Fake iEDGE Cards

The Origins of the iEDGE

For those of us who aren’t so familiar with the iEDGE’s history, it succeeds the highly successful original EDGE DS card for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite. The EDGE DS was probably the overall best DS / DS Lite card ever produced, and the numbers sold at the time were second only to the original R4v2 (which is now out of production) / R4 SDHC. It was designed as a simple, easy to use card that possessed rock-solid reliability and a ridiculously good yet simple interface.

There were only three options on the main interface, which was black and sleek and looking very professional. The box the EDGE DS came in also looked great as a gift, since it was unique, triangular and looked very distinct. It was probably some combination of these features that made the EDGE DS unique because nobody attempted to make a fake version of it! It’s possible the unique box and different design to other cards made it undesirable for factories to try and reproduce it, opting instead to make clones / fakes of the famous R4 branded cards instead. The problem with this was that there were so many fakes of the R4v2 and R4 SDHC cards (such as the R4 Advance, R4 Ultra, R4v3 etc.) that people began losing confidence in the brand, and the EDGE DS rose to its star position.

So, even though the EDGE DS came onto the market ridiculously late, it was an incredible success story. When cards were first produced for the Nintendo DSi starting with our own original R4i SDHC card, the replacement for the EDGE DS was not in production at all. The team were developing the card into February 2010 when they finally released the iEDGE DS which NDS-Gear are proud to be able to sell! The EDGE team thankfully kept the “if it isn’t broken, do not attempt to fix it” strategy and has the same great software and the same robust construction to their card as the original. The iEDGE is arguably the best value-for-money all round DS card to exist on the market!

The First Fake iEDGE

This time, however, things were slightly different. People could see how popular the EDGE DS was so a few rival factories were ready to capitalise on its success. Therefore, when the iEDGE came out, a large factory began making fakes!

The fake iEDGE calls themselves the “EDGEi” – you can see how confusing this could get. The official websites for both cards give away whether they are real or fake.

The real website is http://www.edge-ds.cn. Notice there is no “i” in the domain name.

The fake website is http://www.edgei-ds.cn – this is the FAKE site, and cards from here should be avoided.

This is the easiest way to tell if a card you currently own, is real or fake – by trying the software from either website and then seeing which one allows your iEDGE card to work in your DS / DSi console.

Different Websites for Real and Fake iEDGE

The screenshots below of the two websites (differences pointed out by gamingbase.net) demonstrate the difference between the sites as of the start of May 2010. Click the images to see larger versions.

REAL iEDGE SITE BELOW:

FAKE iEDGE SITE BELOW:

Difference in Error Messages between the Real and Fake iEDGE

You can determine from error messages whether your iEDGE card is a fake. The clone iEDGE has software based on the DSTT (it was a copy in terms of software) so when the wrong software is put on the card the following error is shown:

This is the error message for fake iEDGE Cards

The problem, of course, is trying to tell whether you are buying a real or a fake iEDGE card before you buy, rather than afterwards! This is why NDS-Gear only sources iEDGE cards from the original factory (if we run out of stock, then we’re out! We WON’T be sourcing elsewhere) and proudly offers Genuine iEDGE Cards for Sale Here.

Difference with Sudoku / Danny Phantom Starting Icons

Another easy way to tell a (correctly working) real or fake iEDGE card is to see what the icon is when you start up your Nintendo DS or Nintendo DSi console. The real iEDGE shows “Sudoku” while the fake iEDGE shows “Danny Phantom”.

The fake iEDGE starting icon

Buy a Genuine / Real iEDGE Card

Hopefully the information above will have helped you tell the difference between a real and fake iEDGE card. However, it is difficult to impossible to tell the difference before you buy! The actual packaging of the fake and real iEDGE cards are identical, so you need to look at the actual card before you can tell.

Rest assured, however, that NDS-Gear only sells original, genuine iEDGE Cards – if we run out of stock, we WON’T source from elsewhere! Real cards are all you get from NDS-Gear, and we intend on keeping it that way. Buy with confidence!

Click here to buy your iEDGE card for your Nintendo DS or Nintendo DSi / XL today!

Happy DSing!