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Nintendo DS emulator DraStic has been removed from the Google Play Store

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The most popular Nintendo DS emulator for Android devices, DraStic, has now disappeared from the Google Play Store, and is no longer available for download.

However, this doesn't come precisely as a surprise, as previously the creator of the DraStic emulator, Exophase, stated that the application wouldn't be "on there for that much longer". Exophase stated that the intention to make the emulator free and eventually remove it from the Store came even before Nintendo started attacking other then popular emulators, like Yuzu, which made a ripple back in the day with several emulator developers.

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However, the removal certainly came without any previous notice, and given Exophase's previous comments and the promise of making the emulator open source, the source code of the emulator is still yet to be seen, leaving Android users without the best option to play their favourite DS games in their day-by-day device.

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thekarter104 said:
I'm not familiar with emulators on Android, but did the DS emulation work well on fold phones? This comes to mind with top and bottom screens. Sounds really cool on fold phones.
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It works fantastically, yeah. Because the screens don't scale perfectly with the aspect ratio, you'll have a bit of dead space on the screen, but a lot of people use that to skin the emulator and make the whole setup look like an actual DS, or just use the space for on screen controls if you're a maniac. For reference:

Screenshot_20250214_111429_DraStic.jpg Screenshot_20250214_111932_DraStic.jpg
 
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Xdqwerty said:
Wonder why they havent made the source code public yet
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If I had to guess he may need to scrub code that was lifted from other places and replace it with a kosher workaround

A lot of closed source stuff is kept that way to hide dirty laundry
 
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It's a good thing I already have it downloaded on my phone a year ago before it was allegedly going to be taken down after a few or so days of being up for free.

Xdqwerty said:
Wonder why they havent made the source code public yet
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They are intending to make the source open but currently not yet, possibly due to licensing.
 
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Smoker1 said:
Those that have it already should just Back up the APK for other Devices, if that will work
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they could, but it doesn't really matter, even when the app had a price on it you could get it for free via an APK online pretty easily i know this because i did this way back in middle school before this app was mainstream, I'm now old decrepit
so i'm sure there's already endless amounts of them out there but you can never be too safe so those people might as well tbh
 
Was DraStic really the best DS emulator on Google Play? Why?

There are a bunch of other DS emulator available, including MelonDS, and Lemuroid (which uses libretro cores). Not to mention you could use RetroArch itself, if you don't mind the wonky UX.
 
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Coderman64 said:
Was DraStic really the best DS emulator on Google Play? Why?

There are a bunch of other DS emulator available, including MelonDS, and Lemuroid (which uses libretro cores). Not to mention you could use RetroArch itself, if you don't mind the wonky UX.
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I feel like it's generally the most performant DS emulator on android, you could basically run it on a potato phone. I have an old phone with a snapdragon 660, and a game like wild world will stutter a fair amount on melonDS, but just run fine on drastic.

I also really like how customizable the layout is in drastic compared to melonDS. You could arrange and resize the screens however you wanted with ease and put assignable hotkeys wherever you wanted on the screen. These creature comforts are either missing or not as fleshed out on melonDS.
 
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