Emulation on DS

[sj33]

I'm not really sure if discussion of DS Flash Cards is allowed here, so apologies if this is not kosher. I want to run emulators mainly.

It occured to me recently what a great emulation handheld the DS has the potential to be. It's far more portable than other handhelds like the PSP and homebrew-dedicated ones like the Wiz (since the DS is smaller and clamshell), and also seemingly easy to run stuff, with just a flash card thing and SD. With that in mind, sounds like an excellent portable MegaDrive or Snes!

What's the best flash card to go for these days? And how is emulation of the 16-bit consoles (I don't really consider full speed w/ frameskip to be full speed)? I did mess with a supposedly-full speed MegaDrive emu on the PSP a few years back (DGen I think)... and it was blatently not actually full speed, I've heard the SoR music enough times to notice.

[charlesr]

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=89211&highlight=cyclods

Seems to suggest the CycloDS

[sj33]

Had a quick look around - it's might expensive! Especially since I'm not really sure what the difference is between them all as far as emulators go.

[charlesr]

Something about not having to patch on the fly. er.... It's just better.

It's £30 + SD card (so if you have one lying around that's free). Doesn't seem that expensive to me.

[sj33]

It's interesting when you compare with competing carts however. A CycloDS Evolution w/ 2GB SD is £35.99, but a DSTT + 4GB SDHC is only £24.99. And hell, it looks like you can get a genuine R4 for £10.99. That makes it slightly harder to choose I think I need to give this stuff more research.

[sj33]

Sorry for the double post, but after quite a bit of looking around, it seems the 'Edge' card is the one to go for - supposedly as good as the CycloDS, but only £13! Awesome.

Looking at a MicroSD to go with it. I can get a 4GB Class 6 for £9.99, or an 8GB Class 4 for £12.99. The extra storage space would come in handy, especially if I opt to take advantage of the multimedia capability - is the difference between Class 4 and 6 a concern?

[JamesS]

I've not tried any emulators on the DS for a while, but there wasn't much in the way of full speed emulation of anything beyond the NES/Master System era last I looked. There were SNES and MD emulators that were pretty impressive, but no full speed. Maybe it's better now, though?

One problem with the DS as an emulation platform is that it doesn't have the resolution for most systems, so they have to either be cropped or scaled down. And as it doesn't have filtering, the scaling looks fairly awful.

[sj33]

Having tried out the Picodrive emulator on the PSP, and being impressed that it's actually full speed (unlike DGen which claimed to be) and even supports MegaCD, I may rethink before actually buying. That's a good point though.

[JamesS]

I've just tried the latest version jEnesisDS, and actually the emulation's pretty good now for Megadrive stuff. 60fps with no frameskip in Sonic 2, anyway. Sound isn't perfect, but it's not bad.

The resolution is a real problem, though. You lose loads of the screen off the left and right, and the vertical rescaling looks terrible as it's just dropping lines.

[vanpeebles]

I run a speccy emu on my R4DS and its superb

[kernow]

The neogeo emulator is surprisingly good I've heard.