The State of DS Emulation

The Nintendo DS has to be one of the toughest consoles to emulate. Tune in to this one to really understand what options you have for this console.
0:00 Intro
0:14 Phat DS
3:00 DS Lite
4:16 DSi
7:47 Melon DS
16:56 Desmume
20:29 Retroarch
24:22 Wii U
28:12 3DS
32:24 Delta
39:28 Retroarch again
DS games on the 3DS video
• Guide: DS Games on a M...
Making Wii U injections video
• Add Wii & GameCube Gam...

[@godpuu4093]

Hey guys so looks like I will be making a part 2 for this video to talk about multiplayer options and the android side of things including drastic. Just because it seems like there’s enough interest in these topics.

[@PhyA52]

The "Android side" is likely the biggest side of emulation for the DS. A missed opportunity for sure, but an even better opportunity for a second video. Nice work, btw.

[@pilcrow182]

Yeah, Android has quite a few options, though there are three big ones. First, Retroarch, which has existed on Android for a long time. Second, MelonDS, which works very well on mid- to high-end devices, is pretty accurate, and has a lot of great options, but it definitely gets some stutter and slowdown on budget devices. And last, DraStic, which is kind of the ZSnes of DS emulation: not very hardware-accurate, essentially a collection of *hacks* that gets the games running, but they've tackled a lot of stuff so compatibility is still fairly high and it runs on a freaking 10-year-old potato. 😆

[@SpeedyGwen]

I personally wouldnt even have brought up ios but thanks to a recent lawsuit, they are now obligated to allow emulation on their devices so its intresting, but I do think that android always been the definitive way of emulating on smartphone because of how much u can do anything u want without having to jailbreak the device, just being able to make ur own programs and manualy compile them and run them on ur phone without anything stoping u is something I generally need as a base function as a dev myself

[@nirgunawish]

no matter what i search for on mercari it always gives me 0 results and none of the filters do anything in the Related section

[@hb-robo]

Important note: The MelonDS core on RetroArch is pretty much fine, but what you really want is "MelonDSDS", which is a rewritten core that's in line with standalone. It has the dumbest name you could possibly imagine and that makes it confusing, but it should be in the current build of RetroArch by default.

[@TheNawaf258]

And melon ds also works with bizhawk

[@SeaSlug]

DAM you didn't even talk about how you can connect to nintendo wi-fi / wiimmfi on melon DS to play online vs other melon DS people, or too real DS.

[@ultimatebreak827]

How do I do that on a modern router?

[@megamix5403]

I didn't even knew that loo

[@StarmenRock]

​@@ultimatebreak827most modern routers have a guest network, I recommend you to use it instead of setting a worse security for your main wifi

[@TheVindicitive]

​@@ultimatebreak827 you don't

[@ultimatebreak827]

@@TheVindicitive actually melon ds lets you connect automatically so that’s great!

[@TheVindicitive]

There's nothing illegal about modding your own console

[@hb-robo]

Thank you, I swear people are getting dumber about this stuff every passing week. I'm sure Nintendo would love for that to be true but come on, it's yours!

[@godpuu4093]

I never said it was illegal to mod a console. What I said is that isn’t legal to download the Wii U titles that were available on the shop.

[@exotericidymnic3530]

modding your console is exactly as illegal and immoral as piracy and repairing your console (according to ifixit this has a specific carveout for repairing broken optical drives, newly added a few years ago), since they are prohibited by the same law (DMCA). Make your own conclusion.

[@kevinwong_2016]

​@@exotericidymnic3530 tf are you talking about💀

[@hb-robo]

@@exotericidymnic3530 Equating immorality with illegality is a good way to broadcast that you are a complete rube.

[@JumpyKaput]

tbh im more worried aabout the state of 3ds emulation

[@ykjali]

its honestly in a great state. More and more devices are being able to emulate 3DS at 4X

[@robmalcolm8042]

Yeah everyone says how great it is and it's not bad on my s24 ultra the biggest issue which pushed me to get a new 3ds is stability. All citra forks keep using too much ram and eventually this causes crashes after long game periods. And then the audio later on can start lagging even with good performing drivers.

[@Stravioska]

@@robmalcolm8042 best thing i did was buying a new 3ds xl, i can emulate most of my games so is fire

[@ToonyTails]

@@robmalcolm8042Why not just use the official Citra APK then? It’s not hard to find at all.

[@based980]

rip citra ;-;

[@thechugg4372]

Honestly Melon DS is a godsend, came out of nowhere and surprised everyone how advanced it was without having to deal with Desmume and its issues

[@robmalcolm8042]

Try noods. That's the best one for me. If it ever gets dsi emulation and the other features melon has it can overtake it. Melon music is lower than noods and noods doesn't have graphical glitches in the ds pokemon game intros where as I've seen glitches in melon, drastic and desmume. Noods plays the pokemon games just as well as my 3ds.

[@kitestar]

I still avoid Desmume like the plague because melon exists

[@robmalcolm8042]

@kitestar yeah. So far noods is the best in my testing and I've tried all. Desmume was supposed to be the most accurate and idk where that info came from cause it always had graphical glitches on pokemon ds games to this day. Noods is the only one out of all of them that renders those soulsilver and diamond intros as good as a real ds. Seem another post where they said they played one of those music games for ds that need good input lag and only noods was able to allow the game to played without inputs messing up. So that shows noods is the most accurate.

[@kitestar]

@@robmalcolm8042 I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for noods then

[@Cacodevidro432]

What about Drastic? (Its waaay too optimized, and thats good)

[@Theinvalidmusic]

I desperately wish at least one DS emulator would let you assign your screens to separate monitors. I have a drawing tablet sitting under my main monitor that would be perfect for the DS's bottom screen / stylus input, but no DS emulator I have tried seems to implement this :(

[@Pasquer515]

Hey! If you have iPhone or iPad delta uses melonds but it has an option to screencast the top screen!

[@robmalcolm8042]

I've seen that for android too if you use melon thru retroarch. Nothing too unique. Especially on apples side.

[@christianr.5868]

@@robmalcolm8042really? You can cast a single screen through android?

[@robmalcolm8042]

@christianr.5868 yeah. I seen a 3 year old post for emulation on android on reddit that talks about someone doing it. And that was a older way I'm sure now it's easier by now. Android is even easier actually cause you can do it with almost anything while apple usually is done with mostly apple devices. Not sure why people act like only apple can do things android always has done lol. I also have a iphone 13 so I'm not biased in choices but i definitely prefer android.

[@ToonyTails]

Ok so I know this technically isn’t og DS emulation, but Citra for 3DS emulation allows you to do just that by allowing you to render both screens in separate windows!

[@brunocar02]

I like this video but its SO lacking: No mention of DraStic, melonDS is low end? what? no, no mention of the melon DS DS core?

[@Swampert_Tube]

0:52 it actually means Developer System

[@gia4169]

I was looking for a comment that would mention this lol

[@Poyomini]

I think it's supposed to mean both Dual Screen and Developer System at the same time

[@Martyste]

While Desmume has great complex tools for things such a TASes or LUA scripting to do all kinds of wild things with the games ( see how pro MKDS players record their ghost replays in HD ), it falls short in performance and accuracy. Modern desktops can put up with Desmume in high res nowadays but 5-8 years ago it wasn't very accessible to the point where Gamecube emulation was less taxxing. The software rendering is also inaccurate to real hardware, and appears to be just as bad as the official DS emulator found in the Wii U. Hardware anti-aliasing is missing and polygon vertices aren't snapping to pixels like the PS1 would do. MelonDS also features more accurate sound emulation ( especially with interpolation turned off ) MelonDS has gone above and beyond in redoing DS emulation from scratch, to avoid messy decade old coding spaghetti, resulting in the absurdly fast performance we get out of it, even at ludicrous upscales. And thanks to the Melon can slowly push towards more things Desmume couldn't do and possibly phase it out of relevance in the following years. Desmume will mostly be kept around by TASers and scripters or even folks trying to figure out a game's inner workings by examining the memory. It will remain as the technical emulator, sorta. Lastly, MelonDS is more convenient to use alongside real hardware. Not only both can communicate with eachother via Wimmfii (MelonDS doesn't require a WEP compatible router to connect online! ), but it stores savefiles in the same format used by most DS linkers or the DSi's Twilight Menu, so transferring saves and making backups is very straightforward compared to Desmume's DSV format requiring you to tinker.

[@Falsechicken]

Yeah I have recently run into the benefits of having the save format being the same when swapping my save between my 2DS and my phone.

[@Enzed_]

I hate dsv saves good thing drastic on android has the option to change the save type.

[@SomehowScarlet]

nearly all dsvs in my experience are the exact same as savs, just with a different extension (and dsv files don't have "SPSS data file" as their MIME type); you can just rename it and it'll be perfectly fine much like every other emulator's save file extensions also the modern way of making a tas or lua script is by using the melonds core on bizhawk because tastudio is extremely good the new kirby squeak squad tas was made with that, and it actually loses some time over desmume and wii u from accurate load times

[@Enzed_]

@@SomehowScarlet yeah but renaming is a pain when you have a lot of games and transfer saves between different devices running different emulators. One reason I use retroarch is because the saves are all the same srm format and changing a core would still allow me to continue the game.

[@alienxotic5028]

Huh? This whole time I thought Desmume was the most accurate

[@Jociozama]

If you think that emulation on iOS is good, you can't imagine how it is on Android, since there are more emulators and customization options, it has all the advantages of emulating on iOS but without many of the disadvantages.

[@MikeSandersonVideos]

Drastic comes to mind

[@SwankyCheeze]

Great vid man, it’s been a while but glad to see you uploading again.

[@godpuu4093]

Thanks for the support !

[@LightspeedAdventurer]

1:08 The AGS-101 wasn't even out until almost a whole year after the DS released. Otherwise, great video! :D

[@HyperSonic1999orJTH]

Drastic seems to be more customisable than the options on IOS atm. Enable/disable any buttons you don't want, move and resize the two screens with no restriction, ability to save per-game screen/button settings, double the resolution and add screen filters. You won't need to spend much to get a good experience if you plan to make a video on it. Something like a prepaid or better if you want to use the cool looking scanline filter.

[@mikemallone3487]

Its a shame its not being developed anymore, its literally the most polished emulator I've ever used.

[@HyperSonic1999orJTH]

@@mikemallone3487 I believe after the yuzu incident, the creator decided he wanted to begin open-sourcing it sooner than he initially planned.

[@soulsolis3096]

DesMuMe was something I already hated especially when I got my gaming PC, literally the most unoptimized emulator for the DS that existed for way too long. When melonDS came out, I then became super happy and hopeful.

[@markhovscrch4050]

Damn I miss my 2009 DS Lite silver mom reward me for getting 'Best on Writing' as kid on pre-school.

[@HollowRick]

Pre school in 2009?.. I was 17 then.. jesus that makes me feel old 🧓🏻 😂

[@markhovscrch4050]

@@HollowRick I regret tossing the memory card, Acekard 2 flashcart, throwing the pokemon blue rescue team box somewhere, tear down the game itself loosing its value.

[@SeaSlug]

one of my favorite features of the DSi is changing the brightness by holding down select and then volume up and down. volume sliders kind of suck.

[@Diablange95]

Wow I didn't know that, I found it so painful to go to the main menu everytime, big thanks for that.

[@punishedhaidar]

That was a really great video, i can see you put a lot of work into it, congrats mate

[@stupidbluebird]

man i have been looking for a series of videos like this. i'd love to see a a video on the state of saturn emulation.

[@gluttonousmaximus9048]

What about MelonDS and DraStic on Android? One of my favorite DS titles, Kirby Super Star Ultra, unfortunately has FMV sequences completely destroyed by DraStic due to bugs and that's not going to be addressed per the dev, while Melon deals with it beautifully. The big issue with Melon on Android seems to be power requirement, as RK3566 can't run it well at all.

[@noireisbest6786]

OpenEmu for the Mac is similar to RetroArch, it's DS core, DesMuME does allow for screen rotation. I haven't played around with DS emulation much but at least for Mac users OpenEmu should be considered.

[@ImElekid]

awesome video, very high quality man

[@larry-xs6uh]

Will you be doing a state of wii emulation that would be a really cool video as well also i liked how you went into detail of the different finctions and features the original consoles have

[@narin26nn_]

really cool video, even though you missed the upscaling and widescreen patches that are available on a modded 3DS, or the analog input one too, cool stuff. Btw, it would be great an episode about the N64👍

[@Chrisezo]

The only thing missing from these emulators on PC, is to have the second screen actually be able to be moved to a second screen kind of like how Citra lets you do it, so that if you have systems like the Ayaneo Flip DS, that you can fully take advantage of the dual screens, without having to mess around with any mirroring software or anything that lets you copy a section of the screen, like the current Ayaneo Flip DS youtubers have needed to do in order to get a close enough feeling for DS game emulation. The other thing that I would say I would want to see out of these emulators, is to see how analog stick functionality can be modded into the ROMS, kind of like how Twilight and its hacks let you use the 3DS circlepad for some games, and it actually feels more natural than using the DPad for some 3D games.

[@HollowRick]

Agreed I have a duel monitor set up that are stacked like the DS It would be amazing if I could do that

[@urmanascrewed]

Great video! My preferred emulation feature that isn't in desmume but was in the recent versions of the 3DS emulator Citra (R.I.P.) is having a screen layout of two separate windows. My gaming setup is a laptop with a monitor above, so I just have the top screen on my monitor and the bottom on my laptop both in fullscreen. It feels like I am playing on a big DS, but also console-like as I use a controller. Otherwise, I hotkey toggle screen layout and I am switching between the top screen and vertical layouts.

[@deadmetalbr]

Display scaling for DS and GBA games on 3DS is considerably blurrier than the original hardware. DSi XL + Twilight Menu and GBARunner 2 is where it's at. Integer scaling with pixels so sharp they could cut you.

[@nxx99]

Correction: Planet Puzzle league has a setting for screen rotation, allowing you to play the game without tilting the DS to the side

[@JustAnotherEevee]

really really great video ❤

[@PH96Official]

*Great well-researched video overall,* however I wish to correct you on one incorrect piont Chrono Trigger DS can be controlled by the face buttons... it's not just a touch screen only game.

[@brisslayer-6519]

A little section in the video dedicated to emulation handhelds like the Miyoo Mini+ would be great to see, too. The DS consoles especially are a strange case where there isn't a great option in this regard yet, so discussing the possible options that do exist would be neat.

[@belstar1128]

with upscaling ds games are there any moments when 2d objects are too small ? like i noticed this when i play old pc games designed for 768p or 800x600 or 480p on my 4k monitor. so i wonder if this is a problem with games on the ds that are way lower resolution and were not programmed with different resolutions in mind .

[@StevenUlyssesPerhero]

On the subject of MelonDS not letting you bind touch screen inputs to a controller: Steam Input is my workaround for that. I have MelonDS in my Steam library as a non-Steam game, and I have a desktop configuration for Steam Input where when I rest my thumb on the PS5 controller's touchpad, the gyroscope moves my cursor, and the R2 button acts as left-click. I find this works perfectly well for DS games that use both buttons and the touch screen, like Mega Man Star Force.

[@Leonardo19211]

Excelente investigación, no sabía que se podía usar los stick para emular el toque en la pantalla táctil en retroarch Me veré los otros videos de esta temática en tu canal

[@roberto1519]

Great coverage, I'm not a DS expert, but I do emulate it for quite some time and it's nice to see a comparison like this. The Retroarch remarks were unnecessary, though, the emulator and the community behind it is great, it did have a few issues many years ago, from one or two individuals that aren't even part of the devs team any longer, but as you said, emulating the DS is best using it, because the devs went the extra mile to fine tune the core, and this obviously isn't limited to the DS cores, right? In any case, I enjoyed the video a lot!

[@DattMann]

You can upscale DS games on the Wii U if you're willing to fiddle with the settings

[@tinoesroho]

you can install custom scaling filters on the 3DS - in addition to playing 3D original DS games in wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidescreen, if that's your fancy

[@jebaena91]

I wonder if is posible to map the touch screen to a gyro controller, that way it can be a bit more intuitive to interact with some actions while keeping the precision need it

[@madaraman27]

Anyone here know why i cant save the game on soulsilver on melon ds ? I cant figure it out its very frustrating

[@mak_707]

TWPatch for 3ds Twilight menu lets you patch ds games to get sharper image.

[@Pledditor]

PSA: Most computer monitor stands allow you to rotate into portrait mode. Fixes the blackbars in DS emulation

[@manamaster6]

I love Drastic on Android, I paid for the full version years ago and I don't regret it, I even bought an iPega Red Knight controller just to play DS games vertically with physical controllers and touchscreen.

[@tipsy634]

Youve probably been corrected but the Phat DS had two FRONTLIT screens. The AGS-101 was backlit, however, that console did not hit markets until the time of the DS's release, so not many people experienced one before the NDS. I've never seen an AGS-101 in european retro game stores. With the DS Lite they finally made the screens backlit. I got my pink phat in november 2005. I was more than a little jealous when my sister recieved a fancypants DS Lite for Christmas 2006.

[@DarkBowser64]

Just here to provide a correction. The original DS did have backlit screens. This has been proven already by a video by Makho if you look it up. The only thing is that it has "transflective" backlit screens, not "transmissive" which is what most screens are nowadays. Nintendo wanted to have their cake and eat it too, so they had a combination of the two reflective and transmissive types. This is why you can actually see the screen when you turn off the backlight in a game that lets you toggle the backlight off on the DS, like Super Mario 64 DS, but on a DS Lite, it's just plain black unless you shine a REALLY bright light on it to just barely see. You can also tell because there isn't tons of light in front of the image giving it a tint like the AGS-001 which actually is frontlit and you can see the lights bordering it. To tell the difference, think back to the non-lit Game Boys that required ambient light. Those were reflective. Light comes from in front of the screen, goes through it and hits the reflector in the back, to bounce the light back into your eyes. Transmissive screens require light coming from the back and are almost entirely unusable in strong ambient light. Transflective is a hybrid between the two, which allows for light to come from the back AND the front to light the pixels. It has a light that comes from the back as well as a reflective layer for light to come in and reflect off of, working similarly to a one-way mirror. If you go outside into bright sunlight, you'll still see the screen because that's when the reflector in the back has gotten enough light to overpower the relatively dim backlight. The reason the DS looks so awkward and washed out is simply due to the maturity of transflective screens at the time, as well as the price for a higher quality one. There are better looking backlit transflective LCDs with much nicer colors out there nowadays, but they aren't common.

[@tipsy634]

@@DarkBowser64 Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realise it was actually backlit because it looked so similar to the GBA's screen and dissimilar to the DS Lite's screen, but this explains why I had a much easier time playing the DS at night whereas the GBA was always funky looking.

[@ABlob]

Something you failed to mention is that OpenGL in MelonDS can't reproduce some effects like outlines or shading on models properly. You can notice it the most in Sonic Colors DS where Sonic's outline disappears on OpenGL and his shading is less accurate on the result screen. Software Mode fixes this, but can't increase the resolution, so you're stuck with the original internal resolution. Also, integer scaling is important, uneven pixel art looks really ugly if you play it on a smaller window and then play it with a slightly stretched resolution. Make sure to increase and decrease window sizes in the options tab (instead of manually scaling it by dragging the corners of the window).

[@Seamed]

Nintendo has stated that DS stands for "developer system", not necesarily "dual screen" Nintendo handhelds have had stereo sound since the gameboy, you just needed headphones before, even the original gameboy has "stereo sound" writen next to the dox matrix label on the screen

[@jsn593]

37:35 you can long press on each game and set the skin overlay to that specific game. That way you don't switch the skins for every game all the time and can use multiple of your favorite skins . Which is good for those who like the many creative skin designs rather than just sticking to one skin.

[@godpuu4093]

That’s neat !

[@julianx2rl]

You can also get a drawing tablet to make touch screen inputs.

[@BigBoyAdvance]

You should have mentioned Bizhawk which uses MelonDS core but comes with many quality of life features such as ability to bind savestate/loadstate to controller, lua support, tastudio, ram watch, etc.

[@alyj8606]

You actually are able to upscale DS games on the Wii u it just requires manually doing a simple edit in a text file, though higher resolutions can lag. I played through Mario hoops on my Wii u and it was awesome :)

[@exmerion]

The best way to emulate DS games is with a 7-8 inch sub 100$ tablet paired with a BSP D8 controller playing in portrait mode. Big double screens and decent touch screen with good battery life and fast forward/save states.

[@Browniedays]

What about DrasTic? It's very optimized and it has a great performance for my Tablet with SD662 while MelonDS lagged a lot.

[@Cacodevidro432]

Yes

[@Xmanant03_Mr03]

Melon DS brought back gaming memories on the DS for me

[@Jake76667]

i’ve been using my steam deck oled to play ds games on it and they work really well because of the built in track pads

[@cyclonmaster]

The best nds emulator Drastic & no$gba is missing.

[@trxsboy]

you forgot to say, the new 3ds has the ability to use the CPAD on ds games and with legit widescreen, also you can patch a filter that reduces the total blurriness from games

[@robmalcolm8042]

Really you can get rid of the blurriness in nds bootstrap?

[@TILR]

Rip no mention of the DSi XL or it’s giant extra stylus, also the DSi systems had better WiFi connectivity, a downloadable web browser, system updates, DSi Enhanced DS Games like Pokémon White Version (and Black Version), and the best thing of them all…a rainbow pen option in pictochat. But it was locked out of any DS combo games that added functionality to the games by plugging in an accessory into the GBA slot which included the original DS Internet Browser. Oh and for some reason the DS systems couldn’t play GB or GBC games from the GBA slot

[@MagnaLynx21]

Its the 3DS for me, with dumping possible from 3DS homebrew, the 3DS allows you to have the entire Nintendo handheld library on one console.

[@CapTVchilenaShootingStarMax]

Nice history! I remember playing Pokémon Diamond/Pearl in NO$GBA in 2007. The initial versions were very tough to run. My computer (a crappy 2.66 GHz Celeron D) ran the game at around 30% outside, and 100% in battle, with dips during move animations.

[@The-m4n-f3m]

Okay but what about the home menu?

[@STRONTIumMuffin]

Retroarch meldonDS core is my goto way to play ds games on my pc or retroid pocket 4 pro or on my phone. Especially because of the retroacheivement support.

[@Wiziliz]

The buttons on the Phat DS are so much more preferable for Mario Kart compared to the lite's

[@LandonEmma]

Delta uses melonds I think, just very very very modified.

[@JoaoLuiz-ro6wy]

amazing video

[@PKMNwww411_MkII]

Absolute position mode.would've been a nice feature.

[@dasme8210]

I'd say between the DS and 3DS, the former is harder to emulate mostly because DS games tend to really utilize both screens most 3DS games use the touch screen for inventory management or as an extended UI so switching between the two screens is less cumbersome,. There are also ton of really good DS games and while yes the 3DS has a good library too I do feel like its a fair bit smaller than the DS.

[@robmalcolm8042]

Yeah I agree. Playing through the 3ds pokemon games and I'm not too mad I missed them before. The ds ones and gba and prior are much better. They made it too easy. For gen 6 and 7 I literally turn off exp share and lucky egg because you already get experience just from catching pokemon and when you switch you get full exp. I know it's worse gen 8 and up starting with the let's go games cause you can't even turn any of that off. So I can imagine how bad evs and ivs are in later games.

[@stoic8761]

But ds games are 2d 😂

[@DaisakoKunandra]

It would be really nice to have a Wii U gamepad as a controller and screen for your computer.

[@animetodamaximum]

DS lite having a right hand bias sucked as every time I pull the stylus out I have to swap hands and that kinda sucked while on the move.

[@MIDNITE69]

Actually DS originally stood for developer's system, but everyone kept referring to it as dual screen so that kind of stuck over time.

[@timotheatae]

Untrue; it was originally, officially both.

[@ionpeen]

3DS is the way to go. Same form factor, more power, the circle pad, online function (yes, I know melonDS can also work online), and you can patch TWiLight to run DS games at the widescreen aspect ratio the 3DS has which I’m surprised you didn’t mention in this video. The only downside is the scaling will make text more blurry but personally I never notice it

[@Jackpkmn]

It's worth noting that methods now exist to hack the DSi itself to do the same thing as the 3DS in terms of running DS games and DSiware off the SD card. So if you still have a DSi or DSi XL you can do that. I wish I hadn't sold mine back in the day 🙃

[@KapitanKaos]

*_Drastic_* for Android is such a good emulator, you can have a custom layout and settings for each game, you can move the screens anywhere, you can map the bottom screen to one of your joysticks, and it just has a really good performance, even on low end devices (even with upscaling!). The only downside is that it's a paid app.

[@TheRealHedgehogSonic]

The only thing holding me back from melonDS is that it doesn't have RetroAchievements.

[@jmtradbr]

I remember playing a lot of DS on No$GBA. It was very fast for my poor PC back then.

[@Ryan-Bell]

Retroarch on iOS is easily the goat if you’ve got one of those controllers like the backbone one which attach onto the phone. Beautiful picture quality on an oled screen that you can configure however you want by playing around with shaders for the lcd look and get a crisp interger scaled look, and on top of that, you have a touchscreen that is nice to use. That combined with retroarch’s per game settings and such is so powerful. Shaders really do it for me though. Want it to look like the original phat model DS’s screen for early DS titles? You can do that, dim lcd image with motion blur and all. Want it to look like the DS lite? You can do that as well. Want it to look like your specific DS console that your cousin gave you with an extremely washed out screen? I don’t know why you’d want to, but you can even do that as well.

[@agentbuckshot4697]

Once we finally get the source code for Drastic that should help a lot with improving DS emulation as a whole.

[@flink1231]

I use a wacom pen to control my ds emulation touch screen. Good stuff.

[@SansINess53]

Melon DS is good but tbh, drastic is clearly better

[@opp2334]

MelonDS has a TOGGLE FPS LIMIT hotkey. It does the same thing as Desmume TOGGLE FAST FORWARD.

[@sleeprhit]

8:35 You can connect a DualShock 4 to your PC and the built-in touchpad will act similarly to how a trackpad does on a laptop, giving you the ability to move the cursor and left click from the comfort of your controller. In my experience, there's not even any additional setup to it; you just connect the controller and the touchpad is automatically recognized. Now this still won't be the ideal way to play DS games by any stretch and not everyone owns one of these controllers, but for emulating on a PC, the touchpad is almost as good as using a mouse if you can get used to it. This also means MelonDS and DeSmuME can now actually be enjoyed on a TV, and despite using a Sony-branded controller the experience feels much more natural this way compared to mapping touch-related functions to a control stick. Currently, I'm not able to vouch for how well the PS5's DualSense works in this regard, but since those controllers also feature a touchpad I don't see why using one shouldn't work just as well as its predecessor.

[@SpeedyGwen]

I never liked nor understood retroarch, its a totally different ui to what am used to, I always been used to programs on pc and things like dsmume or cemu or dolphin, so retroarch always been incredibly alien to me and I still have no idea of how to use it, its just not enjoyable for me

[@TuffleG]

Ds emulation needs a transfer feature for some games preferably with an actual console

[@SpeedyGwen]

for emulating on smartphones, I used to try to emulate gba and nds on my Iphone 4s back in 2015 and nds emulation run like absolute garbage back then tho not long after I got a samsung j5 2016 and seeing what I could do without having to jailbreak it, I fell in love with android and emulation, I didnt do much nds emulation on it but I did a LOT of n64 emulation I crently have a xiaomi mi 11i which is a Monster of performances, it can emulate the gamecube and wii flawlessly and can even emulate the nintendo switch practically perfectly for most games, and I got this phone for around 300€ as a refurbished model, its absolutely perfect for gaming tho I find nds emulation to be really bad personally as it runs meh on pc and doesnt run well on smarthpones, u get better perfomances when emulation the gamecube than when emulation the nds... which makes sense with how the nds gpu and cpu works as its verry different compared to modern hardware (I used to make nds homebrew for a while before getting a 3ds)

[@voicedjohn]

Surface Duo is the one to go!! Not cheap or easy to find, but definitely is the closest to perfection

[@retroman--]

I started playing DS games on my Note 3 way back when. Playing Zelda Phantom Hour was amazing. You need a stylus. Which the Note has of course and it worked great. Now I use my New 3ds XL to play DS games. But I hate the slight blur thinking about buying a dsi xl

[@robmalcolm8042]

The best emulator is noods its a bit newer but it emulates the ds pokemon games intros when it shows towns correctly. Melon, drastic and desmume all have graphical glitches in those parts when it shows ekcuteak and another town in diamond. Noods emulates it just like my 3ds. Also I believe the ds emulators have higher compatibility than 3ds if your using nds games digitally cause thats only thru nds bootstrap which can't play every nds game. 3ds is only native playback for nds if you use a actual nds cart of flashcart.

[@retroman--]

@@robmalcolm8042 Thanks for mentioning noods, if I ever run into any issues with Drastic I'll give that a shot.

[@morrowlterraslove]

When delta had released I did play through the entirety of FFIV and SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny (a remake), and on retroarch I did a Solo run of SaGa 1 in Wonderswan on my phone but I’m skeptical about how on earth I could play the Mario and Luigi games due to the gimmicks and wish 3DS emulation (without a paywall cuz nice one guys) is on iOS cuz I felt bored with FE Awakening on my computer

[@leonoliveira8652]

You REALLY didn't talk about DraStic? There's even a retroarch core of it for Single Board Computers running on ARM chips, like the Raspberry Pi. Also, I'm almost sure on Retroarch you can rotate the resolution of your screen to "vertical" because of some arcade games. So, it might not be a core configuration, but a retroarch configuration, or a per game one.

[@retroman--]

For pc emulation...retroarch is my favorite for all systems. Shaders are very important to me and they are incredible on Retroarch. But it does take time to learn all it's features. It's well worth it.

[@sylvercritter]

waiting for the day where you can use your phone or tablet or steam deck as a second screen on an emulator from your desktop

[@x149te]

DS on 3DS now available do widescreen, even use Gyro for some games (Metroid for example). Guys adding action replay codes that adding additional controlls support of 3DS in DS games. For me it's superior way to play DS games.

[@AlbertoCiarrocca]

what about a homebrew DSi XL? Nothing beats that

[@ConcasicoWoodworks]

I'm interested in knowing about the current state of original xbox emulation. I think I haven't heard anyone talking about it.

[@godpuu4093]

Good idea

[@Rayu25Demon]

good video, it's sad you skipped the topic drastic emulator of android and retro handhelds

[@igorgiuseppe1862]

honeslty, customizing the gap between the screens and the input issue may be very easy to do. its an open source emulator, so if you know a bit of coding you probably can do that... i would try if i was not busy with my own projects, and burried in debts so i cant work for free >.> nor charge for an feature that im not completely sure i would be able to implement.

[@ImSumGuy]

You mention the ability to make the Metroid game into a "twin-stick shooter" which is technically true if you take the words literally, but that term actually refers specifically to a genre of game which Metroid Prime is not a part of. It refers to top-down perspective games where one stick controls the character and the second rotates and shoots simultaneously (ie. rotating in these games always shoots). These originated as arcade games but function better on the analog sticks of console games. Because "twin-stick shooter" is a genre of game separate from analog-controlled fps games, I wanted to be sure you know for future videos

[@Yogarpg]

RetroArch have RetroAchievements too, for me is awesome

[@TwilightWolf032]

You know what would be great? If we could use the DS itself as a controller for the emulators on computers! "If you have a DS then what do you need an emulator for?", one might ask, to which I respond: "Game preservation, customization beyond what Nintendo allowed, randomizers and all the extras that emulation allows, just with a controller suited for the task. Like using a Wii Remote for Dolphin."

[@dingus451]

I wish I could do that too. You can still have stuff like game mods and customizability with a ds flash cart like a r4 or tt ds. And you don't have to modify the console to make it work. But you can't use rewind or save states either so full compatibility with og hardware with an emulator would be killer.

[@kechidonick]

You can do that with a 3DS and ArticBase / Citra

[@SpeedyGwen]

for running nds games on the 3ds, the best way of doing it us by using an R4 flash card as it can have real time save states, but its still Extremly bad in my opinion as ur stuck at the original resolution and it runs in a nds mode which means u dont have any of the 3ds features... on the 3ds, being able to go and open the web browser or take notes in the notes app while playing a game is what makes it truly amazing in games, it can be as multitask as a phone or a pc when playing games compared to most game consoles and its amazing, tho not being able to do that when running nds games is one of the reasons why I dont play many nds games anymore, also, many nds games have an improved verssion on the 3ds with extra content and better graphism, and the 3ds being able to emulate the n64 and ps1, it makes the 3ds an amazing system, tho it lacks on running nds games not much better than a nintendo ds

[@RonneB.Official]

What about the state of DSi ware games emulation?

[@joesterling4299]

They're not high-resolution models. They're polygonal models. They get rendered in real time to the frame-buffer's resolution. When, say, a triangle is drawn on a screen with 16 times the resolution of the original, then the resulting shape onscreen will be that much sharper.

[@TheNawaf258]

I actually use desmume for recording