what do I need to play homebrew ds games, DS Games, and GBA/NES/SNES games on my DS?

obviously I'm new... I've looked around, but am getting confused. So I thought making a post would be easy on my part.

I'm wanting to play some DS homebrew games on my DS (mainly Doom DS when it is released) and have some SNES/NES/GBA action on my DS.

So what do I need that is relatively cheap? I have the Red DS (from the Mario Kart bundle) and am told I need to purchase Passme2. So what do I get from there? I heard of GBA flashcards, M3's, yada yada... but am confused.

I know theres different sized carts or mem cards... 64 mb, 128 mb, 512, 1 gb, 2 gb.. etc. I don't think I'll need anything higher than a 512 (how big are DS games tho?).

Any input with links to places where I can buy the things would be great. Just wanting to play some homebrew and some classic snes/genesis/gba/whatever games on it (and maybe some DS games).

Thanks!

 

Here's what you need (in my opinion)

- Your DS
- A M3 (CF or SD)
- A CF or SD card of 512MB or above
- Passkey 2

ou can get a M3 with the Passkey2 from:
CF - http://www.divineo.com/cgi-bin/div-us/dd-ds-m3cfp2
or
SD - http://www.divineo.com/cgi-bin/div-us/dd-ds-m3sdp2

You can get a CF or SD card from pretty much anywhere.

EDIT: You'll also need an original DS game for the Passkey to work.

 

whats the difference between CF and SD?
IS there one that is better from the other?

 

CF stands for Compact Flash, it is larger than SD, but I find it cheaper, and easier to use for homebrew development.

SD means Secure Digital (i think), it's smaller than CF, but as it's smaller it tends to be slightly more expensive.

 

alright. Both links list the same price however... (the SD and CF) at $92.99.

So do you have to purchase your own CF/SD card? And like you said... you can get those just about anywhere? Are they just normal digital camera cards or something? Any brand? And they run in different sizes? How much do they cost about?

Other questions... is the M3 the device where the card is placed into, and then fits into the GBA slot of a DS? And is the Passkey2 essentially the same thing as passme2?

Lots of questions, but that should clear up just about everything. Seems a bit pricey for my liking (was hoping to spend between $50 to $80 for everything). thanks.

 

Yes you can get them pretty much everywhere, I personally use eBay, but thats not to everyones liking.

You do need to purchase you own card. Cost depends on what size you get and where you get it.

Most brands work, however the CF version does not work with the fatter CF 2 cards. I will find a compatability list and update this when i find it.
UPDATE: http://www.ndscard.com/download/Compatibility.txt
This has some cards known to work, however I know that it's basically a case of most working, and there only being a few that don't.
I know i've seen a more comprehensive list than that, however I cannot remember where, try using google.

The passme2 does the same thing as the passkey2.

If your looking to save money you could buy a SuperCard, however I honestly think they're crap.

 

thanks for the info... I'll probably end up purchasing from ebay as well... I found this on there:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SANDISK-1GB-CF-...ryZ48526QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

shipping would be $10. Looks good to me. If the price gets too high, I could always just settle with a 512.

Whats the difference between the supercard and M3? I've seen pictures of both... arn't they the same thing? (since supercards also have slots for these CF/SD cards?)

 

Yes, that card should work.

SuperCards do basically the same as the M3, but are made with much cheaper components. And I believe do not have a very good compatability with games (especially GBA games).

The SuperCard is basically a cheap rip-off of the M3.

Heres a comparsion of the SD versions of the M3 and SuperCard
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=29384

 

awesome, I'm bookmarking that page for future reference.

I think I've decided to wait on getting one of these until the release of Doom DS. That way the software/hadrware of either one might imrpove... and the prices might be lower.

 

i have a M3 Perfect SD + Passkey 2

gba and nds games run perfect.
i also got video's to run in perfect quality without frame rate drops or anything
(i converted a full south park episode to a 40mb nds video, the quality is great. looks like dvd quality on a nds screen)

gba doesn't need the passkey at all

anyway, i also tried games for other consoles, like snes and sega genesis games. but i didn't know how to put them on my sd card.

anybody know how to get them to work on the M3.
i also had a problem with a GBC game, it said i needed a gameboy color to run it (since it needed color) but the NDS can display color.
the only thing is that it doesn't detect it as a gbc/gba.
so is there anyway to rid of that. i tried to find a good disassembler/debugger. couldn't find any good one.

 

To get games from other consles to work on the DS you need to download an emulator for each console.
I would recommend going to http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk however the dcemu network has been down for a few hours now, when it comes back online be sure to check it out.

Other than that i can only think of googling for the emulators.

 

i tried emulators allready, none of them work.

 

What emulators have you tried?
Some emulators such as goomba can work as one with the M3, where as others have to be run as homebrew.

Have you tried running the emulators using the Start button?

 

@ Gunout: It's normal your GBC roms don't work. NDS doesn't support them. NDS plays DS-games and GBA-games, no gbc or gb games.

 

dwarrior,

Thats whay he was trying to use emulators to play them on the DS.
I'm just waiting for him to reply to tell me what emulators so I can try to help him further.

 

it does support normal gameboy games.
but the gameboy color games detect my nintendo ds as a normal gameboy.

what i want to play on my nds is snes =)

 

Sorry, misread or something. Anyway, an emulator I know of is snesDS (http://www.cs.utah.edu/~tew/snesDS/snesDS.zip), but lot of roms still don't work. A compatibility list can be found here: http://luffy.free.fr/nds/snesds_compat/index.php

 

ohh thanks for the compatibility list =)
this helps me out a lot.

 

yo i have silver ds(the old one).do i need passkey 1 or 2?

 

Either will work, though I would recommend getting the Passkey2 as it will also work with newer DS's (in case you decide/need to get a new DS in the future)