Hacking Help With M3 DS Real - Man I'm confused

[jimmysuggs]

Really hoping someone can help me out with this: So my DS Lite broke a few months ago and I finally got a new one and now I want to start getting up to date with flash cart stuff. But there are just so many loaders, firmware, software, etc. I have NO idea what's what and there seems to be 10 of everything now and I have zero idea what works best (or at all). Basically I have an M3 DS Real and all I want to do with it is play NDS games. I don't need it for music, movies or text, just games. Maaaaybe the occasional GBA game but really, mostly NDS. Can anyone point me in the right direction, software wise? Do I need this sakura thing? Or Kaura? Or something else? I don't need any sort of fancy interface, just whatever will get me access to the games the quickest and whatever's stable and works.

Also I've been out of the scene for a while now so I'm not sure if the problem I was having a while back has been solved: last time I was looking into this stuff, I was getting a lot of games that simply wouldn't load on the DS Real, everything from Avatar to Assassin's Creed 2 to Iron Man. I was thinking it had something to do with features for the DSi that I couldn't access, but that was just a theory. It could also have been some kind of new encryption that I wasn't aware of, but again, that's also a theory. Does anyone know if this issue has been resolved yet? Is there some kind of workaround for it? Or are some games just never going to run? Or some other thing that hadn't occurred to me?

Rest assured that any info that anyone can provide on this stuff would be greatly, greatly appreciated. I tried to search for the answers on the site but for for the life of me, I couldn't find the info. I'm really confused at this point and I'd be grateful to anyone who can even just point me in the right direction, so I know where to begin. Thanks very much for your time and for reading this post.

 

[Goli]

Go here: http://handheldsources.net/M3DS/Download_M3DSR.html
download the first thing under "System for M3i Zero & M3DS Real(18-7-2010)".
Copy the SYSTEM folder to the root of the microSD card, make a folder called NDS, put your roms in it.
And you're ready to go!

 

[jimmysuggs]

This is great, thank you. I appreciate it. I don't imagine this software fixes those white screen issues with certain games, does it? Or is that a totally unrelated issue? Either way, thanks for the quick response.

 

[Goli]

This is great, thank you. I appreciate it. I don't imagine this software fixes those white screen issues with certain games, does it? Or is that a totally unrelated issue? Either way, thanks for the quick response.

It does, there are some unfixed games because the update is a bit old. but you're good for the majority of the games

.

 

[jimmysuggs]

This is awesome, thank you so much. Now I just need my new lite to show up (coming Wednesday) so I can give this a shot. Can't wait to try some of those games that white screened me way back when.

Just a couple follow up questions, if I can push my luck just a tad further: is the white screen thing somehow caused by games with special dsi features? And if so, does that mean future games will have similar problems? If so, what's the remedy for that (if any)? I keep reading about trimming roms, but I haven't ever done that because I use an 8 gig card and there's always plenty of space. But I'd start trimming if it'd help get troublesome roms to run. Is that something I should look into, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Either way, thanks again for all your time and help. Can't wait to get back up to speed on the DS. My game saves are gone for good, but something tells me I'll have fun creating all new ones.

 

[Subtle Demise]

If it doesn't fix all your games, just let us know what ones still don't work and I'll try to track down a patch or something for you.

 

[jimmysuggs]

Okay, got a little problem here. I loaded up the software and the roms onto my micro sd card, put the card into the ds real and while it does read the card, it's pretty slow and kinda wonky. And when I select a rom, a get a "failure to create save file" message and that's it. No games will actually load.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Am I using the wrong software or something?

 

[jimmysuggs]

Okay well I removed the loader that Goli suggested I use and put on something called "Sakura" now things seem to work. This is the name of the file I used:

4374-M3_Sakura_1.48X_TouchPod_4.8dX

I'm not sure why this works but the other one did not though. I'm also not sure if this will allow me to play the newer games (though I'm certainly going to try them out). Can anyone tell me if I'm way off base with this? Should I not be using this for some reason? Is Sakura any good (or any bad)?

Any info anyone can provide would be really, really appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Subtle Demise]

That's the latest Sakura and it should play almost everything without a problem, except the very newest games, and even then, I'm not sure there's anything that hasn't been cracked yet.

 

[jimmysuggs]

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I'm gonna load up the roms that wouldn't work way back when and keep my fingers crossed.

Just curious- what's the difference between Sakura and the loader that Goli suggested? Anything I'm missing out on by using Sakura? Cause I would have happily used the other one, but I just couldn't get it to work, sadly.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Sakura is basically like an improved GUI and built-in media player and picture viewer and things like that.

 

[jimmysuggs]

Ah, okay, thanks.

The good news is, all the roms I tried worked this time around, with the exception of Assassin's Creed 2. Regardless, great to have my DS back and great to be able to play some of these newer games.

Thanks again to everyone that chimed in on this, rest assured that I really appreciate it.