How do I get started with homebrew, emulation, and more on my Nintendo DS Lite?

September 26, 2006 10:29 PM

How do I get started with homebrew, emulation, and more on my Nintendo DS Lite?

I own a Nintendo DS Lite. It's great fun. I would like to further its functionality though and experience using homebrew software and all the rest that comes with this (like playing music, movies, old NES games for example). So, how do I get started? What exactly do I need to purchase? I've been reading various things online about it for the past hour and have ended up here. I'm sure it wasn't a wrong turn either. The options are a little confusing. Are all these companies just offering the same thing? I'm looking for the simplest of ways to get started here. I don't feel like flashing my DS either.

posted by sjvilla79 to technology (10 comments total)

check out this site nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk

I havent tried the stuff for the DS, but I used to have GBA and this looks like something you might want to get.
It sounds like the flash carts I got for the GBA, you use the computer to copy stuff to the cart then the gameboy thinks the cart is a normal game cart and everything works fine. you can even put multiple games on one cart.
posted by Iax at 12:18 AM on September 27, 2006

Also check out this
posted by Iax at 12:21 AM on September 27, 2006

Check out Pocket Heaven's DS Shopping List. Lots more info about all this stuff at the wiki there, and lots of knowledgable people on the web boards.
posted by chuma at 6:01 AM on September 27, 2006

You need 2 things I believe.

Superpass 2 to cause the DS to boot off of the GBA slot, and a gba slot memory device (supercard, g6, m3).

I flashed my ds, so my experiences are slightly different, but I think the hardware is the same.

SO far I've used the Supercard CF and the Supercard Micro (not the lite).

Not bad, software is a bit twitchy, but I think that's to be expected. For info on them I use ScDev.
posted by Lord_Pall at 6:03 AM on September 27, 2006

Note quite out yet, but you might be interested in the DS-Extreme 4gb. (Can be found on other sites as well).

It lets you run homebrew without anything bulkier than a standard DS cart and has a USB port built into it.
posted by melt away at 6:18 AM on September 27, 2006

I've been looking into DS homebrew on and off for a while (I'm desperate to play the old SCUMM games on the go), and I've decided to wait for the the DS-Extreme 4Gb (note that that's giga-bit, so it's actually 512MB). Here's a review. It's a little pricey, and doesn't have the most storage, but it's so much more convenient. Looks like it'll be out next month.
posted by Sibrax at 7:14 AM on September 27, 2006

There is an excellent DS homebrew megathread over at SomethingAwful's games forum (don't let the SA name scare you away) here. Scroll down past the big ugly picture of Lowtax and you should be able to peruse the thread at your leisure. Tons of good info even in the opening few posts.

N.B. I haven't done any homebrewing with mine yet, so I cannot vouch for the specific info provided, but I can vouch for the overall quality of the info in on those forums.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 8:18 AM on September 27, 2006

Also, since the DS plays GBA games - AGI games on the GBA
posted by IndigoRain at 9:55 AM on September 27, 2006

DS-X looks great. Thanks for all your feedback.
posted by sjvilla79 at 4:11 PM on September 28, 2006

I got my DS-X. It's awesome.
posted by sjvilla79 at 2:56 PM on November 7, 2006