Nine Over Ten 9/10: homebrew

Showing posts with label homebrew. Show all posts

Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Rom Report Part VIII - Earthbound Zero Edition

For brand new The ROM Report articles, head over to www.nineoverten.com.

Welcome back to The Rom Report, currently in Issue Eight. Here's where you'll find what retro games from the NES, SNES, Genesis, and Gameboy eras will work on a modern day device such as the Nintendo DS with the help of homebrew emulator software!

I came across this back-issue of Retro Gamer at a local magazine shop and I bought it for just RM 10 (3 USD). It is a pretty good read, better than some of the retro games websites that I usually visit online.

As such, this issue of The ROM Report is inspired by that magazine issue which featured the NES on the cover. Later on, you'll find a substantial number of NES games featured on this edition of The Rom Report.

As usual, I'm using the R4DS Slot-1 solution to run a variety of emulators required to run all these retro games on the Nintendo DS. The emulators are:

SNEmulDS - For SNES Games
nesDS - For NES Games
Lameboy - For GameBoy Color Games
jEnesisDS - For Sega Genesis Games

For a full list of emulators, please refer to The Rom Report Part VI.

Before I get on with the results, I'll need to re-iterate that emulators are not perfect, therefore even if a game might seem to run excellently on an emulator, I'll say that the game "runs okay". On the other hand, "not okay" is a catch-all phrase for games that cannot run on the emulator or are unplayable due to major glitches.

With that out of the way, here are the games that I've tried out:

Adventures of Lolo (NES) - Runs OK. This is a puzzle game in the vein of Bomberman. You play as a rotund purple creature in a quest to rescue his princess (Lala). Curiously, Lolo and Lala appear as the bad guys in some Kirby games. Both games are developed by HAL Laboratory Inc.
Balloon Fight (NES) - Runs OK. For all you retro gamers out there, this is a classic on the NES, along with Excitebike and Ice Climber.
Castlevania III - Dracula's Curse - Runs OK. Looks prettier than Castlevania II but with graphical glitches on and off.
Crystalis (Gameboy Color) - Runs OK. SNKs Zelda killer does in fact play a bit like the Zelda of old, but in a sci-fi setting.
Crystalis (NES) - Runs OK. This is the same game which was ported to the Gameboy Color.
Dragon's Lair (SNES) - Runs OK. Another platform hack and slash and like Rastan Saga II, I really like the graphics.
Earthbound Zero (NES) - Not OK. This is a major disappointment as I couldn't get the Demiforce version of Earthbound Zero, which is the English version of Mother 1, to run on nesDS.
Frogger (SNES) - Runs OK. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at what pretty graphics the SNES is capable of, and Frogger is a good example. Played on a smaller screen like that of the DS serves to accentuate the graphics even more.
Ikari Warrios (NES) - Runs OK. SNK's offering on the NES feels like a pushover in the starting 30 seconds but quickly ramps up the difficulty. Apparently the game was inspired by Rambo.
Maniac Mansion (NES) - Runs OK. Lucasfilm Games' (now LucasArts) "point and click" adventure game was heavily censored when ported over to the NES to conform to Nintendo's policy. For a list of what was left-out, read the Expurgation of Maniac Mansion. As for the "point and click" part, you use the d-pad to move a cursor on the screen.
Popeye (NES) - Runs OK. An arcade conversion for the NES, it's pretty fun to play on the DS. I used to play this alot on the NES clone called Micro Genius.
Rastan Saga II (Genesis) - Runs OK. A platform hack and slash, I actually liked this game, with its colourful pallete and rather fun gameplay. Best played on jEnesisDS and not PicoDriveDS.
River City Ransom (NES) - Runs OK. A platform bash-em-up, I like the fact that you can throw weapons (chains, knuckle dusters) at opponents. The graphics remind of me of South Park.
Startropics (NES) - Runs OK. Nothing much on this as I'm still adverse to RPGs with really crappy graphics or boring premise.
Sweet Home (NES) - Runs OK. Feel's abit like Resident Evil with a haunted castle/mansion and a bunch of people looking for something.
Wrecking Crew (NES) - Not OK.

Some of these retro games are available for purchase in their original or updated forms.

Rastan Saga II is available on the PC-Engine and Sega Mega Drive.
Ikari Warriors is available on the Famicom.
Mother 1 and 2 (Earthbound Zero and Earthbound respectively) are available as a Japanese language bundle for the GBA.
Akumajo Densetsu, the Japanese version of Castlevania III, is available on the Famicom.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

The ROM Report Part VII - The Excel Sheet Edition - Download It!

For brand new The ROM Report articles, head over to www.nineoverten.com.

As some of you might notice from my previous The ROM Report installments, I experiment with quite a number of emulators (SNemulDS, jEnesisDS, Lameboy, StellaDS, MarcaDS) and also quite a number of old-school ROMs (71 of 'em) on my Nintendo DS. To keep track on what works, what doesn't and ultimately what have I tried out, I decided to create a spreadsheet in Excel.

As promised, here's the Excel sheet file, in PDF format uploaded to Rapidshare. Click here to download.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The ROM Report Part VII - The Excel Sheet Edition

For brand new The ROM Report articles, head over to www.nineoverten.com.

As some of you might notice from my previous The ROM Report installments, I experiment with quite a number of emulators (SNemulDS, jEnesisDS, Lameboy) and also quite a number of old-school ROMs on my Nintendo DS. To keep track on what works, what doesn't and ultimately what have I tried out, I decided to create a spreadsheet in Excel.

It's a relatively simple one and soon you, dear reader, will be able to download it.

Here's a screen capture of what's in store:

So stay tuned for more update with The Rom Report!

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The ROM Report Part VI - Emulators on the Nintendo DS Edition

For brand new The ROM Report articles, head over to www.nineoverten.com.

I really liked the "Notable Homebrew" section in the Nintendo DS Homebrew Wikipedia article before it was editted out, with the reason that "Wikipedia is not a list of links". In any case, the list of links from that section can still be retrieved from the revision history.

I'm putting up a portion here for posterity. More specifically, it's a list of emulators.

I've taken the liberty to enhance this list of emulators that run on the Nintendo DS. Included now are the manufacturers of the consoles as well as the year that they were introduced. The format is as such Manufacturer ConsoleName Year : EmulatorName. Emulators that I've tried before have an asterix (*) next to their names.

Feel free to click on the links to find out more about the consoles and also to download the emulators:

Bandai WonderSwan (1999) : DualSwan
Sega Dreamcast VMU (1998) : VirtuaMUnstaz DS
Nintendo Game Boy (1989) : Goomba
Nintendo Game Boy Color (1996) / Game Boy (1989) : Goomba Color / Lameboy*
Texas Instruments TI-85 (1992) : DS85
Texas Instruments TI-83 (1996) : WabbitDS
Watara Supervision (1991) : Wasabi
SNES (1991) : snesDS / Snezzi DS / SNEmulDS*
Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) (1988) : PicoDriveDS / jEnesis*
NEC PC Engine (1987) : PCEAdvance
Amstrad CPC 6128 (1985) : Croco DS
ScummVM : ScummVM DS
SNK NeoGeo Pocket (1998) : RACE!
Apple Macintosh Plus (1986) : MiniVMacDS
Sega Master System (1987) / Sega Game Gear (1990) : SMSAdvance DSMasterPlus
Sierra Entertainment : GBAGI
MSX : MSXAdvance
MSX2 : Penko DS
Nintendo NES (1983) : NesterDS / PocketNES / nesDS* / midori
Commodore 64 (1982) : FrodoDS
ColecoVision (1982) : COLECODS
Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1982) : DSpec SpeccyDS
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 (1985/86) : ZXDS
Atari 2600 (1977) : StellaDS*
Atari ST (1985) : StyxDS
Arcade/MAME : MarcaDS

I've been trying out StellaDS, an emulator for the Atari 2600, and I can't believe how ugly Mario Bros looked liked 30 years ago. Anyways, it's all very nice getting to play really old games on the DS.

Be warned though that emulators are not perfect, the ones that 'm using have compatibility problems with some games on their respective platforms. Those games either look terribly jumbled up or refuse to run on the emulator.

Click here (or alternatively the picture on the left side of my blog) for The ROM Report Archives.

Friday, November 16, 2007

The ROM Report Part V - Running Old Arcade Games on the Nintendo DS with R4DS and MarcaDS (MAME)

For brand new The ROM Report articles, head over to www.nineoverten.com.

In this Fifth edition of The Rom Report, we'll look at running something special on the Nintendo DS, with an exceptionally good looking piece of homebrew software and a bunch of ROMs as well.

According to Wikipedia, MAME, which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software. In plain English it would mean that old arcade games can be played on MAME emulator running on a PC!

All you need to do is to supply the ROM image of the arcade game, by which downloading them is a legal gray area, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Legalities aside, the same thing (running arcade games using a MAME emulator) can be done with the Nintendo DS! The piece of software that I'm about to introduce may just support a paltry sum of 75 games, but it really is a piece of work.

For starters, MarcaDS looks like a piece of commercial software, with the nice intro screen and all. It even apparently supports the use of the Rumble Pak, but the best part is yet to come. It uses BOTH DS screens to display a game! It's something like playing games from this year's Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits for the Nintendo DS.

Running MarcaDS is pretty easy. Just copy the MarcaDS.nds file to the root directory of your Flash Cart's Trans Flash memory card (Most of the time, it's a MicroSD card). If your Flash Cart's firmware doesn't support auto DLDI patching, it would be a good thing to apply the DLDI patch to the MarcaDS.nds file before attempting to run it.

I've always recommended creating a folder (let's call it MAME) in the Trans Flash memory card, to store games of a specific type. It's a much better way of organizing than just dumping everything in the root directory. Arcade ROMS are stored as ZIP files and you'll have to make sure that the zip file names match the ones listed in the compatibility list.

Here's the entire compatibility list taken from the MarcaDS site. The rest of the site is in French, but you can visit it here.

In order to download MarcaDS, scroll right down to the bottom of the page, with the latest version being the first on the list of files. Click here for a direct download, but it's best to check back with the previous link provided, for latest updates.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

How to run SNES games on the Nintendo DS with R4DS?

For more homebrew guides for the Nintendo DS, head over to the brand new www.nineoverten.com.

Short of GBA games, a Nintendo DS and R4DS combination can be used to run (on emulation) games from a myriad of other platforms such as the NES and the SNES.

Here's a guide on how to run SNES games on the Nintendo DS with an R4DS:

First, you'll need a SNES emulator that can run on the R4. I would recommend SNEmulDS, by archeide. You can grab the zip file at his website located here.
Unzip the file to a convenient location in your Desktop. The file contents should look something like the screenshot below.
Copy the two files: SNEmulDS.nds and snemul.cfg to the root directory of your MicroSD card.
Once this is done, create a folder called SNES in the root directory of your MicroSD card. This is the location where you store all your SNES roms.
Place some roms inside the SNES folder.
Start the Nintendo DS, with the R4 and MicroSD card inserted and run the SNEmulDS.nds file. From here onwards it's just selecting the SNES ROM that you wish to run.

Pretty simple right? This technique should work on the M3 and CycloDS as well. Next up is a guide to running NES roms on the R4DS.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Alternatives to the R4DS

For the latest R4DS articles for the Nintendo DS, head over to the brand new www.nineoverten.com.

Look about the Internet and you would probably read reports/rumours that the R4DS is not readily available for sale. Now, the R4 has an unsavoury light in my books when it used to run pirated ROMs, but as a device that enables the use of homebrew on the DS, it's pretty top notch. And with the demise of the R4 forums, I probably need to go somewhere else for my homebrew fix.

All things considered, what are your alternatives for running homebrew on the DS? As far as Slot-1 solutions are concerned, there are plenty of choices.

First up you have the nearest cousin to the R4DS, the M3 DS Simply. According to one flashcart website, this is manufactured by the same factory as the R4DS and both are identical. However, do note that R4 firmware won't work on the M3 and vice versa.

Second would be the new kid on the block, the CycloDS Evolution Slot 1 Enhancer. A mouthful of a name with a feature set geared at pirated ROMs, it appears to be a good alternative to the R4 when it comes to homebrew. Amongst other things, it has support for SDHC (bigger storage space possible).

I remember reading in a forum that this particular Slot-1 solution doesn't boast a good built quality so caveat emptor.

Third up would be the G6 DS Real. This is probably for people who don't like using external media such as micro SD cards with their Slot-1 solutions. My R4 in particular is sometimes finicky and makes for an excellent SD card launcher. Talk about being as crazy as a spring. This on the other hand comes with 2 Gigabytes of internal flash memory, more than enough to store tonnes of homebrew and media files. Cool isn't it?

Last but not least in this feature is a Slot-1 solution from the very makers of Supercard themselves, the Supercard DS(One). This is probably one of the more common offerings at local game shops to "uninformed" buyers when it comes to "lowering the cost of ownership" for the Nintendo DS Lite since the R4DS is now hard to come by.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Currently Playing

These are the games that I'm currently playing, what about you?

Animal Crossing: Wild World (NDS)
New Super Mario Bros. (NDS)
God of War II (PS2)

Have you ever had a sense of deja vu, like you have seen/played this game somewhere, sometime else but the game was presented under a different guise? Fear not as that gut feeling of yours might ring true, as 1Up has a featured article about games that have had a total makeover (click here).

Speaking of which, aren't most homebrew games ports of particular games that have not been introduced on the DS? There are some original IPs, but most of the time, homebrew programmers dedicate their time in porting over stuff that they would love to see on the DS, stuff that they have played before. I've got no problem with this, as I'm a nostalgia-inflicted gamer myself.

My wishlist?

Battlechess
The entire Space Quest series

I bet you got some as well :)

On a side note, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice For All is going at a bargain price of USD 24.90 over at Play-Asia. And here's a little trivia, did you know that the Japanese title for the Phoenix Wright games, Gyakuten Saiban, means "Courtroom Turnabout"?

If you are looking for Play-Asia coupons, get them at my blog but first you'll have to hunt for them!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Nerd Speak, Gamer Talk

Altogether now, "valign="top" width="50%"". Anybody with Transitional (or even Strict) XHTML and Visual Studio 2005 experience will know why the infamous Visual Studio red squiggle appears underneath the syntax "width="50%"". Want to know why? Go find out yourself and now, back to games.

Good things come to those who wait and for those of you interested in getting Jump Ultimate Stars, well this is your chance as Play-Asia is selling it for a discounted price of USD 39.90. I suppose I would get the game, sooner or later, considering that it should be a rather enjoyable experience when coupled with a translation guide.

You would probably want the Jump Ultimate Stars Emperor's Bible (it's a guide book) as well but too bad for the most of us, it's in Japanese. It does look more like a collectible item though.

But instead of buying games, wouldn't it be great if there were stores down the street where you can rent games for a fee. Those 7-11 guys should probably consider it, as I am more than willing to walk/cycle/drive to the nearest 7-11 store, put down a one time deposit, rent a couple of games (or try 'em out on the spot for free) and then rinse, repeat.

If that sounds like a long shot, get inspired by Mr Kolo Soro of the Ivory Coast. You can read about his entreprenual exploits here. Guy really has a keen business sense and has carved a niche for himself on access to things that we usually take for granted over here in Malaysia (telephone usage, games, etc)

I'll be reviewing more homebrew games this month, assuming that I have the time to load them up on my R4. Work has caught up with me in a big way and the Nintendo DS is hardly a sight in the office these days. Nevertheless I'm looking forward to playing "A Touch of War" and "Super Mario War". War is this month's theme boys and girls.

Altogether now: "I promise I won't whine about delivery dates after choosing the "free shipping" option on Play-Asia". That goes to you, you and you.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Warcraft : Tower Defense, Nintendo DS Homebrew-ed Adaptation

For more video game reviews, head over to the brand new www.nineoverten.com.

I never really have written a review of Tower Defense, a homebrew adaptation of the popular Warcraft III mod, for the Nintendo DS, despite it being one of my favourite homebrew games. I intend to make up for that and so here goes.

For those who are not familiar with the Warcraft III version of Tower Defense, it's basically involves stopping waves of creatures (creeps) moving from Point A to Point B of an obstacle/maze-like map. Stopping creeps involves building and upgrading towers that will slow them down, deal damage and act as buffs for other towers.

The Nintendo DS version of Tower Defense is somewhat similar to the PC counterpart whereby it has this Warcraft 3 theme going on. Players start by selecting a map and the actual game begins with all the action taking place on the bottom screen. The top screen is used to show build options, wave stats, the amount of gold earned, and not forgetting tower stats.

In order to access the build options, players will need to "switch screens" by pressing either trigger button. This will cause the top screen to swap with the bottom screen and players will be able to access the build options (and everything else) using the stylus.

Gold is awarded by killing creeps and is required for building and upgrading towers. Since players can only place a certain number of towers, positioning, upgrading and selling of towers is a necessary form of micro-management, a term Warcraft III was rather well known for.

Tower Defense for the Nintendo DS manages to port over the strategic depth and fun gameplay of its more illustrious PC counterpart and while the PC version emphasizes on multiplayer teamwork, the DS version is pretty much a single player game for now. Graphics wise, it's pretty, in a DS way and you gotta love the sound effects :)

You can get this excellent homebrew game at the developer's website over at http://ndswtd.wordpress.com. If you have a slightly older version of the game and you cannot get it to run on your R4, it probably needs patching; please refer to my patching guide over here.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Playing to the Crowd

I've added a new section on Homebrew stuff on my blog's navigation pane (just below the collectibles section), so it wouldn't be a pain (pun not intended) to look for homebrew articles on this blog. At the moment, this humble section contains only 3 articles:

On to other things; Play-Asia's Crazy Week ends this Thursday. Since one of the more exasperating questions that I have encountered from other Nintendo DS users is "How do I get connected to Nintendo's WFC without a WiFi router/Access Point?", my suggestion would be to get any of the USB WiFi Adaptors on sale (20% off the normal price) at Play-Asia now!

The list includes a bunch of products from Datel, but all of them should work with a Nintendo DS; anything else would probably be a reason for raising the price. Personally, I'm using a Mayflash WiFi Link, and there are no problems so far.

Datel Wifi Max (Nintendo DS, DSL, Wii) (here)
Datel Wifi Max (Nintendo DS) (here)
Datel Wifi Max (Nintendo DS, DSL, Wii, PS3, PSP) (here)
Mayflash Wifi Link (Nintendo DS, DSL, PSP) (here)
Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector (here)

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Quake DS

I managed to get Quake DS up and running on my Nintendo DS today using my R4, and indeed it is still a work in progress. My first impressions are that the game runs rather fast but the dimensions of the DS screen makes for a dizzying experience (the rather bland/washed-out textures of Quake didn't make things any easier). I was feeling nauseous after 5 minutes of play and the experience had me wishing for Quake 2 instead as it was way prettier.

As mentioned in the developer's website at Drunken Coders, the world textures are pretty much there but the character textures are non-existant. Hopefully these will be fixed in the final release of this homebrew game. It was just weird shooting at silhouttes, try playing the game at its current state and you'll probably understand what I'm saying.

In order to get Quake DS running, you'll need several stuff from the Drunken Coders site and a copy of the PC version of Quake. The shareware version would do just fine but if you have trouble downloading it from id Software's website, you can always Google it.

Instructions are available also at the Drunken Coders' site and if you have trouble patching the NDS file in order for it to run on your R4, you can always refer to my guide over here.

There's also another Quake homebrew project for the Nintendo DS known as DSQuake. This project looks promising in particular as it will support some form of Internet multiplayer mode but as of now, Slot-1 solutions such as the R4 are not supported.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Coming Attractions - Part 2

One of the games that I have high hopes for is Quake, for the Nintendo DS. Yes, you read that right, Quake. Besides having the distinction of being the first true 3D first person shooter on the PC platform (or any other platform for that matter), it brought about the 3D revolution which resulted in PC gamers everywhere having to purchase large, expensive graphics card to get their game on. Sounds more like the use of Viagra to treat impotency

Originally developed and released by id Software, the game has proven to be a phenomenal success critically, commercially as well as technologically. Since the source code was released several years ago, the game has proven to be resilient, having being ported over to quite a number of platforms including the Pocket PC and Palm-based devices. Take a look for yourself at www.itplaysquake.com.

Now DS gamers can get their game on as Quake is heading to the Nintendo DS. The nice guys at quake.drunkencoders.com are working to bring this title to the Nintendo DS homebrew scene and even though its only in prerelease, I'm pretty much stoked for the final outcome.

Stay tuned for the review of homebrew Quake DS next week, when I get my micro sd card reader back.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Running Homebrew on a Nintendo DS and a R4

You just bought a R4 Revolution for the Nintendo DS and you look forward to running homebrew applications such as DSOrganize and homebrew games such as DSDoom and Tower Defense. However you find that you are unable to run the homebrew applications after copying them into the MicroSD card of the R4.

A common solution for this is to patch the particular application's .nds file (otherwise known as the ROM file) with a DLDI patch. Don't ask me what it does but I guess it fixes something to do with the file system.

Anyways, here are the steps to patching the file:

Download the DLDI patch for the R4 here
Download the DLDI patching software here
Assuming that you have the ROM file in hand, unzip the DLDI patching software to somewhere that is conveniently accessible from the Command prompt.
Place the DLDI patch and the ROM file in the same location as well.
Using the command prompt, head over to the folder containing the files mentioned above.
Key in the following at the command prompt: dlditool r4tf.dldi filename.nds, with filename being the name of the ROM file
Press the enter key to begin the patching process
Copy the ROM file over to the MicroSD card and you should be able to run the application/game.