nds-bootstrap loader: Run commercial NDS backups from an SD Card

nds-bootstrap:

Thanks to the work of ahezard, Gericom, Apache, Robz8, _catcatcat, and shutterbug2000 and other contributors, we can now load NDS games from the SD card, without any flashcard/SLOT-1 card.

Don't expect high compatibility, but do expect many, many updates.

:arrow: Compatibility listing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LRTkXOUXraTMjg1eedz_f7b5jiuyMv2x6e_jY_nyHSc/edit#gid=0

:arrow: The official Discord server for nds-bootstrap:
https://discordapp.com/invite/7bxTQfZ

:arrow: The thread for the recommended loader (by Robz8):
https://gbatemp.net/threads/twloader-ctr-mode-nds-app.448375/

:arrow: SRLoader for softmodded DSis (by Robz8):
https://gbatemp.net/threads/srloader-nds-app-for-dsi.472200/

:arrow: If you're more of a forwarder person:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nds-forwarder-cias-for-your-home-menu.426174/

:arrow: Link to the releases page:
https://github.com/ahezard/nds-bootstrap/releases

:arrow: Anti-Piracy patch list by Robz8
https://gbatemp.net/threads/ap-patch-preservation.477536/

Also, thank you to our testers:
Historian
JoshuaDoes
thejsa
Alerdy
PokeAcer


Also, a video thanks to Robz8:


And another thanks to Alerdy:
 
Last edited by shutterbug2000,

AceTrainerMike

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I don't know if anyone's ever asked this, but is the pokewalker supported in anyway? Lost my heart gold copy while visiting a friend, but luckily I had backed up the save and a copy of the game so this is the only way I can play for now until I can get it replaced.
 

Lotoonlink

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I don't know if anyone's ever asked this, but is the pokewalker supported in anyway? Lost my heart gold copy while visiting a friend, but luckily I had backed up the save and a copy of the game so this is the only way I can play for now until I can get it replaced.
It is supported but the way the pokewalker connects to the game is through an IR sensor on the physical cartridge so you need to plug in another ds game that has an IR sensor like the pokemon BW/B2W2 games while you connect to the pokewalker with hgss running on nds-bootstrap. You can't use the IR sensor that's built into the 3ds unfortunately, it has to be from another ds game that has one on the cart.
 

peteruk

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I used to have the crackling audio when using forwarders, what I do is close the screen and re open and it works flawlessly

Sorry if this was already posted but I'm not reading through 264 pages again
 
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havocdrake

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I used to have the crackling audio when using forwarders, what I do is close the screen and re open and it works flawlessly

Sorry if this was already posted but I'm not reading through 264 pages again

Nope not working, same with HOME + CANCEL, 1 second w/o crackling but then there again after. So annoying... :>
 

raxadian

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It is supported but the way the pokewalker connects to the game is through an IR sensor on the physical cartridge so you need to plug in another ds game that has an IR sensor like the pokemon BW/B2W2 games while you connect to the pokewalker with hgss running on nds-bootstrap. You can't use the IR sensor that's built into the 3ds unfortunately, it has to be from another ds game that has one on the cart.

The hilarious thing is that I have two Pokewalkers, a DS and a DS Lite and Soul Silver and Heart Gold and I never ever used the Poke walker... Because I have an original R4 with Wood so cheating was way easy on Fourth Gen.

Anyway, Fourth Gen game rom save files have dedicated cheat programs for them, so using the Pokewalker is at most just because.
 

DolphinCube

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hey whenever I launch puyo pop fever DS using twilight menu plus plus. I get a freeze whenever I load a cutscene. Can you help?
 

RocketRobz

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hey whenever I launch puyo pop fever DS using twilight menu plus plus. I get a freeze whenever I load a cutscene. Can you help?
Make sure "Expand ROM space in RAM" is not set to "Yes+512KB".
If it's already not set to that, and it still freezes, turn off heap shrink in the per-game settings.
 
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Alexander1970

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Hello.:)

hey whenever I launch puyo pop fever DS using twilight menu plus plus. I get a freeze whenever I load a cutscene. Can you help?

May I ask please,do you have the latest Version v16.0.3 ?
(and nds-bootstrap Version v0.35.1)
You can check it in the TWiLight Settings.

Thank you.:)
 
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Pokemon Emerald has anti-piracy protections, you might want to use a rom with those removed or something.
What kind if anti piracy does it have? This is the first im hearing of the GBA pokemon games having anything like that
 

Zense

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Yeah, there are some select few cases of AP measures in GBA games, though Pokémon Emerald is not one I've ever heard anyone mention. However, you could always start a debate about what the definition of AP measures actually is. The only games I can remember with AP measures are the Legacy of Goku games plus some other Dragon Ball titles, which have patches incorporated in GBArunner2 thanks to @Robz8 , and the NES classics that were made deliberately hard to emulate to combat piracy, if I am to understand endrift, the mGBA dev, correctly.

I mean you could say that any rom that is coded in such a way to make it hard to emulate has AP measures, and I'm not sure if Pkmn Emerald is like that. Although I don't think you could ever really be 100% sure whether it is or isn't unless you were part of the team developing it, because from someone on the outside it might just look like bad coding or unneccessarily convoluted coding, while it might just be intentional. An exception is of course if the code introduces glitches, bugs, performance loss or the alike - that would just be bad coding. Those are just my thoughts and digressions, though.

So if you're encountering issues running Pkmn Emerald more than likely you're running a DS version of GBArunner2 that is not from the hirom branch. The solution would therefore be to change to a release from that branch, which can be found on the top of the releases on the gbarunner2 wikitemp page.

If you're on a CFW'd DSi or 3DS running from SD card you should be able to run it, so either you're using an old version or you have a bad rom.
 
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raxadian

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Yeah, there are some select few cases of AP measures in GBA games, though Pokémon Emerald is not one I've ever heard anyone mention. However, you could always start a debate about what the definition of AP measures actually is. The only games I can remember with AP measures are the Legacy of Goku games plus some other Dragon Ball titles, which have patches incorporated in GBArunner2 thanks to @Robz8 , and the NES classics that were made deliberately hard to emulate to combat piracy, if I am to understand endrift, the mGBA dev, correctly.

I mean you could say that any rom that is coded in such a way to make it hard to emulate has AP measures, and I'm not sure if Pkmn Emerald is like that. Although I don't think you could ever really be 100% sure whether it is or isn't unless you were part of the team developing it, because from someone on the outside it might just look like bad coding or unneccessarily convoluted coding, while it might just be intentional. An exception is of course if the code introduces glitches, bugs, performance loss or the alike. Those are just my thoughts and digressions, though.

So if you're encountering issues running Pkmn Emerald more than likely you're running a DS version of GBArunner2 that is not from the hirom branch. The solution would therefore be to change to a release from that branch, which can be found on the top of the releases on the gbarunner2 wikitemp page.

If you're on a CFW'd DSi or 3DS running from SD card you should be able to run it, so either you're using an old version or you have a bad rom.

Pokemon has included anti-piracy measures as far back as Pokemon Crystal. In Crystal it was the pirated game not working all that well to make people know it was a pirate copy. On the GBA generation the whole dried battery thing, when tne games were new, was an easy way if your game was not original.

With Pokemon Emerald, there may be other issues.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/921905-pokemon-emerald-version/63707671?page=1

Oh can't forget the whole time thing in second gen was a way to let players know they had a pirate game but it was quite minor and annoyingly you had to wait like a say to find out if you weren't paying attention.
 

Zense

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Pokemon has included anti-piracy measures as far back as Pokemon Crystal. In Crystal it was the pirated game not working all that well to make people know it was a pirate copy. On the GBA generation the whole dried battery thing, when tne games were new, was an easy way if your game was not original.

With Pokemon Emerald, there may be other issues.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/921905-pokemon-emerald-version/63707671?page=1

Oh can't forget the whole time thing in second gen was a way to let players know they had a pirate game but it was quite minor and annoyingly you had to wait like a say to find out if you weren't paying attention.
Well, the whole Real-Time Clock (RTC) thing with old emulators wasn't so much about AP as it was about bad emulation. Basically these emulators hadn't implemented RTC yet which made the Pokemon Games give the "The Battery has dried out" message, because to the game it seemed like the internal battery found inside those pkmn game cartridges had indeed run dry, gone empty, making the ingame time stop. This is also why some bootleg pkmn cartridges give that error message because the roms are put on PCBs lacking the necessary stuff for RTC. At least for good fake cartridges and real cartridges you can just open it and put in a new battery.

I read your link but I could only see examples of this and of bugs that are found in a real copy of the game running on real hardware, and it also seems to only be about bootleg cartridges. For example, if we're talking glitches I wouldn't call Missingno an AP measure.

Also don't confuse AP measures with Anti-cheat measures. IVs and specific controls to tell if pokemon are not fake are also not AP measures in my definition at least.
 
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