Summary of DSi limitations in emulation

[pundy14]

Hey guys,

Sorry if this is in the wrong section or if it has already been answered however im after some information.

Im after a Nintendo DSlite or DSi and i want to be able to run Snes and Gameboy advance game roms.

My question is do we definitely have a way to run both Snes and Gameboy roms on the DSi (or is it only on the DS lite) and do they run well enough to be played? I currently have a PSP and it doesnt run many Snes games very well, quite chuggy.

Also, can i get some opinions as to which they feel is the better investment. Money aside, the DS lite or the DSi and why?

And just one last thing, can someone point me in the direction of a good FAQ/Guide to actually playing NES/SNES/GBA roms on both the DSlite and DSi? Cheers,

[DanTheManMS]

At the moment we do not have access to the DSi's upgraded hardware. Current DSi-compatible devices boot the system in DS mode, which is limited to the same hardware that the original DS/Lite had. We don't know if an exploit is coming soon or at all, at least not yet.

There is no GBA emulator for the DS or DSi because it simply doesn't have enough power to do it faster than perhaps 1 frame per second. However, on the DS and Lite, you can get a slot-2 device to run GBA games natively on the system at full speed. On the DSi of course this is impossible since it doesn't have a GBA slot.

SNES emulation is not going to be better than the PSP's. It will be faster in general, since the SNES emulators for the DS use hardware rendering rather than the software rendering used by the ones for the PSP, but they are graphically inaccurate and their compatibility is lacking. You'd be much better off figuring out how to get the emulator for your PSP running better (I know there are ways to get it to only need 1 frameskip for most games, but I don't know what those ways are).

Running NES games on a DS is simple - download NES DS, put it on your card along with your *.nes games, launch nesDS.nds, and choose the game to play. Same with Gameboy and Gameboy Color games, using the Lameboy emulator and *.gb/*.gbc files, and same for Genesis games using jEnesisDS. For GBA, assuming you have the slot-2 EZ-Flash 3in1 expansion pack (the most popular slot-2 addon device), you would launch the GBA ExpLoader software to load a GBA game from your slot-1 microSD card to the 3in1, then launch the game. For SNES, you'd download SNEmulDS, put "snemul.cfg" on the root of your card, put the games in a folder called "SNES" on the root of your card, launch SNEmulDS.nds, and choose the game to play.

So in short, NES and GB and GBC and Genesis games are all entirely playable. GBA games are playable if you get a DS Lite and a slot-2 device to run them. SNES is lacking.

[pundy14]

MAD! thanks for your help DanTheManMS! I think i'll get me a cheap DSlite for now then and wait for further advancements with the DSi. I'm excited to see what Nintendo do next with their hand help gaming consoles! i would definitely like to see their DSiWare have down loadable games from GBA - GBC etc. Think that would be a good move for nintendo.

Thanks mate,

[MinDS]

MAD! thanks for your help DanTheManMS! I think i'll get me a cheap DSlite for now then and wait for further advancements with the DSi. I'm excited to see what Nintendo do next with their hand help gaming consoles! i would definitely like to see their DSiWare have down loadable games from GBA - GBC etc. Think that would be a good move for nintendo.

Thanks mate,

dnt think that will ever happend