Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Emulation (Games) Nintendo Games

GBA Emulator Released For the DSi 66

Busshy writes "Darkchen has released a Gameboy Advance emulator for the Nintendo DS/DSi that plays full speed with frameskip. This can only be played with the homebrew dev cart, the DS iPlayer. The emulator adds save states, cheats and tools to GBA games, and for DSi Fans the ability to finally get over the loss of the GBA Slot on the DSi."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

GBA Emulator Released For the DSi

Comments Filter:
  • Re:Not for the DSi (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20, 2009 @12:10PM (#29483245)

    Except that the summary says it works for the DS as well. Ergo, the thing in your hand could be a DS, not a DSi.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20, 2009 @12:22PM (#29483297)

    As the iplayer has one of these in it:

    http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tms320dm6441.pdf

    As the DS isn't quite powerful enough to play video (2 cpu's 100MHz, 4MB of RAM), they put a decoder chip on board a flash cart. This is decoded into the 16MB included in the cart and then displayed on the DS screen. I had previously assumed that it wouldn't be that useful for much else due to traffic being one way only.

    As a developer of the Linux port to the DS (http://www.dslinux.org) I am very interested to see if an X server or similar could be run on the iplayer cpu, leaving the DS cpu to handle wifi/touchscreens etc.

    It's important to note that this is an unofficial development (darkchen admits to acquiring the SDK through not the normal methods). The iPlayer team are quite proud of the fact that their cartridge is one of the few that doesn't allow piracy. Having a GBA emulator goes against this.

  • by TSPhoenix ( 1367187 ) on Sunday September 20, 2009 @12:44PM (#29483419)

    Lameboy DS seems to work fine.

  • by bmecoli ( 963615 ) on Sunday September 20, 2009 @12:46PM (#29483425)
    Lameboy [nutki.com] seems to work pretty well. I played it with Link's Awakening DX and it runs at a solid 60FPS.
  • Re:nitpick (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20, 2009 @01:00PM (#29483507)

    Technically, both claims are correct. I guess the question is whether or not frame skipping is required to achieve full speed emulation. If so, then then the original commenter is correct in that it is not really full speed emulation.

  • Re:nitpick (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20, 2009 @01:16PM (#29483587)

    No, that is fast forward. Frameskip is for keeping the game at a playable speed either through manual or automatic dropping of frames.

    I suggest that YOU learn the terminology before you start accusing others of ignorance.

  • Re:nitpick (Score:4, Informative)

    by ZosX ( 517789 ) <zosxavius.gmail@com> on Sunday September 20, 2009 @01:30PM (#29483651) Homepage

    From the looks of the video its frameskipping like hell. Emulation doesn't get good until it is as smooth as the original.

    The core they are running this on is an arm9. I'd be willing to bet they could get it up to 100% with some optimization. The original GBA was only a 33mhz arm. The music doesn't seem quite right tho.....

  • by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Sunday September 20, 2009 @02:31PM (#29483995) Homepage Journal

    If the DS can natively play GBA games, is the DSi any different, besides the lack of the GBA slot?

    For one thing, GBA games expect 0x08000000-0x09FFFFFF to be the Game Pak ROM. DSi appears not to have anything in that address space. Instead, as I understand it, DSi has extra RAM in 0x02400000-0x02FFFFFF and an SD card slot.

The universe is an island, surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes.

Working...