Emulation You can connect a DS emulator to real Wii console?

[Neosss]

Hello I'm new to the game and have recently gotten nostalgic for my Wii console.

I'd like to access some features that certain games have, like Pokemon Stadium, Animal Crossing, etc.

That allow you to connect your DS to your Wii console and transfer saves, Pokémon, etc.

I have a real DS, but it's pretty close to death, so I was wondering if there's an emulator that supports this type of connection?

Or is it even possible to do these things using a Nintendo 3Ds emulating an NDS?

Or would the only real solution be to use Dolphin, connect the emulators, and transfer the save games to the real Wii?

 

[Sekii]

melonDS can't connect to a real or emulated Wii locally. Someone recently asked that in the melonDS forums: https://melonds.kuribo64.net/board/thread.php?pid=7579

As far as I know, the games don't really transfer saves, but transfer some data between them.

A 3DS can act just like a normal DS, because it contains the DS hardware. It can do everything a normal DS can, aside from accessing the GBA slot.

There are ways to edit your Pokémon Gen 4 and Battle Revolution save files to import your Pokémon into BR though. There are a few tutorials online, you should be able to find one.

There are some DS and Wii games that have local and online crossplay, but they're on the rarer side. I only know of two Puyo Puyo games and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time. You are able to play Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time on Dolphin and melonDS and have them both connect online only, not locally, but yeah, not many games support this.

 

[Neosss]

It's a shame that emulator support leaves this aside, I know that for GBA it is possible to connect an emulator to dolphin for example

I just tried transferring Diamond Pokémon to Pokémon Battle Revolution with the 3DS.

The Wii recognizes the 3DS and lets me connect it. The 3DS even detects the Wii and launches the Battle Revolution nds application, but it gives an error at that point. I've tried it a couple of times and the result is the same at that point. I don't know if it's because the 3DS can't write to memory in DS mode.

About editing the saves, I imagined it.

As for the rest of the games, I'll be investigating. I also wanted to try Animal Crossing, but to be able to connect it to the Wii, it required you to use a function in the DS BIOS menu (the one to download data) that I don't think is possible to access from a 3DS, for example.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hello I'm new to the game and have recently gotten nostalgic for my Wii console.

I'd like to access some features that certain games have, like Pokemon Stadium, Animal Crossing, etc.

That allow you to connect your DS to your Wii console and transfer saves, Pokémon, etc.

I have a real DS, but it's pretty close to death, so I was wondering if there's an emulator that supports this type of connection?

Or is it even possible to do these things using a Nintendo 3Ds emulating an NDS?

Or would the only real solution be to use Dolphin, connect the emulators, and transfer the save games to the real Wii?

NiFi is weird and only works with specific wifi chipsets. Generally, this means using the official Nintendo Wifi USB Connector with special drivers. Because that wifi chipset is ancient and the special drivers only work on Linux, not much thought has likely gone into supporting real NiFi in emulators. It's impressive that emulators are even able to emulate NiFi these days because all this stuff had to be figured out from nothing and MelonDS was the first to properly emulate it.

It's a shame that emulator support leaves this aside, I know that for GBA it is possible to connect an emulator to dolphin for example

I just tried transferring Diamond Pokémon to Pokémon Battle Revolution with the 3DS.

The Wii recognizes the 3DS and lets me connect it. The 3DS even detects the Wii and launches the Battle Revolution nds application, but it gives an error at that point. I've tried it a couple of times and the result is the same at that point. I don't know if it's because the 3DS can't write to memory in DS mode.

About editing the saves, I imagined it.

As for the rest of the games, I'll be investigating. I also wanted to try Animal Crossing, but to be able to connect it to the Wii, it required you to use a function in the DS BIOS menu (the one to download data) that I don't think is possible to access from a 3DS, for example.

It should work on a 3DS if you're using a real cart.
Obviously flashcarts and Twilight Menu don't present as a real game in the cartridge slot, so the multiboot rom doesn't see the game.
You can get around it by playing Pokemon Platinum. It has the Pokemon Battle Revolution functionality built into the game, instead of using a multiboot rom.

 

[N7Kopper]

NiFi is weird and only works with specific wifi chipsets. Generally, this means using the official Nintendo Wifi USB Connector with special drivers. Because that wifi chipset is ancient and the special drivers only work on Linux, not much thought has likely gone into supporting real NiFi in emulators. It's impressive that emulators are even able to emulate NiFi these days because all this stuff had to be figured out from nothing and MelonDS was the first to properly emulate it.

Bear in mind that even the official DS emulation used by the Wii U's Virtual Console has no Ni-Fi support, despite carrying a chipset that does indeed support it.

 

[Ryccardo]

I know that for GBA it is possible to connect an emulator to dolphin for example

Yup but it's because the two* (one of which being a notoriously inaccurate HLE) teamed up to explicitly add a trick feature to do that, it's not a specific case of a more generalized console-to-console network!

* both are Free Software and another emulator - or more relevantly to your question, an emulator-to-real-GBA-or-GC program - is free to imitate the functionality, but as a matter of fact it hasn't been done...

NiFi is weird and only works with specific wifi chipsets.

IIRC it's just a tiny change in the packet headers - which yes, is enough to hopelessly throw off most wifi cards which hardware accelerate this and a lot more (same thought process went into the low level formatting of GC/Wii DVDs)

Also what a shame the loss of competitors in computer parts from 2005 to today has been...

 

[Sekii]

It's a shame that emulator support leaves this aside, I know that for GBA it is possible to connect an emulator to dolphin for example

I just tried transferring Diamond Pokémon to Pokémon Battle Revolution with the 3DS.

The Wii recognizes the 3DS and lets me connect it. The 3DS even detects the Wii and launches the Battle Revolution nds application, but it gives an error at that point. I've tried it a couple of times and the result is the same at that point. I don't know if it's because the 3DS can't write to memory in DS mode.

About editing the saves, I imagined it.

As for the rest of the games, I'll be investigating. I also wanted to try Animal Crossing, but to be able to connect it to the Wii, it required you to use a function in the DS BIOS menu (the one to download data) that I don't think is possible to access from a 3DS, for example.

As others already said, I don't think this is "left aside", it's just complicated. Apparently, on melonDS's side, the emulator already sends the information needed to communicate to a Wii, there's just nothing that can handle that data. As for connecting to a real Wii, I had my suspicions, but others confirmed it's a hardware issue.

What you're describing about your attempt to connect a 3DS to a Wii sounds a lot like something that happens when using nds-bootstrap. Currently it'll fail when trying to read save data, because Battle Revolution sends an executable to the DS and that executable looks for the save file in a specific place, but since nds-bootstrap rearranges some stuff, it can't find it. It's also not possible to patch that executable that gets sent yet.
Just yesterday a few friends and I held a little Battle Revolution tourney with three people using 3DS consoles and everything worked fine.

To access DS Download Play on a 3DS, just launch 3DS Download Play and choose DS Download Play.

Obviously flashcarts and Twilight Menu don't present as a real game in the cartridge slot, so the multiboot rom doesn't see the game.
You can get around it by playing Pokemon Platinum. It has the Pokemon Battle Revolution functionality built into the game, instead of using a multiboot rom.

Whoa, Platinum works now? What about Heart Gold and Soul Silver? It would be such a Nintendo/Game Freak move to change how this works yet again

 

[N7Kopper]

Whoa, Platinum works now? What about Heart Gold and Soul Silver? It would be such a Nintendo/Game Freak move to change how this works yet again

Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver always worked, because they're compatible with Battle Revolution, whereas PBR is compatible with Diamond and Pearl. In short, Diamond and Pearl download the PBR multiboot and let it handle interfacing with the cartridge ROM and save data, whereas P/HG/SS ignore the multiboot and load their own code that is compatible with PBR.

Tl;dr, Diamond and Pearl are slaves to Battle Revolution, whilst Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver are clients.

This is also part of the reason why Ranch doesn't "just work" with the other games. They're not compatible with it, and the Japanese-exclusive update only had a multiboot for Platinum. Gen IV in general is kind of jank in the netcode department, especially in Battle Tower Multi Battles: D/P make certain AI assumptions that P/HG/SS don't, for example - and Gen IV always gives hosting privileges to the latest battle engine when in battles, but to the lobby leader outside of them.

 

[Sekii]

Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver always worked, because they're compatible with Battle Revolution, whereas PBR is compatible with Diamond and Pearl. In short, Diamond and Pearl download the PBR multiboot and let it handle interfacing with the cartridge ROM and save data, whereas P/HG/SS ignore the multiboot and load their own code that is compatible with PBR.

Tl;dr, Diamond and Pearl are slaves to Battle Revolution, whilst Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver are clients.

This is also part of the reason why Ranch doesn't "just work" with the other games. They're not compatible with it, and the Japanese-exclusive update only had a multiboot for Platinum. Gen IV in general is kind of jank in the netcode department, especially in Battle Tower Multi Battles: D/P make certain AI assumptions that P/HG/SS don't, for example - and Gen IV always gives hosting privileges to the latest battle engine when in battles, but to the lobby leader outside of them.

I tried again with Platinum and SoulSilver (and an out of date nds-bootstrap 1.5.1), but Platinum crashed when reaching the part where you select who participates in the battle (probably when trying to read the save's name as that didn't show up on the Wii) and and SoulSilver crashes immediately after selecting Connect to Wii. This also matches what I remember reading in the nds-bootstrap changelogs.
Then I checked if there were any updates to this and saw that on 2024.12.25, there was an update to nds-bootstrap (2.3.0) that promises full compatibility for all Gen 4 games with Battle Revolution and Ranch. So the statement that Platinum onwards always worked is not correct, but also doesn't matter anymore since it got fixed

And thanks for the explanation. I was wondering why Platinum and onward worked at all, since Battle Revolution didn't get updated, but the games containing the multiboot rom themselves makes sense.