NES DS

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NES emulator for DS, a port of PocketNES, taking advantage of the DS hardware for better scaling and compatability.

Loopy originally merely ported PocketNES 9.97 to the DS, adding some additional features like rewinding and fast-forward with the L and R buttons, as well as a touchscreen-based menu. In his version, saving and savestates were only supported on slot-2 devices with GBA compatibility, as NES DS saved to GBA SRAM only. A user named emu_kidid later obtained the source and modified it to allow for save support and savestates on certain supported cards. With Loopy's recent addition of DLDI support however, NES DS is now compatible with nearly all flash carts/cards.

Contents

Caveats

  • No DPCM sound (SMB3 drums, Kung Fu laughing, etc), unlike PocketNES.
  • No raw PCM sound (speech in Joshua, SCAT, Big Bird's Hide and Speak), like PocketNES.
  • Inaccurate touchscreen code for many users. Some have suggested that the homebrew device used actually makes a difference, as one user tested the same binary on his slot-2 Supercard and slot-1 R4 and found the touchscreen to be wildly inaccurate only on the latter.

Compatibility

A user named Another World spent several months testing compatibility in NES DS. The resulting list, while possibly inaccurate, is the most complete compatibility list available. The list may be viewed at both PocketHeaven and GBAtemp.

Basic Usage for DLDI-Capable Devices

  1. Get the new DLDI version from the NES DS homepage[deadlink]
  2. DLDI patch nesDS.nds with the DLDI file for your card. See the DLDI Wiki for the latest downloads.
  3. Copy nesDS.nds to your card along with your *.nes ROMS.
  4. Tap the touchscreen after selecting a game to bring up the NES DS menu.

Usage on Non-DLDI-Capable Devices

Try the DLDI instructions first. If the DLDI instructions do not work for you, you can try the older method:

GBA flash cards

NOR card owners can use DLDI Right Click to make an FCSR image. If that fails, try this:

  1. get the latest WIP of NES DS by emu_kidid (known working version available here)
  2. extract all files into the same folder
  3. run "nesDS.exe"
  4. click "more>>"
  5. drag and drop NES ROMs on the list
  6. make sure that the total does not exceed 32 MB
  7. click "save"; then save as the default name
  8. nesDS.ds.gba should be produced. Flash it to your card and launch it.

Slot-1 Devices

  1. get the latest WIP of NES DS by emu_kidid (known working version available here)
  2. get ndstool [1]
  3. extract all files and ndstool.exe into the same folder
  4. run "make_nds.bat"
  5. click "more>>"
  6. drag and drop NES ROMs on the list
  7. make sure that the total does not exceed 3mb
  8. click "save"; then save as the default name
  9. 2 files should come out: a ds.gba file and a .nds file. Copy the .nds over to your card and launch it.

GBA Movie Player and DS-Xtreme

Note: On DS-X, firmware 1.0.2 or higher is necessary; older versions do not work

  1. get the latest WIP of NES DS by emu_kidid (known working version available here)
  2. get ndstool [2]
  3. extract all files and ndstool.exe into the same folder
  4. run "make_nds.bat"
  5. Just click save, do not insert NES ROMs at this point.
  6. It should ask where you want to save the nesDS.ds.gba file. Choose a location and hit Save.
  7. It will make the .ds.gba file and it will also make a .nds file because ndstool.exe is there
  8. Place nesDS.nds on the DS-X as well as your NES ROMs.
  9. Launch nesDS and browse to the location of your ROMs, launching the one you wish to play

Slot-2 Supercard

Several options are available. The first method lets you browse your media card for *.nes games to run. To do this, use the old method for DS-Xtreme, and there are two choices of output files you can use. If running make_nds.bat, use the standard .nds that is produced. If running nesDS.exe directly, rename the .ds.gba output to .nds, which will work as well. Just do not use the .ds.gba produced by make_nds.bat

If for some reason NES DS cannot work with the filesystem of your Supercard, there are two methods to use to inject NES games into the output file. For non-Rumble Supercards, use the instructions for NOR-based flash carts, renaming the output nesDS.ds.gba file to nesDS.nds before placing it on your card. For the Rumble series, follow the instructions for Slot-1 devices and place the output nesDS.nds file on your card.

Max Media Dock and Max Media Player

The SLOT-2 MAX Media products and the GBAMP are electrically similar, if not identical, but the WIP builds with save support do not explicitly support the MMD and MMP. As a result, a PocketHeaven user named AWal used a hex editor to modify the pointers to the GBAMP and replace them with pointers to the MMD [3]. This modified version has save support and is reported to work fully on the MMD and MMP, though you must manually tap "Save SRAM" in the NES DS main menu to finalize the save.

Locations to download this include RapidShare link in RAR format, DanTheMan's GooglePages account in ZIP format, and DanTheMan's GooglePages account in NDS format (as the .nds file is the only file inside the RAR or ZIP archive anyway)

Once downloaded, follow the old DS-Xtreme usage instructions to create an empty file that can be used to browse your card for NES roms.

Links

Official Site[deadlink]

Retrieved from "http://www.pocketheaven.com/ph/wiki/index.php?title=NES_DS"
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