NDSi and Emulators

[schmocke]

Alright folks. Since today I´m a prowd owner of a brand new Nintendo DSi XL. The last new console I´ve bought was a Playstation 1 15 years ago (okay, I have a Dreamcast and PS2 too, but these were used..).
Tomorrow a M3i Zero Cart will arrive, along with a 8GB SD-Cart. Then the setup will be finished. My questions are: has anyone tried the various emulators on a DS(i)!? Are you able to recommend a specific one? Is it easy to setup the emulators!? I´ll surely figure out some stuff by myself but I wanna know, if anyone has experience with emulation on NDS(i).

regards, schmocke

 

[Maximum Potion]

I only have expirience with slot 2 devices on a ds / ds lite, but I think that 9th knows a lot about DS emulation.

Anyways, based on that, there was nesds and snemulds I think that I used. They were OK, the snes one had some problems with layers (which you could adjust). GB I used lameboy and gba, well, I didn't need to emulate (being a slot 2 device). That is all I know.

 

[Reaper man]

personally I wouldn't bother with console emulation as the vertical resolution of the DS is lower than 220, and thus can't properly display the entire NES/genesis, etc screen. Gameboy and game gear emulation is a good idea though.

 

[The 9th Sage]

My experience is only on the DS, but all the emulators you'll find are DS emulators (no one can easily, reliably run DSi code yet). It should be pretty easy to set all of these up...a few need ROMs to be in certain folders (read the readme to be sure) but it's really just a matter of copying them to the SD card with any recent-ish flashcart.

Anyway, there are some pretty good ones. I'd say NesDS for NES games (quite a lot of games work). Despite what Brad says, NES games still look pretty good despite the smaller screen resolution. The scaling is really good.

For SNES I'd say SnemulDS...not that you have many choices there. A lot of games work pretty well, but keep in mind the DS has to uses some tricks to get games running full speed, so you might have to play with the graphical settings and such to get games to look right. It uses the DS's 2D hardware rather than a software renderer...it's much faster, and many games look fine, but some need to be tweaked...it's not perfect but it's probably the best SNES emulation on the DS will be. Also, interestingly, it uses the ARM7 cpu to emulate the SNES' sound hardware. Some timing sensitive games don't like this, so if you have some games that won't work, that could be why. Also, don't try anything needing an extra chip such as the SFX or SDD1. They won't work.

Like Max says, Lameboy seems to be the best GB/GBC emulator. Tons of games work well on it, and I'd say most are full speed (one example that isn't being Shantae, which isn't quite 100% speed).

For PCEngine/TurboGrafix, I think the only choice would be NitroGrafix. I have yet to try it, but it should be a good piece of work, it's developer Flubba based it on his old PCE GBA emulator, and he certainly knows what he's doing.

For Genesis your only choice is jEnesisDS, thankfully it's a pretty good choice. It even has sound, which as I understand it is quite a feat given the available RAM of the DS. Some games are too large horizontally though (it can scale vertically but not horizontally...you can use L and R to scroll left and right though). A lot of games work pretty well just the same though.

For Master System, DSMasterPlus seems pretty decent, though admittedly I only really used it to play the SMS Ninja Gaiden. S8DS should be good too, it's another one made by Flubba.

There's a lot of others too, like MaracaDS (which emulates some old arcade games like PacMan), NeoDS (which, though it's far from perfect, is astoundingly impressive in how well it emulates the NeoGeo on the DS...a lot of games work well if not full speed. Metal Slug is very very playable on it), and DSx86, which emulates a 286 computer and thus lets you play a surprising number of old DOS games on your DS. It grows by leaps and bounds with every release.

Make sure you check out stuff like DoomDS and the Quake port too. There's also a really good port of ScummVM for those old adventure games like Maniac Mansion.

Anyway, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

 

[pipes]

The DSi uses different hardware (no arm7) and because old DS games are made with nintendo's bullshit dev system the arm7 is never touched by developers so Nintendo can emulate/simulate all the functions on the faster arm9. Its a new system hardware wise from the original DS. This is why there is no GBA slot, as that used the arm7.

Now speaking of new system...
There is suppose to be a 3ds coming out soon or still in development that uses 3d screens?
This was from 4chan so...

 

[schmocke]

First, thanks for the quick replies. I´ll test some of the mentioned emulators and write my experiences down here. Perhaps some emulators will be updated for DSi use in near future. That´d be great, ´cause DSi has faster Hardware than an ordinary DS/Lite. I doubt given Emus will take advantage of DSi´s Hardware at the moment. Hopefully they´ll work on DSi when written for DS/Lite. As I said, I´ll test them when my Flashcart will have been arrived. Again, thanks a lot for the nice overview @The 9th Sage.

 

[Reaper man]

Now speaking of new system...
There is suppose to be a 3ds coming out soon or still in development that uses 3d screens?
This was from 4chan so...

yeah it's supposed to come out at some point, and from what I recall, it'll be revealed at E3.

 

[The 9th Sage]

The DSi uses different hardware (no arm7) and because old DS games are made with nintendo's bullshit dev system the arm7 is never touched by developers so Nintendo can emulate/simulate all the functions on the faster arm9.

Where on earth have you seen that? Just because GBA games don't work it doesn't mean that it has no ARM7. First I've ever heard of such a thing. I mean, emulators like SnemulDS work on the DSi, at least I think they do. If it was lacking the ARM7, I'm certain that emulator would fail to work.

It doesn't work like most commercial DS games do, where the ARM7 doesn't do a heck of a lot. Maybe you're right, I've just never heard of that, so I want to see some links.

*edit*
No, it says here specifically that it has both the ARM9 and ARM7. That's a website created by Team Twiizers who has been (having mainly worked in the Wii scene) reverse engineering the DSi. They'd know better than most. Still curious to know where on earth you heard such a thing though.

@schmocke The thing with DSi mode is that it's an entirely different hardware mode apparently (only in DSi mode can you use the higher CPU clock and access the extra RAM, otherwise you can only access what the 'regular' DS can). It sounds like some people have been able to run code in DSi mode, but there's nothing reliable yet. I'm sure some stuff would benefit though once it's easier to run DSi code...NeoDS being one. It seems to really max out the DS.

 

[pipes]

Still curious to know where on earth you heard such a thing though.

Only (much outdated years ago) hearsay, but if thats true then now I am curious what would happen if you put it in GBA mode if its possible. And now I question why remove the option in the 1st place as some DS games use it like guitar hero.

 

[The 9th Sage]

Only (much outdated years ago) hearsay, but if thats true then now I am curious what would happen if you put it in GBA mode if its possible. And now I question why remove the option in the 1st place as some DS games use it like guitar hero.

I think they might have removed it to make space more than anything, but I'm not sure. Not sure what would happen if you tried to put it into GBA mode...at best I assume it would sit at the GAMEBOY logo...maybe something got changed in the hardware to prevent going into Gameboy mode since it's not supported though. Would be interesting to find out.