Running DSi Games

General
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Hello! I have not seen much discussion around DSi emulation. It is possible! But it runs poorly :smiley: (at least via the method I have it working). Currently I have confirmed this working on Pixie version 7c4e6a8f and 54c85a0f

Also I was hesitant to post this to user guides as I wanted to see if anyone has tried on their end and found better ways.

First, the only preloaded cores that will even support DSi are “melonDS” and “melonDS DS” and of the two, I have only gotten “melonDS” to work.

The process is straight forward - first you need BIOS files and a nand dump. Place them in your BIOS folder with no subfolder:

  • bios7.bin
  • bios9.bin
  • firmware.bin
  • dsi_bios7.bin
  • dsi_bios9.bin
  • dsi_firmware.bin
  • dsi_nand.bin

More information here: Nintendo - DS (melonDS 2021) - Libretro Docs

You also need a DSi rom. It doesn’t really matter what rom (as long as its good file) as you need a way to load into the DSi since “Start Core” isnt an option for melonDS.

Second, you will need to make sure that the core for your DSi rom is set to melonDS since drastic is the default core. Then simply launch the DSi rom. It will boot to a DS menu at first which is normal.

Third, after the rom boots to the DS settings menu, you will need to bring up the RetroArch options quick menu and go to Core Options>System. Change console mode from DS to DSi. Make sure “Boot Game Directly” is OFF. It is off by default so do not change it or any other option. After setting console mode to DSi, save core overrides and close the content.

Fourth, reload the rom and it should take you into the DSi menu where you can choose to play any of the games that are loaded on the nand dump you are using. Load games and play to your hearts desire! (with poor framerates and stuttering :P)

Notes:

  1. Regardless of what rom you use to boot into DSi, it will not show as a loaded game to play. Only the games saved to that nand dump will be available.

  2. On the PC version of melon DS - I have the setting to “Boot Game Directly” working when set to on. What that does, is boot you straight into whatever rom you loaded. However on the retroarch core I am not able to get that to work and it only boots to a black screen and you cant even bring the RA menu up anymore meaning you have to manually edit the core options file to set the option back to off.

  3. The nand seems like it can corrupt easily so there may be a time it stops booting. For this I recommend making a backup of the nand so you can reload a new copy in if that ever happens.

If anyone else has tried any other approaches that are working better or has anything else to share let me know!

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The “melonDS” core is a very old version of melonDS so this will surely give out bad performance, and the “melonDS DS” core although keeping up with newest version, won’t be working due to graphic requirement (only work on glcore, and with BSP kernel that we are having, that not gonna happen). You should seek for other device with better spec and driver in order to play this

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Good call out. I would advise against trying to play DSi on these as well, this is mostly just to explain how to do it if one was curious :slight_smile:

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