Confessions of a Retro-Geek - Year Two

[wavemotion]

So two years ago I started my Nintendo DS homebrew journey because I wanted to add the difficulty switches to StellaDS (so as not to render the Space Invaders ship "fat" with the default Difficulty A selected).

I estimate I'm north of 1000 hours now of development time and debug on the six (6) emulators I've worked on. Some of those hours have been very enjoyable. Some have been frustrating. Most of all I continue to thank the retro community for their support and encouragement. It's usually the same crew that always thumbs my posts and responds with kind comments/words and that doesn't go unnoticed - especially when that's the main reward for the effort!

In year two, the focus was on bringing Nintellivision and ColecoDS to the forefront. Most of my efforts went to those... though in recent months I've gone back to touch up the first two emulators I worked on. StellaDS has been modernized to include all the most recent developments in the homebrew scene and both StellaDS and A7800 have been overhauled to include better DS-Lite/Phat support for those running older hardware (or just running from an R4i or similar card that doesn't yield the 2X faster DSi CPU).

Overall I look forward to where things go in year three... someone recently commented that the DS homebrew scene is dead. If so, I like to think I killed it!

 

[Nikokaro]

I hope this overview does not mean that you are abandoning us, and disowning your geek/nerd past (and present) to dive solely into the prosaic and stressful swirls of crazy american life, because that would make us very sad. For my part, I have always found your continued presence in this section as something reassuring and friendly; like seeing a father or older brother come home every evening after a hard day's work, and who greets us with a comforting smile.
Rather than a farewell, I hope you will have more new projects in store for us, maybe some console emulator ports, but I add this one for personal taste, how can I put it ...... hmmmmm ............. a little less ............................. rudimentary and outdated.
A brotherly hug from yours truly, with esteem, sympathy and gratitude.

 

[ber71]

Dave, don't read this as a request, it's your time and effort, which we all appreciate. Have you ever considered having a look at not-so-retro emulators besides the DS ecosystem? Sure it's a bit outside your comfort zone, but perhaps you could achieve some palpable and rewarding progress. You may or may not be a good programmer when coding from scratch, can't assure that, but you really are very very good at optimizing existing code, which is a necessity for big boys like dolphin, mupen64, pcsx, yabause...

 

[CrashMidnick]

We can't thank you enough for what you've done and what you will do in the future. You bring back interest in the DS scene and at the same time in the 2nd gen video game systems. The project I liked the most was Nintellivision because there was no emulator for this console on the DS, you used the lower DS screen brilliantly, made an intuitive menu full of options but most important thing, we feel the love you puted into it.
Cheers mate.

 

[dub_the_old]

Thanks for your works and hope the better for your future. As a developer I know how frustrating but also exciting it can be when you see your screen filling up with pixels.
Of course, I love atari so it's always a pleasure to play your emulators.

 

[djleviticus]

Thank you for all your hard work making these emulators some of the best on the whole homebrew scene. Even now making some so much more playable on the DS Lite wow what a challenge.

I would love to have a commodore 64 emulator on the DSi that runs as well as these do

 

[Cris1997XX]

I've only discovered DSi homebrew last year, and to be honest I haven't played many outside of emulators. Yours might as well be the best and most user-friendly, since there is not a whole lot to be done aside from running the game. GameYob and S8DS might be up there, but I think they're still lacking in some aspects. Honestly I'd kill for a Commodore 64 emulator, I feel like the DSi would be the perfect candidate for it (I have a 2DS, though I'm unable to turn it on). Keep your head high and be proud of all the work you've done on this abandoned code, hopefully year 3 will be even better

 

[ZoeLain]

you make good emulator

 

[SylverReZ]

you make good emulator

He do make good emulator