The FXPak Pro is a flash cartridge for the SNES and Super Famicom that has been around for a long time. First arriving on scene as the SD2SNES and then being rebranded in 2020 due to trademark reasons, regardless of which name it goes by, it’s still a wonderful product.
We’ve covered the Everdrive GG X7 and now we are looking at this amazing cartridge, both of which were provided courtesy of Krikzz.
So what all is this cartridge capable of and should you have it as a means to play your SNES or Super Famicom library? Well the later is for you to ultimately decide, but lets check out what this can do.
Sporting two color schemes, either the red one or the classic gray as seen above, a loading speed of 9MB/s, RTC, support for ROM size up to 128MBit (96Mbit actually implemented), and support for every enhancement chip, it’s definitely not short of features and compatibility.
The only enhancement chip it didn’t support until most recently was S-DD1 but now it does thankfully. So there isn’t a game (as far as I know or has been documented) that won’t work on the FXPack Pro…well there is one set of games that won’t work.
The only set of games that are known to not work are the games made specifically for the Sufami Turbo, at least without some work. Should you own these games and have a means to patch them, you can get them on the cart and have them work quite well.
With the FXPak Pro you are getting a lot of support from every special chip, to the Sufami Turbo (with some work), Satellaview games, and even Super GameBoy is supported. The sky really is the limit with this cartridge.
The cartridge supports different clock speeds, save and load states, auto region patching, tons of options, even themes can be downloaded. With so many options, game support, and customization there is a lot of things this little cart can do. In fact, lets check out some games that would be great to play on the FXPak Pro.
When I got this cart, I immediately wanted to put it to the test to see just what it’s capable of. I loaded up Stunt Racer FX and it plays very well as you can see here. This is one game that takes advantage of the Super FX chip and allows the SNES to play somewhat 3D titles and it looks really nice here.
If you wanted to play a game that was never meant to see the light of day like Super Boss Gaiden, you can play it with this cart. Super Boss Gaiden was a game that was meant to be played on the Nintendo PlayStation using it’s Super CD drive. As you can see in this picture, the game plays perfectly fine here and is very enjoyable.
Mr. Tuff is a game that was cancelled but then eventually released by The Retro Room Games. This action platforming game plays just like it would if it was on an actual cartridge. Thanks to the FX Pak Pro, you can play this game on original hardware if you purchase the ROM. Definitely a must play game and I am glad that it was brought back from the grave and can now be enjoyed by players everywhere.
As previously mentioned, the Sufami Turbo is supported, but you have to tweak the ROM so that it is able to be played. As you can see here with Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Sailor Stars: Fuwa Fuwa Panic 2, it plays just fine on the FXPak Pro. Specifically you have to patch the BIOS file to the ROM image. I am not going to go into any further details, but I am glad that it’s working and the cart can play these games without the need for the accessory.
So we’ve seen some really fun games that take advantage of the various chips that they had built in and clearly the FXPak Pro can run them just fine. We even saw that it can play Sufmai Turbo games with a bit of effort, which isn’t all that user friendly, but is clearly possible. The only set of games I can’t show here is Satellaview. Though it does support playing them, I can’t show them here because there is no known way to legally play them as they were originally broadcasted and I don’t have a Satellaview to borrow an capture images from.
But the final accessory I wanted to show you that it had the capability of playing is Super GameBoy, specifically Super GameBoy 2. Yes, that’s right! Now you can play all your legally backed up GameBoy games on the SNES with the FX Pak Pro and don’t need a Super GameBoy or Super GameBoy 2 cartridge (though just like the games shown here, you have to legally own the cart to dump and use it with this flash cart)!
A game that is very special to me that I had a hand in bringing to the community is Yosei Wars. As you can see here, the game plays flawlessly using the FX Pak Pro. It’s a great platformer and is fun on the go, or being played on the FXPak Pro on your SNES or clone console.
Patchy Matchy is a great tribute to puzzle games like Tetris Attack.This is a game that was released fro the ModRetro Chromatic and plays very nicely on the FXPak Pro. If you like puzzle games, you can pick up this game and enjoy it on the Chromatic or even on your SNES if you plan on picking up the FXPak Pro.
We looked at a lot of different games here just to see how amazing and powerful this little flash cartridge is. Before I close out this review, I do want to touch on one aspect that seems to never get talked about, or even is mentioned in any documentation from Krikzz. This is the micro USB port on the top of the cartridge that is opposite the micro SD card slot. What this is used for is really kind of neat, though may not be practical.
The lack of being practical may be why it’s not talked about or even documented. But for the sake of covering it, I will go over it here. So the micro USB port on the cartridge is mainly used for firmware updates, or at least it was prior to the OS being able to update itself once you put the files on the micro SD card and booted up the cartridge.
The image above is the file browser used for managing files directly on the FXPak Pro through the micro SD card. You can use this application to boot games, debug, create and work with games you’re making for the SNES, or even use it to put ROMs on t he cart. As shown, I took some of the games I worked on and/or got for review and put them on the SD card for the FXPak Pro.
Now is this as easy as taking the micro SD card and putting it into your PC directly? Most definitely not. You see, you need to not only plug in the cart to your PC, but you have to also power on your console so that the cart can have power and be read by the computer so that you can then get to transferring files.
So though definitely not as easy as just using the micro SD card and definitely not as practical, it’s nice to know that there is a means to get the dumped ROMs from your legally owned carts onto the FXPak Pro in the event you don’t have a micro SD card reader or adapter handy to use.
In closing, would I recommend the FXPak Pro? Well given everything I’ve talked about and shown you in this review, I would most definitely recommend this. I mean it supports a LOT of special chips and some accessories that are either expensive, rare, or otherwise hard to obtain. At a price point of $229 (or region equivalent) your getting more than your moneys worth with this cartridge given everything you can do with it. Krikzz does an amazing job with their flash carts and this is one that is a must have if are a fan of the SNES or the Super Famicom.
Disclaimer: We were provided with a review unit
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.