be used for nefarious causes too though, with Nintendo claiming it loses more than $975 million USD to piracy every year.

The mass lawsuit includes a total of 54 companies who claim they've been affected by the sale of the R4, including the likes of Capcom.

Today the Tokyo District Court found enough cause to block all legal sales of the the R4 across Japan, with further punishments still possible as the court case continues.

The block imposed by the court probably won't have all that much impact however, as Nintendo has already pressured the majority of game retailers into taking the R4 off their shelves according to Kotaku.

Do you have an R4 or other DS homebrew device? Check out our guide to DS homebrew for some excellent recommendations of games you can play and let us know your thoughts in the forums.

11 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

NeMoD 27th February 2009, 10:43

I have a R4, and I love it, sorry Nintendo :)

Dreaming 27th February 2009, 11:22

I don't have one, but am now interested :D

kenco_uk 27th February 2009, 11:57

One's on it's way to me now :)

chiper136 27th February 2009, 12:00

I got a DS for a long coach trip recently and everyone on in the DS home-brew community advised against getting one anyway as they are no longer supported by the people that made them. I got an EDGE card instead and it works fine.

Nintendo will get rid of one and 30 more are going pop up in it place.

UltraKev 27th February 2009, 13:20

Did Nintendo ever figure out why the DS is so popular? Perhaps its something to do with the R4....

Kode 27th February 2009, 13:24

i have a DS-TT its great, im not sure how nintendo can claim they lose more than $975 million USD to piracy every year? If anything all the R4 and other cards like it did was boost hardware sales, id say there a pretty big relation to the amount of people who have a card, to those who wouldnt have bought the console in the first place without it, dont know if that makes sense, but im sure you can work out what im trying to say :P

Arkanrais 27th February 2009, 14:11

I love my R4.
I still have to finish off playing through Shining Force II and Landstalker on the thing, but the Megadrive emulator is pretty good on the thing. I want to track down a SNES emulator next. I like being able to take retro games with me for getting stuck in meetings or waiting for appointments. The only homebrew DS game I have is pocket physics though so far (just got Colors! as well and I'm having fun with it [more fun than painting with my tablet])
the reason I got a DS initially was cause I wanted to play my GBA games on a console that had a goddamn backlight on the LCD, but then found out about the R4 and have barely played any of my old GBA games since.

FaSMaN 27th February 2009, 16:00

This is actually a good thing,the R4 cards lacks quite a bit when comparing it to today more modern cards like the Acecard2, rom support for instance has alot of newer titles not working (note original R4 Firmware not clone),,no sdhc support(talking about original,not clone) and it has no build in 3 in 1 support etc... But the worst thing of all is that ALL the R4s sold today are clones and who knows how good they will perform in the long run or how long they will last :(

PS if you want nothing other then homebrew get a Dingoo A-320 :)

aggies11 27th February 2009, 19:20

Thank God.

I'm glad they stopped this, cause if they let this go on any longer it really could have killed the DS! I mean, think about how popular the DS could have been if the R4 wasn't holding it back!

I heard a rumour that Nintendo was almost going to go out of business, cause it hurt them so bad...

In our modern corporate world, the tale of Robin Hood really is dead, isn't it?

Rich_13 28th February 2009, 18:09

It's not really Nintendo that suffers as much as the software publishers / creators who spend on development and royalities etc...

Probably why DS games cost so damn much imo.....

Neji 1st March 2009, 00:28

Amazing how socially acceptable piracy is, isn't it?