DS Flashcards and You: Part 2/4

DS Flashcards and You
Part II: The Emulators
by Jared “Gapporin” Bottorff

The DS actually offers a lot in terms of emulating your favorite consoles and computers. Read on for a rundown of the most popular ones available.

– CrocoDS (Amstrad CPC): CrocoDS, an original emulator programmed for the DS, is an emulator for the Amstrad CPC. For those who are unfamiliar with the Amstrad, Wikipedia lists that it was “designed to be a direct competitor to the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum systems. The CPC range was very successful and over 3 million were sold during the machine’s lifespan.” The graphics were very good for a computer in that era, and some of the notable titles included Cybernoid 2, Turrican, Switchblade, and Crafton & Xunk. The CPC also had a mascot of sorts in the personage of Roland, and eight different Roland titles were created during the computer’s lifespan.

CrocoDS is a respectable translation of the CPC to the small double screen. It supports save states (saving, loading and erasing), an on-screen keyboard (as do most computer-based emulators on the DS), and a speed limiter in case the emulator runs too fast. Although, during my play testing, I found that the emulator usually hovered around an 80-85% frame rate: Not slow enough to be unplayable, but not fast enough to be at full speed.

One interesting feature of CrocoDS is the ability to save screenshots of the game you are playing. Pressing a certain button on the DS saves a .sna file of the current screen on your SD card. To convert it into a usable picture format, you will have to use a program called “sna2png” (also programmed by the same author) to convert it into a .png file. Despite having to go through a couple more steps than normal, I believe this is the only emulator on the DS that allows you to take screenshots of the game you are playing.

CrocoDS uses .dsk files to run the CPC games, and auto starts the game that you select, so there’s no guesswork involved with trying to get the game to run. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support multi-disk games. Nevertheless, it is a very good emulator if you’ve always wanted to try out the CPC.

DreamZZT (ZZT): Do you remember back in 1991 when a little game called ZZT was released? Using ANSI art for graphics, it was reminiscent of top-down RPGs like Rogue. But whereas Rogue and similar games focused on battling creatures and gaining experience, ZZT was more about exploring your world and solving puzzles to advance further in the game.

When ZZT was first released, there was a level editor included with the game that allowed people to create their own ZZT worlds using the ZZT-OOP engine. The creator did not expect the editor to be that popular, but it did, with users creating new worlds by the score. These user-created worlds weren’t just adventure games like the original; they spanned from shooters to puzzlers to just plain exploring. Even today, users create new ZZT worlds for people to discover.

That’s where DreamZZT comes in. Originally programmed for the Sega Dreamcast (hence the “dream” title), DreamZZT is an open-source ZZT-OOP interpreter for the Nintendo DS. It allows you to play user-created ZZT levels, or just play the original levels as you remember them. There’s not much in the way of extra bells or whistles, but with a program as simple as this, it’s not really needed.

A caveat, however: With my Max Media Deck, I noticed that DreamZZT seemed to crash a lot. After I got my Supercard DS One, I didn’t notice as much crashing, although it still occurred occasionally. I’m not sure if the problem lay with DreamZZT or the way the world was originally programmed. Just something to note.

– DSMasterPlus (Sega Master System/Game Gear): DSMasterPlus is an SMS/GG emulator with a very good-looking GUI. It supports most of what you can throw it at, but it does have a limitation in which you can only select from 255 games at a time, no matter how much space you have on your SD card (other emulators suffer from file limitations as well — more on this later). Speed is imperfect depending on which game you play: Some run faster than they’re supposed to, while others run slower. However, there is an option to submit a bug report directly to the developers through the DS’s Wi-Fi. Neat.

There’s also an option to use Pro Action Replay codes when playing a game. Features that like are what I like to call “uncommon additions” — things you would think would be included in every emulator, or at the very least, seem to be standard on any PC emulator. However, these things aren’t very common when dealing with DS emulators, so it’s a nice addition. Save states are also supported, so you can pick up right where you left off.

– fmsxDS (MSX): Unfortunately, in the world of DS emulators, there is no clear-cut choice if you want to emulate the MSX computer. There are two main MSX emulators available: fmsxDS (a port of Marat Fayzullin’s fMSX) or PenkoDS. Neither one of them emulates the MSX perfectly yet, but each one has its advantages. fmsxDS seems to possess better sound support while lacking in overall performance. PenkoDS, on the other hand, has better performance, but has awful sound support.

I used to use PenkoDS when I used my Max Media Dock, but after I made to switch to a Supercard DS One, PenkoDS refused to work and hung at the title screen. I never did figure out what the problem exactly was, so I switched to fmsxDS.

Firstly, fmsxDS is written completely in Japanese. Therefore, if you decide to use fmsxDS, I would recommend taking the time to read Gus’ quick guide to fmsxDS, as it explains what each menu option does and how to get fmsxDS up and running.

A few things I do want to note, however. The guide mentions that “I noticed that if you put too many roms (don’t ask me how many is too many!) in that directory fmsxDS will hang or crash!” That’s not exactly true, as I have a lot of MSX 1+2 roms in the same folder and fmsxDS works fine. The problem, however, is long filenames. You can have filenames longer than eight characters, but not by much. If the filename extends the space in the menu (about 12-15 characters), fmsxDS will crash upon loading. That’s the only file limitation I’ve noticed about fmsxDS. Oh, yeah, do not touch the touch screen, either, or fmsxDS will crash. Therefore, as you can tell, it’s not perfect. For MSX enthusiasts like myself, however, it’s a small price to pay for portable MSX gaming.

– FrodoDS (Commodore 64): FrodoDS is, obviously, a port of the Commodore 64 emulator Frodo to the DS. While it has some very good points about it, it seems incomplete and buggy overall.

First, the good: The emulation itself is actually pretty accurate. I’ve noticed no problems with graphics, and all the games I have used so far have no compatibility problems. One of the trademarks of the C64 was the unique 8-bit sound that it produced, due to its built in SID chip. FrodoDS recreates the SID chip very well. There’s also an on-screen keyboard for typing, and there’s a neat feature in which, before loading a game, you can press the R button and it automatically types in and runs the LOAD,”8″ commands. No fuss, no muss.

But then the bad: Depending on which version you get, there are different bugs to watch out for, and sadly, no release is bug free. Sometimes, when running FrodoDS, the keyboard will not work and the sound is missing. This is an arbitrary cause, and you may need to re-run FrodoDS 2-3 more times before these start working again. In another version, you have to load the first .D64 file twice before you can run it, otherwise FrodoDS will toss up a “DEVICE NOT PRESENT” error.

Multi-disk games are not supported, so if you want to play one of these games, you have to make sure it has been merged onto a single .D64 file. Speaking of which, only .D64 files are supported by FrodoDS. There is no save states, either. Actually, there is a way to use save states, but it involves creating the save state using the PC version of Frodo and coping it over to your SD card. FrodoDS cannot save or overwrite save states, anyways, so the whole process seems counterintuitive.

I don’t mean to knock FrodoDS too much, because it really is a nice emulator. Nevertheless, it just a little bit more polish to bring it to the top of the list.

– Lameboy (Game Boy/Color): Lameboy is actually a quite accurate emulator for the Game Boy. It can play both Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, and plays each with full speed. The emulator notes that it only has “preliminary” sound, but it sounds very good despite not being fleshed out.

It saves your game once you exit out onto a file that acts as the GB’s game SRAM. Once you re-enter the game, you can pick up right back where you left off, just as if you would if you saved in game on a regular Game Boy. There is even a Fast Mode that you can trigger on and off to speed up gameplay.

Not many extra trimmings with this emulator, but if you want an accurate, well-programmed Game Boy emulator, this is your best bet.

– nesDS (NES): nesDS may be the second most accurate emulator available on the DS (second to ZXDS), no matter what platform. A port of the GBA emulator PocketNES, nesDS is DLDI-compatible, so it runs on most every flash card available. There is a bevy of options to choose from when setting up the emulator. You can configure the buttons to use in the emulator, and there is even fast forward and rewind buttons as well.

You can move the screen around to fit what you prefer. You can also load and save states whenever you want to, and there is no filing limitations or filename restrictions.

The NES emulation itself is very good. I would say it’s about 90% accurate. There’s a few noticeable problems (for example, the graphics glitch in Baseball Stars, or the drums in Super Mario Bros. 3 are missing), but otherwise, it’s almost perfect. If you enjoy NES, this is the emulator to get.

– SNEmulDS (SNES): SNEmulDS is probably the most advanced SNES emulator you’ll find for the DS. Unfortunately, it still requires a bit of work before it could be considered an accurate emulator.

The sound is very good. A lot of the SNES music really sounds great, such as Final Fantasy III. There is a variety of settings to change the speed of the game, for instance if it runs too fast or too slow. It’s easy to control, and there’s automatic saving of the SRAM for save files.

So you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, what’s the problem?” The biggest problem that SNEmulDS has is that it cannot correctly configure the priorities of some of the background and graphics used in a game, mainly because it varies from game to game (or even from scene to scene within a game). For instance, a character sprite may go “over” instead of “under” a background tile. Background may look jarred or cut in half. Some graphics may be completely missing or just white instead of their natural colors.

Fortunately, SNEmulDS offers many menus to try and re-configure the graphics as to where they become playable. For those who love to tinker, this is a blessing. But most of us, when we want to play a game, we don’t want to spend 15 minutes setting up the graphics, 5 minutes playing, another 15 minute setup, and so on. We just want to play. Unfortunately, SNEmulDS lacks that ability.

SNEmulDS shows a lot of promise. Aside from the graphics issue, it would be a fantastic emulator. It just needs a bit more work before it can become a serious contender.

– StellaDS (Atari 2600): Speaking of the ability to pick up and play, StellaDS offers just that. No frills, no extra hoops. Just some good 2600 emulation.

StellaDS is a port of the PC emulator Stella, so the emulation itself is outstanding. There’s accurate graphics, sound and control. You also have the ability to choose which variation you’d like to play, just like a real VCS.

However, even as simple as is this, there’s still a few omissions. For one, there’s no way to change the screen from Color to Black and White. Even though this isn’t a practical option, it would still be a nice throwback to the actual console. There’s the ever-present filename bug as well. Nothing causes the emulator to crash, but if your filename is too large, it messes up the continuity of the list. For example, say you have a lot of roms in a folder and they all have filenames that are too long. If you choose a certain game, it will actually load the game that’s several entries farther up on the list, so you have to count it out and actually go farther down the list than normal. It’s a very annoying bug, so remember to keep those filenames short.

Overall, StellaDS is a very nice emulator that’s perfect for those 5-10 minute play sessions.

– ZXDS (ZX Spectrum): From the moment you start up ZXDS, you can tell that it’s a very professional looking emulator. Right away, you are greeted by the help menu that tells you the lowdown on everything that ZXDS can do. The bottom screen, which is the onscreen keyboard, is designed to look exactly like a ZX Spectrum, right down to the rainbow stripe running across it.

ZXDS handles a variety of files like a pro. .rom and .z80 RAM snapshots are supported, as well as complete .tzx and .tap tape images. You can also save and load states at will as well.

You can setup the DS to manipulate any key on the Spectrum keyboard that you would like. Because of the wide variety of inputs that the Spectrum supported, you can set up any of these that you would like from within the emulator, such as the Kempston joystick, the Sinclair I and II, the Cursor joystick and more.

Speed is also a configurable aspect of the emulator. You can set it for fast or slow speed, or gradually speed it up or slow it down. You can even toggle the speed between normal or fast/slow at will. If you are worried about losing any of your settings, ZXDS saves to a separate file to be loaded again the next time you start it up.

As you might imagine, if the emulator is this rich in settings, the emulation itself has to be pretty good. And it is. Tapes load up and take time to run, just as if they would on a normal Spectrum computer. Sound and graphics are perfectly recreated. The whole program is polished to perfection.

Even if you aren’t acquaintanced with the Spectrum computer, everyone should at least check out ZXDS, to see DS emulation done right.

Did you know your DS can do more than just play games? In Part III, we’ll talk about some of the applications you can use to expand your DS’s functionality.