I tried out the alpha 1 build out of curiosity and it's pretty impressive. 3D games run a little slow on my computer, though I'll guess that's due to a lack of a dynarec, or perhaps there's still room for optimisation. It's mainly meant for commercial stuff right now, since hardly any homebrew I tested booted, but just about every backup I tried at least booted (notable exception is Radiant Historia, this one just hung on a black screen for some reason, while other really tricky games like Warioware DIY booted and ran fine, though without saving since it uses a special NAND memory). Some of the DS sound channels are either missing or not entirely emulated right as well (see the Phoenix Wright series, and Warioware DIY, 8-bit sounds are too low in pitch or are missing).
Games I tried (DS only, of course, all US region unless otherwise specified), rather unscientific notes follow:
-Final Fantasy IV (Slows down in general, some sound effects are missing or distorted due to slowdown, and battle scene transitions are a little buggy (missing transparency maybe? It showed the entire framebuffer spinning oddly))
-Warioware DIY (needs anti-piracy patch to boot, missing sound channels, playable, but can't save normally due to lack of support for that 32MB NAND flash)
-Pokémon White (Slow in 3D areas (33-45 FPS or so), battles have minor slowdown (55 FPS range); only played for a few minutes, but it seems to be working fine otherwise).
-999 Nine hours, nine persons, nine doors (sometimes rainbow garbage shows up when CGs/FMVs play but otherwise it seems perfect).
-Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney (seems fine, but some sound channels are off-pitch or missing)
-Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations (started case 1 and the music was off-pitch, and some sound channels were missing, speed was fine).
-Radiant Historia (black screen, no signs of life after 2+ minutes)
-Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (EUR region, extremely slow during FMVs, like 3 FPS, no support for screen rotation makes it rather tough to play comfortably since it's a horizontal game)
-Pokémon HeartGold (white screen, no signs of life)
-Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (crashed, Jumped to invalid address: 033FE504)
-Gyakuten Kenji 2 (JPN region, aka Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations 2, crashes, Jumped to invalid address E12FFF1C, crashed regardless of original clean dump or with English translation, same address)
-Final Fantasy III (hangs after the first few frames of the intro FMV, so the game can't be started without button mashing past it, seems to run fine otherwise, though I assume other FMVs will also hang, minor graphical bugs in battles like enemies vanishing instantly instead of fading gradually)
-Mario Kart DS (hangs on white screen, no signs of life)
-The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (hangs on Nintendo/ESRB rating screen)
-The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (slows down in general, ~30-50 FPS in 3D areas, ~55 FPS in menus
-Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (hangs on white screen, no signs of life)
-Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (needs a clean dump, the one with the cracktro from xenom/xenophobia will hang on a white screen after exiting the cracktro, slow in 3D areas, seems fine otherwise so far though)
DS homebrew tried (I'd guess compatibility here will be low for a while, I don't think there's DLDI and such yet):
-GameYob (red guru meditation error screen)
-Bad Apple by Gericom (black screen)
-Musicly Ocarina (booted, but wasn't able to test the actual microphone stuff, unsure if microphones are supported yet, it doesn't look like it)
All games were tested on Windows 7 x64, with an Intel i7 5930k @ 3.8GHz.
Now onto my thoughts on some of the comments asking "why another DS emulator": Why do anything in life then? Thousands of marathons have been run and won, so why should one bother training oneself to try and complete one too? Hundreds, maybe thousands of NES emulators exist, lots of them abandoned; they can be written simply for self-education, or simply for the challenge. My point is that it doesn't matter why, it's not like it's harming anyone, and if the community ends up with an emulator that exceeds the best of breed emulators, then that's even better. If people didn't continue innovating, then we'd still be stuck with terrible emulators like NESticle and ZSNES (which were fine for their time, because that was the best knowledge they had, but time passed and new challengers arrived like SNES9x, BSNES, puNES, virtuaNES, Nestopia, and Nintendulator, to name a few).
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