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."
nitpick (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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)
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.....
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The original GBA was 16MHz, not 33.
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I don't think it's that serious. You could probably drop quite a few frames and have a playable emulator. Back in ye olde days people would write games that were basically locked to the vertical blank interrupt. You'd have two buffers, one visible and one being drawn. Once you were done drawing you'd wait for a VBlank to come along and then flip the buffers when the change was invisible.
Someone should me a demo where he'd set the screen background color to white at the top of the screen then set it back to
Not for the DSi (Score:5, Insightful)
About DSi, once DSi mode is properly cracked, it should give access to 133MHz ARM9 (up from 66MHz) and 16MB of RAM (up from 4MB), which might make this iPlayer device not needed.
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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.
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DS is not an exciting target for GBA emulation, since the DS can play GBA games and GBA flash karts natively. You might be saving 15 or 20 dollars on a GBA flash kart, but that's about it.
The DSi, on the other hand, is interesting to those of us who actually still have GBA games that we enjoy, but foolishly picked up DSi's anyway.
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More like foolishly picked up a DSi knowing full well it dropped the GBA slot, and also foolishly threw away your DSLite, DS, Game Boy Micro, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Advance, etc.
You might as well cry about the original DS ot supporting original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
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Well, I had a GBA, which was quite literally given away to a sick neighbor's kid. My DS original was given away to a friend's kid, who wasn't actually sick at the time but was broke.
The DSi seemed like a good time to jump in. I didn't realize, however, how many good games from the GBA I'd miss.
I'm not saying it's a dealbreaking feature loss to me. But an emulation option is nice.
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If it said 'for the iplayer' people would assume it was for the iplayer (a website run by the BBC), not the DS (a console made by nintendo).
For once I agree with slashdot - it's the best they could have done given the stupid naming of the app.
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I would have written "for DSi/iPlayer."
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Fascinating.
No hands, typing with your penis, and you manage fewer typos than a typical slashdot post.
It's actually very interesting..... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Homebrew without piracy? (Score:1)
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.
How would it even be possible to emulate homemade GBA games like Luminesweeper [pineight.com] without also emulating pirated GBA games of the same size?
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*psst* He needs to work in an angle so he can link to his tetris clone
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the DS isn't quite powerful enough to play video (2 cpu's 100MHz, 4MB of RAM)
MoonShell on a standard DS flash card plays DPG video (MPEG-1 up to 18 fps) just fine, and there's even an experimental DivX (MPEG-4 part 2) player called "tuna-vids" that works at half film rate (12 fps).
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I'd rather have a GBC emulator for the DS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather have a GBC emulator for the DS (Score:5, Informative)
Lameboy DS seems to work fine.
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(I'm a little surprised NoA didn't put out a DS card that would let me play those titles.)
Nintendo probably plans to sell emulators or enhanced remakes of GBC games on DSi Shop, just as it has done with NES games on Wii Shop.
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Mostly because I still have some old GB/GBC games that do not play in the DS at all.(I'm a little surprised NoA didn't put out a DS card that would let me play those titles.)
They can't. If you try to put a GB or GBC cartridge in your DS, you'll find it won't go all the way in. They operate at a different voltage, and the GBA was designed with a switch inside the slot that only GB/GBC cartridges would push. That switch changed the operating voltage and basically connected the cartridge, screen, and buttons to an alternate set of hardware. In the DS, there's a solid obstruction in place of the switch, so you can't fit GB/GBC carts in it.
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Yes, but I see where the PP is going with this. If the DS can natively play GBA games, is the DSi any different, besides the lack of the GBA slot? If so, then all that's needed is a new loader for the GBA ROMs, without any sort of CPU emulation.
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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.
For all flashcarts (Score:2)
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Nope! The iPlayer has a 200+MHz arm9 in it which makes it possible to just flat out run the emulator on the flashcart. This isn't so much an emulator for the DS, as much as the DS is being used as a screen for the iPlayer, just as if the iPlayer was playing a video. Not exactly the most exciting conclusion, but at least it runs?
Hmmm... how long until someone ports one of the DS emulators to this, at which point the iPlayer would become THE device for the Eyepatch Brigade?
Or, approaching it from another angle, how long until a hacked loader beccomes available for this that permits the loading of "backups"? Didn't that happen with one of the early Datel homebrew/media cards?
How cheap are you? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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I guess the convenience of not carrying around multiple game systems whenever possible is lost on you.
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So, I assume that you carry your Gameboy, Atari Lynx, TurboExpress, GameGear, NeoGeoPocket,Gameboy Advance, N-gage,DS, GP2X and PSP in your belt wherever you go uh?
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Or you know, the only handhelds worth owning.
A Gameboy Advance SP (GB -> GBA), and a DSi (DS -> DSi & DSiWare).
Hah! (Score:1)
Gamepark GP2X or Wiz already run the GBA at full speed without frame skipping :)
This is still impressive for the DS though. I wonder if it will run in my cart..