Drastic Emulator File Type

[Ariane Delbrune]

Ihave a Pi 3 working fine with Retropie and mame, snes, gba roms e.t.c... I'm trying to run roms for the Nintendo DS, so far unsuccessfully. I read here there is a nds emulator for Retropie called "desmume".

Not sure about the second point... I read here you can set up desmume using cli. I followed the steps described there... I installed "desmume" using sudo apt-get install desmume. I already created the nds folder on config and roms directory, I put nds roms there, I added to /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg the code:

Now I can see the Nintendo DS with the roms on Emulationstation menues but it didn't worked for me. Any advice from anybody who made it work? Where can I see some kind of log to see what is happenning? Thanks.

Firstly, if you plan to actually play .nds games on the Raspberry Pi 3, you can forget it :(I've tried many games on my overclocked Pi3 and none of them are even close to playable (unlike psp, which has some perfectly playable titles).

If you have a spare SD card, I recommend giving RetroPie a try. After loading up the image, there's a script to install desmume (under 'experimental'. You can the play your .nds files in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nds/.

I have installed and tested Super Mario Brothers and it runs really well on my Pi3 overclocked to 1.4 GHz. I will be testing more games, but I expect them to run quite well. Make sure you reduce the resolution for emulators to make games run nicer, it is needed especially for emulators of the Dreamcast and PSP.

You'll probably have to write your own emulator for the DS as current emulators availible (especially Desmume) are generally very poor and unoptimised. Power of the computer itself is not really an issue since the DS' specs are very close to the N64, and that can be emulated with very few problems on this system. EDIT: The emulator "drastic" has been ported to the RPi and actually runs with (somewhat) decent performance (even better if you turn off screen scaling). I tried Sonic Rush and it works fine!

The Nintendo DS (NDS) is a handheld console produced by Nintendo and released on November 21, 2004, and had 2 ARM CPUs (ARM9 and ARM7) with 4 MBs of RAM and was priced at $149.99. The main selling point was the use of dual screens for gameplay, with one being a touchscreen. It is the only console to have come close to the PlayStation 2 in lifetime sales (154.02 million units), as a result of attracting a large number of casual players, and even non-gamers, into the gaming community.

The major challenge with emulating multiplayer functionalities is timing inaccuracies, which have made many projects, such as DeSmuME, not want to implement them. So far, the only emulator to actually make any progress is melonDS, but even that is still under development.

melonDS supports wireless communication with several games, including New Super Mario Bros. and the Pokmon games, but you need to have either multiple instances opened, which can slow down overall performance, or connect multiple computers via LAN. No$GBA can connect but fails before the actual connection is finished.

This feature allows players with a DS and only one copy of a game to play together. This way, not everyone needs a copy of a game. The player with the physical cartridge will host the game while the other players connect using a "downloaded" version received from the host. Normally they are either simple mini-games, stripped-down demos of the main game, or a limited version of multiplayer. In most cases, it's better to use multi-cart instead. However, some games, like Mario Party DS, require Download Play to use its multiplayer.

Download Play is supported by melonDS. Like with local multiplayer, it is very hit-and-miss but unlocking the framerate helps. melonDS will often fail during the download process, but some games actually go as far as booting and sometimes in-game as well.

Uses wireless communication on the DS to connect to the Wii. The idea is parallel to the GBA Link Cable for the GameCube, and just like the Link Cable, only a handful of games actually have this feature. Some notable examples include:

It's unknown if No$GBA supports this, but it can be done in DeSmuME by going to Config > Slot 2 (GBA Slot) and selecting GBA Cartridge. Select the GBA ROM file, and make sure its .sav file is in the same folder. You may need to reset the game for it to take effect. As of version 0.9, melonDS supports GBA connectivity and even added support for the solar sensor on GBA Boktai cartridges used in Boktai DS (Lunar Knight), something DeSmuME has yet to support. Either drag and drop the GBA ROM onto the program before starting or open the file before loading the NDS file.

The Nintendo DS is backward compatible with Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridges. Should not be confused with Game Boy Advance emulation or GBA/DS connectivity. None of the emulators supports this feature currently.

iQue is Nintendo's Chinese subsidiary (previously a partnership between them and Wei Yen until 2013), so when they released the DS with a few localized games, their ROMs had special flags set in them to check if the hardware that ran the cartridge was iQue's or Nintendo's as a sort of region lock. Nintendo's own hardware would fail this check, throwing an "Only for iQue DS" error in white text on a black background. No other DS games have this mechanism, not even for Korean releases. This region lock is bypassed by the 3DS for these DS games, even though 3DS games have their own region lock. It's weird.

Emulators differ in their behavior to this region lock. No$GBA crashes, while DeSmuME can load them. However, for melonDS, you need a Firmware Dump from an iQue DS, otherwise, it will replicate the region lock.

Released on April 5, 2009, the Nintendo DSi added new lighting effects, an inner and outer 0.3 megapixel digital cameras, 16MB of RAM (compared to the previous 4MB of RAM), a faster ARM9 CPU clocked at 133 MHz, and offered downloadable titles called "DSiWare". It cost $169.99 at launch and later dropped to $149.99. The system, however, was region-locked, meaning that DSi exclusives from different regions couldn't be used. It also did away with backwards-compatiblity by removing Slot-2 which was used to load GBA cartridges and certain accessories (such as the Rumble Pak).

DSi emulation has been pretty neglected due to its small library of exclusive games and lack of DSi-enhanced titles that provide anything major besides camera support. The only thing really notable is DSiWare, which saw several exclusive releases.

No$GBA added support for DSi games of all three formats starting with version 2.8, although some games won't boot and others have graphical glitches. You'll need to enable "16MB DSi/retail" under the settings in order to use it. Compatibility is very iffy due to No$GBA's already poor DS emulation, and the camera is just spoofed as a static image and will cause the emulator to crash whenever used, meaning games that uses it may boot, but won't be very playable.

DSi used an encryption system for the game dumps that went on to be enhanced and used for the 3DS. This encryption is checked at start-up, hence why some Nintendo DS emulators don't even manage to boot DSiWare dumps. It's very unlikely DSi-mode emulation is ever going to be implemented in DeSmuME in particular due to various creative differences unique to that project.

As of version 0.9, melonDS has DSi emulation. It can connect to the internet and can play games with WFC online using libslirp or libpcap. It could become the most usable option for DSi emulation in the near future. Most of it is being done using the documentation that the No$GBA dev has already compiled on the subject[4] (GBATEK).

All three formats can be converted to .nds format. Compared to regular DS games, DSi games have some additional header information that wasn't even correctly dumped in most early sets. Recent sets have since updated to the correct format. DSiWare dumps can exist in both .nds format and .cia format (for installation on a homebrewed 3DS).

Even though it's possible to convert these titles to .nds, when attempting to run these games on a normal emulator it will either show an error message (when attempting to run a DSi-exclusive title), or will crash on boot-up (when attempting to run DSiWare) due to missing encryption abilities and lack of DSi hardware support. DSi-enhanced games will run as if it was on a regular DS model.

On the DSi/3DS family of handhelds, the first two formats can be played on some select DSi-compatible flashcarts like the discontinued and expensive CycloDS iEvolution flashcart(which won't work on a stock 3DS unless you install custom firmware to whitelist it). As for the third type, some are only available for digital purchase at the 3DS eShop and are installed as apps to the limited TWL NAND. Users with custom firmware can also convert DSiWare to an installable .cia and even dump already installed ones back to .nds. Since both the DSi Shop and 3DS eShop have closed, the only way of obtaining DSiWare on the original system is by homebrewing your DSi and launching the .nds ROM through Unlaunch or TWiLight Menu++.

DSi emulation requires a copy of the lower 32K-halves of the ARM7/ARM9 BIOS files (BIOSDSI7.ROM and BIOSDSI9.ROM), which are different from the regular DS BIOS files and needed for the decryption. melonDS also requires these files along with the regular DS BIOS and the DSi's firmware.bin. These unicorns can be found here.

This tutorial will show you how and where to access your save files while using a DS emulator. This guide will cover 3 of the most popular emulators for running DS games: DeSmuME and No$GBA (Computer), and DraStic (Android). This guide assumes that you have already set up and played one of these emulators at least once. Scroll down to your emulator of choice.

4. While this type of save file (.DSV) is supported by PKHeX, it is highly recommended to convert your save to the standard (.SAV) file type to maximize compatibility and reduce possible errors you may encounter. You can convert your save file using the save converter tool found here.

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