GBA emulation on a Nintendo DS flashcart (iPlayer).

The Nintendo DS has long been able emulate over a dozen consoles — NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis, Neo Geo, PCE, C64, ZX Spectrum, GB, GBC, NGP, WonderSwan, etc.

Emulating the GBA through the DS slot, however, has eluded homebrewers for years due to the DS CPU’s limitations, despite the DS Phat and Lite having hardware to play the old handheld’s games through the GBA slot.

Programmer Darkchen, though, developed an emulator that uses the built-in chip in the iPlayer — a flashcart specifically designed to play homebrew software and most media formats without needing to convert the video/audio files first  — to play GBA games (preferably legal ROMs you’ve archived in a somewhat legal manner).

Though there’s slowdown with some titles, GBAtemp says most games, including 3D-intensive ones, work with “almost perfect video and sound output”, and describes the emulator’s performance as “astonishing for a first release”.

Darkchen hasn’t released the emulator to the public yet, but he’s already added a few useful features to it: save states, screenshots (I wish there was a flashcart with this feature for DS games!), frameskip, and more. Wicked!

See also: Jeremy Parish on “the ineffable quality to a real game played on a real system”

tags / flashcart / iplayer / darkchen / gba / emulation / ec