Gaming What's out there for emulation of DS?

[jt_1258]

Personally I'm kinda of out of the loop so all I know that is for sure not some form of malware is DeSmuME but sadly that seems to have not been updated for 5 years now so I'm wondering if there is anything that's still maintained if it's any better.
edit: ignore that size thing, not sure what's going on with it and it doesn't show up in the message editor

 

[Tweaker_Modding]

the emulator DraStic for android is going open source soon this means it’ll no longer be paid and can be ported to other systems

 

[The Real Jdbye]

melonDS
One of the main DesMuME devs left the team to work on that, since they had some disagreements with the rest of the team (mainly over the team's plans to remove the online/wifi code from DesMuME, rather than work on fixing it to work properly) and it still seems to be in active development.

 

[FAST6191]

PC wise there are three main emulators you want to be looking at

Desmume.
http://desmume.org/
Has a few forks these days but mostly for hacking and debugging ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/desmume-debugger-version-release.571995/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/unofficial-desmume-build-unused-memory-finder-tool.349332/ ), though there are others that increase the quality of 3d graphics by rendering at a higher resolution
https://gbatemp.net/threads/hi-resolution-ds-emulation.364549/
Development does seem to have stalled out but did pretty much all it needed to do by the time it had finished.

no$gba
https://problemkaputt.de/gba.htm
An old staple but still a good one that sees updates (though most of those are looking at DSi and now 3ds). Its debugging options went free a few years back as well (previously they were a paid option).
Some flank it with no$zoomer to tweak some things. Personally I don't but you do you there.

melonDS
http://melonds.kuribo64.net/
A newer emulator (and likely the only newer one to you) and still a work in progress but one people are keeping an eye on (some even claim it is the best choice but I will debate that one), and can do pretty well for a lot of games.

For emulators in general a lot of people these days look at all in one emulator programs like retroarch. They take care of a bit of setup for you but in the end they are still running the same emulators, just with a nice selector at first. It does however appear on a few more OSes more easily than other things.

Anything else (see http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/nds/ for a few of them) is probably an old emulator that might once have done something (a few had compatibility with certain games, or might have had some features that made it useful for cheat code makers, ROM hackers and the like).

If doing a phone/tablet then DraStic is what most would look at here. DSi and 3ds these days can skip the flash cart thing and go straight from SD card if you hack them. Wii U also has some options for emulation as well.

 

[the_randomizer]

DeSMuME hasn't had updates in years though, it's still active?

 

[jt_1258]

well dam, wasn't expecting all that but thank you o.o
tbh though seeing an emulator named no$gba I would assume it only did...well...gba emulation and maybe the other iterations of gameboy at most, interesting to know that it does ds too
definetly going to give melon a shot

side note, I have messed around with retroarch before but about my only issue is I get confused trying to tweak settings. "does this setting even affect the core I'm using? what do these button configs even mean in relation to the system(they seem to be generic instead of system specific)? ect.

 

[FAST6191]

The DS is still much the same CPU, approach to memory, underlying hardware... as the GBA so if you have a GBA setup already made it makes sense to expand it much like expanding into the GBC when you have a GB setup already made and working (the GB/GBC actually being a rather different hardware setup to the GBA). Such a thing is also why no$gba also does the PS1 pocketstation and now DSi and 3ds.