GBA emulator for the DS by Darkchen

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September 17th, 2009, 22:33
wraggster

GBA emulator for the DS by Darkchen

News via gbatemp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpwuV...layer_embedded

Homebrew enthusiast and GBAtemp member darkchen has been busy developing a Game Boy Advance emulator for the Nintendo DS, and we've tried it! The result? Some extremely impressive work!

How did darkchen manage to emulate the GBA given the hardware limitations of the DS? The clever guy used the extra power that the DSiPlayer (slot-1 media player) provides to get the extra juice needed to emulate GBA at a decent speed. Unfortunately of course, this means that this emulator will only work on the iPlayer.

We've tried a handful of games using darkchen's emulator and the results have been extremely impressive. The majority of games (even 3D intensive games) work extremely well with almost perfect video and sound output. There is a little bit of slow down in some games (using a frameskip setting of 2), but the results are astonishing for a first release. I didn't even see a single graphical glitch. But, not only is the emulation side of things impressive, the emulator GUI itself is also very well done and offers a great number of useful and well implemented options such as save states, screenshots, frameskip and more. It even supports zipped ROMs, but has some issues with 256Mbit games when zipped.

You can check out our hands-on video of the emulator above to see it in action for yourself. (We apologise for the poor video quality - watch in HQ on YouTube for a better picture). Well done to darkchen for a great piece of software and we hope you'll continue to improve it.

Also, please be aware that darkchen has not yet released this emulator publicly, so please do not request download links.

Interesting especially for DSI owners ?
September 17th, 2009, 23:28
juiceface

looks awesome

to bad the lite and other DS's don't have the juice for this.
September 17th, 2009, 23:53
genowing

Quote:

Originally Posted by juiceface

looks awesome

to bad the lite and other DS's don't have the juice for this.

The iPlayer is for every generation DS
September 18th, 2009, 00:04
juiceface

oh cool, does anyone know if other homebrew slot 1 cards provide this extra power?
September 18th, 2009, 01:32
darkriku2000

So than, maybe if we FINALLY get some dsi mode homebrew, we'll already have a gba emulator
September 18th, 2009, 02:54
Pilot_51

And they said GBA emulation on the DS was impossible and never going to happen.

Maybe GBA multiplayer over Wi-Fi/wireless might be possible now: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=142991
September 18th, 2009, 06:37
DanTheManMS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pilot_51

And they said GBA emulation on the DS was impossible and never going to happen.

It still relies on the iPlayer, which has its own CPU and RAM which is used to power the emulator. The DS alone can still never emulate the GBA in software at any playable speed.
September 18th, 2009, 11:59
Pilot_51

I know, but it's still possible on the DS. Nobody said it had to be unassisted. Apparently "they" thought adding the necessary power was also impossible, otherwise they would've (should've) mentioned it as a possible exception.
September 18th, 2009, 14:00
Flygon

Oh, how disappointing.

My DSTTi sits there yet...

That or a DSi mode hack (Which is probably the most sensible choice =p).
September 18th, 2009, 16:26
Sonny_Jim

Holy crap! Fair shout to Darkchen, I was hoping something like this could be done with the iPlayer!

Now I've got to go eat all my words about "How GBA emulation was never likely to happen"
September 18th, 2009, 22:06
Exophase

If it requires specialized hardware, including an external CPU and extra RAM then how does it count as being for DS?? I bet the DS is being used as a framebuffer and input passthrough and nothing else..
September 19th, 2009, 05:26
Flygon

^

Exactly why I am disappointed.
September 19th, 2009, 06:26
DanTheManMS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pilot_51

Nobody said it had to be unassisted.

Maybe not, but it was kinda assumed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited as anyone else to see GBA emulation running on the DS(i), but one must remember that it can't run off the DS's power alone, so all the people saying "EVERYONE WAS WRONG AHAHA U NOOBS" are being foolish in doing so. Like Exophase said, it probably only uses the DS for control input and video/sound output.
September 19th, 2009, 09:04
koh-kun

So how is this different from running gba games using that EZflash gba adapter that's been around for years? I don't really get it… is it amazing because it emulates the gba instead of using that gba slot Nintendo provided? Sorry, it might be a dumb question :p
September 19th, 2009, 10:37
indaman

Quote:

Originally Posted by koh-kun

So how is this different from running gba games using that EZflash gba adapter that's been around for years? I don't really get it… is it amazing because it emulates the gba instead of using that gba slot Nintendo provided? Sorry, it might be a dumb question :p

This time, you don't need anymore a slot-2 expansion like the "EZ 3in1".

You can run GBA game from this slot-1 cart, and it's drag and drop
plus cheat support
plus savestate
plus ingame menu
plus compatible in every DS (DS/DSLite/DSi).

An awesome piece of software running perfectly fine every games I tried.
September 19th, 2009, 17:10
gumgod

I saw this the other day, it's quite awesome for those with a DSi since the DSi does not have a GBA slot. I bet once DSi mode is fully cracked you'll see more GBA emulators pop up that can use any flash cart, but in the mean time this guy was first to do it so kudos to him (or her idk). :thumbup: Personally I don't have a DSi so it's only semi interesting to me :P
September 19th, 2009, 22:36
Exophase

Quote:

Originally Posted by gumgod

I saw this the other day, it's quite awesome for those with a DSi since the DSi does not have a GBA slot. I bet once DSi mode is fully cracked you'll see more GBA emulators pop up that can use any flash cart, but in the mean time this guy was first to do it so kudos to him (or her idk). :thumbup: Personally I don't have a DSi so it's only semi interesting to me :P

Or not, since those other flashcards won't have the required hardware for this. On the other hand, a fully cracked DSi might be enough to emulate GBA (133MHz ARM9 using the DS's video hardware to push GBA 2D emulation) but it certainly wouldn't be happening with a VBA port.

But I'm surprised VBA runs this well on some chipset in a little card, that CPU must be more powerful than you'd ever guess.

EDIT: Correction, this is probably gpSP, not VBA. My, that emulator gets way more handheld action than I ever thought it would.