Homebrew Don't shoot me! I have to ask this.

[Searinox]

First and foremost. I KNOW this issue has been brought up countless times, and that there is NO NDS GBA emulator nor are there plans of creating one.

However. I would like the DS software developers out there to consider the immense advantage of running GBA games off the slot-1 flashcard without the need of a slot-2 device. Many many flashing costs could be cut short. Secondly, many people don't even bother playing GBA games on their NDS simply because of the hassle of flashing them onto a slot-2. I'm not referring to the proffessional GBA adapters which can hold tens of games at a time, I'm referring to the slot-2 devices which only hold 2 or 3 big games at once. This is an excellent way of putting to display the full potential of slot-1 cards and it would just be such a waste if the DS would not be capable of it. All in all it would fill a void that many of us feel is there.

Is there anyone out there who agrees with me?

 

[DanTheManMS]

Nobody's going to do it because there's no way it would work at any playable speed. The DS simply isn't powerful enough to emulate the GBA in software. Unless you want to play your games at 20% speed with tons of graphical glitches, I'd suggest opting for the 99% compatible hardware emulation the DS already has.

 

[Grimalkin]

There's also the problem compressing a GBA game to work in 4 MB of RAM. Just not going to happen, DanTheManMS has the exact right idea.

 

[Searinox]

Nobody's going to do it because there's no way it would work at any playable speed. The DS simply isn't powerful enough to emulate the GBA in software. Unless you want to play your games at 20% speed with tons of graphical glitches, I'd suggest opting for the 99% compatible hardware emulation the DS already has.

Can it not be made to treat GBA roms as native GBA games like it does with NDS games? If it could do that and just process the roms as it natively processes GBA games they would run at full speed with no glitches. I know a real GBA game requires instant access to the data which a slot-1 cart would just never be able to offer, but can't the extra RAM an NDS offers be used to store the actual cart data?

 

[science]

*shoots*

 

[Grimalkin]

Nobody's going to do it because there's no way it would work at any playable speed. The DS simply isn't powerful enough to emulate the GBA in software. Unless you want to play your games at 20% speed with tons of graphical glitches, I'd suggest opting for the 99% compatible hardware emulation the DS already has.

Can it not be made to treat GBA roms as native GBA games like it does with NDS games? If it could do that and just process the roms as it natively processes GBA games they would run at full speed with no glitches. I know a real GBA game requires instant access to the data which a slot-1 cart would just never be able to offer, but can't the extra RAM an NDS offers be used to store the actual cart data?

The problem with that method is that the GBA portion of the DS will override and shutdown the slot-1 section of the DS. That's why the save games when using a Slot-2 are written on next boot-up from the SRAM in the GBA expansion.

 

[Searinox]

*shoots*

Now that really hurt me.

 

[Hadrian]

Closing this as there are HUNDREDS (maybe) of threads already debating this.

 

[Searinox]

Nobody's going to do it because there's no way it would work at any playable speed. The DS simply isn't powerful enough to emulate the GBA in software. Unless you want to play your games at 20% speed with tons of graphical glitches, I'd suggest opting for the 99% compatible hardware emulation the DS already has.

Can it not be made to treat GBA roms as native GBA games like it does with NDS games? If it could do that and just process the roms as it natively processes GBA games they would run at full speed with no glitches. I know a real GBA game requires instant access to the data which a slot-1 cart would just never be able to offer, but can't the extra RAM an NDS offers be used to store the actual cart data?

The problem with that method is that the GBA portion of the DS will override and shutdown the slot-1 section of the DS. That's why the save games when using a Slot-2 are written on next boot-up from the SRAM in the GBA expansion.

They can't be made to work together? Too low-level hardware management that DS software has no control over?