How to run old arcade games on Nintendo DS Lite

BeRNLeiGHToN

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Hi, I have a Nintendo DS Lite and would like to run on it old arcade games like Ms Pacman, Bomb Jack, Bagman, Marble Madness, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, Outrun...

I read about the DSTWO card and its ability to run MAME4ALL, I do have all of Mame 0.37b5 roms, however I do not own a DSTWO card and they seem to be sold by fortunes now on Ebay.

Is there any other card/way to run these kind of games on Nintendo DS Lite?

Thank you.
 

FAST6191

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https://gbatemp.net/threads/flubbas...s-plus-assorted-other-recent-homebrew.619739/ (second page being my links for everything else as that is where the discussion went) might have a few.

For the most part you will be told to find find the best console version (that is not the Amiga) and deal with that instead, though I will say there was a really nice marble madness homebrew homage on the DS (even supported the homebrew tilt sensors if you wanted to go that way)
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/Marble
Various other homebrew standalone games also recreate things there.
 
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Indy13

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R4

You can use MarcaDS & DS Pack to play Ms Pacman, Bagman, Galaxian & Donkey Kong
You can use BombJack DS to play BombJack

You'll find this here in the arcade section :
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/List_of_DS_homebrew_emulators


DSTwo

I've seen you're from Spain maybe the solution for you is
here
(not mine)

If you can get it, now you can install Mame4All :
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/Mame4All

Final Burn Alpha DSTwo :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/fba4dstwo.461008/
(Check the mediafire links)

For the fullset CPS1, CPS2 & few Cave games
you have to install dstwolinux :
http://www.mediafire.com/file/hrxuv9pwgllqm8x/DS2Linux%2BEOS%2Bboot.dat.rar/file

Once you did it, create a subfolder named "FBA" in the "GAME" folder and extract this in this folder :
https://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/dingoo.cgi?0,0,0,0,73,145

If your roms are heavy and don't work in .zip format convert them in .fba with this tool :
https://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/dingoo.cgi?0,0,0,0,73,151

Take a look on this thread for more infos
https://gbatemp.net/threads/dstwo-linux-beta1-0-release.339028/
 
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FAST6191

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Three main choices, maybe four.

1) Supercard DSone clones appear to be available again. Quality is dubious but the price is right to buy a few and hope one works.

2) An AK2i running AKAIO

3) One of the non timebomb R4 clones that runs the wood firmware (comes from the same people as AKAIO).

4) If you happened to find a late stage DS flash cart from one of the real teams (M3i, EZ5i and so forth) you would likely have a wonderful time. I would not necessarily seek one out over the other lot. Commercial games for some of those can be a bit iffy -- many things fell with the DSi and 3ds flash cart killer updates which also happened shortly before the last of the DS ROMs hit (Pokemon Conquest on up) so for those you might need the third party stuff. Same might be said for the DSTT/TTDS running ysmenu.

The only other flash carts to do any kind of enhanced flash cart homebrew were the iplayer (a supercard produced thing, dubious commercial abilities and enhanced homebrew amounts to a media player and a GBA emulator), the ISMM (a sanctioned clone of the iplayer but with the dstwo kernel ported to it, same media player and GBA emulator but also a copy of dingux, none of the fun homebrew beyond that though).
 
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BeRNLeiGHToN

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Three main choices, maybe four.

1) Supercard DSone clones appear to be available again. Quality is dubious but the price is right to buy a few and hope one works.

2) An AK2i running AKAIO

3) One of the non timebomb R4 clones that runs the wood firmware (comes from the same people as AKAIO).

4) If you happened to find a late stage DS flash cart from one of the real teams (M3i, EZ5i and so forth) you would likely have a wonderful time. I would not necessarily seek one out over the other lot. Commercial games for some of those can be a bit iffy -- many things fell with the DSi and 3ds flash cart killer updates which also happened shortly before the last of the DS ROMs hit (Pokemon Conquest on up) so for those you might need the third party stuff. Same might be said for the DSTT/TTDS running ysmenu.

The only other flash carts to do any kind of enhanced flash cart homebrew were the iplayer (a supercard produced thing, dubious commercial abilities and enhanced homebrew amounts to a media player and a GBA emulator), the ISMM (a sanctioned clone of the iplayer but with the dstwo kernel ported to it, same media player and GBA emulator but also a copy of dingux, none of the fun homebrew beyond that though).
Thank you, most of what you wrote, I don't understand... I'm very new to this... I hope to learn.

-The cards that you mentioned are still sold new in any online store, or only possible to be bought second hand?

I know it is probably too much to ask, but I wish what you wrote was not using so many words that I didn't understand, thank you in any case :)
 

JuanMena

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-The cards that you mentioned are still sold new in any online store, or only possible to be bought second hand?
Those cards are very old and most "official" manufacturers are no longer in business. You'll find them but probably will be clones of said cards. Either way, you could go to their website and check if they're still selling cards.


I know it is probably too much to ask, but I wish what you wrote was not using so many words that I didn't understand, thank you in any case :)
Don't worry, I too have to read 2 or 3 times his posts to understand... nah, just kidding... it's 5 times.
 

FAST6191

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You might find various ones second hand. For the most part it is not a bad thing for DS flash carts like it might be with a lot of other things -- for things in the DS slot there are rarely any batteries or things that wear out that can't just be cleaned and returned to use.

1) Supercard kind of stopped doing anything many years ago now. This is one reason why the DSTwo is so expensive (the other being its onboard processor that allows extra homebrew). It even meant their normal flash cart (the Supercard DS One) became hard to find. However more recently clones of them appeared https://gbatemp.net/threads/dsone-clones-appear-to-be-available-for-purchase.586226/ so there is that option.

2) Acekard made flash carts, however they released the code to allow others to do things for a bit so there ended up a user made kernel for it known as AKAIO. AKAIO had the best compatibility, the fastest and all manner of other nice things. To that end the Acekard 2i, also known as the AK2i, became one of the best flash carts to have. I have not checked in a while but I did see some new in shops in fairly recent times.

3) R4 was a flash cart early in the DS slot (as opposed to GBA slot) flash cart scene. It seemed to have the right blend of price, ease of use and capabilities that it became super super popular. So popular that "R4" became the term many referred to flash carts as (similar to how jailbreak these days means any hack as far as some people are concerned rather than a specific thing for Apple products). These flash carts with R4 in the name are known as R4 clones despite some not actually being clones of the R4 (you can actually get copies of the original R4 but don't). In more recent times it was seen to be popular to have the device read the system date and if it is beyond a certain date stop working, something known as timebomb. You can work around timebomb by setting the date on your DS or using another kernel that does not do that but easier to find one without the thing in the first place. Preferably one that also supports the Wood firmware, which is based on AKAIO discussed above and thus quite good.

4) There was way more than supercard, acekard and R4 doing DS flash carts. EZFlash (their last one being the EZ5i), M3 (whose thing was the basis for the R4 actually) with the M3i, ismart, team cyclops and many many more ( http://linfoxdomain.com/nintendo/ds?mode=stats is not complete but still good).
Many of these stopped being updated before the last DS ROMs got released so might not play every commercial game without further fiddling where the ones in 1), 2) and 3) above will. https://gbatemp.net/threads/ap-patch-preservation.477536/ can get things working. The usual cut off point where things stopped getting updates was also when they were blocked on DSi and 3ds, about the time pokemon conquest was released if you want to look at release lists http://advanscene.com/html/index.php
To that end if you found one of these later cards on a facebook group, vendor somewhere or whatever you could still run homebrew, most games, probably have some cheats and other nice features (the EZ5i for instance being one of the few things to compete with Supercard and even beat it in some cases when it comes to extra features).

Enhanced flash cart is a term the community uses to refer to things like the DSTwo. These are DS flash carts that rather than just play games actually had processors of their own onboard that homebrew could use to get extra power and do more than a normal DS. The DSTwo is the only example that really matters but there were two others that technically could do more, the ismart MM/ISMM with its port of Dingux (a version of Linux that has emulators built in, including some arcade stuff) being that.

I see now I have just done more words but hopefully it clears some things up. About the only other thing I would note is GBA slot stuff. There are some emulators that try to do GBA on DS slot flash carts (the DS slot is way too slow to do it natively) but they are only ever likely to be proof of concept rather than something you would want to use to play games. To that end if you want to run GBA ROMs and homebrew (and there are a lot of obscure emulators for the GBA that never made it to the DS) you will want a GBA slot flash cart. These days that mostly means find a EZFlash 3 in 1 and probably replace the battery (also mod the case if you want it to work on an original DS), an EZ4, EZ Omega, EZ Omega DE, or Everdrive GBA with the latter three being quite expensive (way more than the DSTwo that kicked this whole conversation off) but also very good.
 

BeRNLeiGHToN

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Superthanks.

Question: I believe not, but just to double check, can the MAME4ALL be installed in a DSONE clone card in any way?
 

FAST6191

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Sometimes pieces of homebrew will have a normal DS version (as opposed to DSTwo or DSi mode, or possibly extra RAM in the GBA slot) with less abilities but this does not appear to be the case here. The DSOne/scONE is just a normal flash cart running in DS mode, it has none of the extra processing abilities of the DSTwo.
 
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BeRNLeiGHToN

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I just snatched a second hand DSTWO + 16Gb microSD card for 27 euros which seems like a decent deal, since there are very few being sold, and most of those they were asking fortunes .

Any recommended step by step article with everything I need to do and install in order to make the most use of it? Including info on any updated firmware that I would have to upgrade in either the DS Lite or in the card
 
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FAST6191

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Decent deal? You are the envy of the forum for the next week or so (even a half decent 16 gig SDHC is about 10 Euros these days -- they are becoming old tech but some devices did not make the jump to SDXC so knowing they have you in a bind...)

Afraid I did not do much with the DSTwo.
http://eng.supercard.sc/manual/dstwo/ looks like it is still up and was generally more than suitable for task.

Plugins are like any other homebrew and you are left to whatever remains of old blogs, forum/front page posts, wikis and the like to sort out the DSTwo versions (if separate).

If it is for a DS lite then life is pretty easy. The DSi and 3ds with them blocking updates is where the "put it on the root of the card, turn it on and wait ? seconds" stuff tended to come in.
For GBA stuff we are probably still suggesting https://gbatemp.net/threads/tempgba-ndsgba-revival.343210/ over the bundled offering.
For SNES stuff there were some extra things.
DOS games if you are going there for arcade stuff has its own effort. http://dsx86.patrickaalto.com/ and you can see what it does (386 with a respectable amount of memory for a 386 setup, and dos4gw support).

Not sure where the DSTwo port of Dingux ended up -- it was originally ported from the various things it was aimed at to the ISMM but later redone for the DSTwo. It was never quite as polished as some dedicated homebrew but had some other options that dedicated did not (up to and including PS1 at "good enough for a turn based game maybe", and some stuff for the Amiga if you really tried) so might be worth investigating.
Indy13's post above has a bunch more good stuff in it.
 

Indy13

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@BeRNLeiGHToN you can start with this pack :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/list-of-all-emulators-for-ds.255764/page-6#post-9006093
Note : if you're using a DS Lite, you don't need the GW Simulator that is in the pack

Otherwise,
it's been a long time since I planned to redo a DSTwo pack including emulators, homebrews and DS2linux enough (see the tests I did a few years ago, I put the link at the end of the message), it's something I wanted for myself but also after discussing the subject a bit with @CrashMidnick in 2021, I've been very busy for the past two years and unfortunately haven't been able to do it yet, at the moment I'm in the process of changing housing so during the next three months, it's sure and certain that I won't be able to do it again, I don't want to put pressure on myself either but I'll try to do that in 2024 so to share it with the forum
But feel free to PM me if you need some infos

DS2linux emulators that can be launch on DS Lite and that I want to include in my next pack :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/dstwo-linux-beta1-0-release.339028/page-11#post-7579584
Note 2 : Considering that since this test series, @FluBBa and @wavemotion have developed emulators like NitroSwan, NGPDS and NINTV-DS which allow a much more efficient emulation on DS Lite, I will probably lighten the DS2linux part of my next pack a little

To finish here is the link of the page dedicated to the DSTwo of WikiTemp where you can find information to start :
https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/SuperCard_DSTWO
Note 3 : Once familiar with the information contained on the WikiTemp page, do not hesitate to look at the apps on Gamebrew, here:
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/List_of_all_DS_homebrew
 
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