Recently with the impending US release, I finally got the Nintendo DS bug. I don’t know what tipped it over for me (probably SylphIRC), but it looks like there’s some momentum at the office. Ed, Kevin, and Eric are all getting NDSLs.
To be able to run homebrews, emulators, backups and the like, you’ll need two things. First you need a passkey to boot into DS mode. The latest and greatest is the Max Media Launcher, which replaces the older bulky passkeys with a DS cart sized (but non-reprogrammable) replacement. (You can subsequently go through a flashing process (link to FlashMe to bypass the need for a key, but it seems like sort of a bad idea for the DS Lite at the moment). In any case, I bought mine for $26 shipped from the UK.
UPDATE: It looks like the MML is buggy with sleep mode. To get around this you can swap in an NDS cart after boot up. Alternatively, the Passkey3 and Super Key are both similar NDS cartridge sized launchers that are supposed to be coming out soon.
The second thing you’ll need is a memory cartridge / player. The best at the moment seems to be the ones made by M3 (100% compatibility, skinnable interface, media playing, lots of emulators built in). The Mini-SD version is very slightly shorter than the SD version, but SD cards are cheaper and come in bigger sizes (and since I have SD and mini-SD cards already, it makes more sense to have something that can take both). While the newest SD SuperCard is smaller (GBA-cart sized) I figure I wouldn’t be bothered too much since GBA carts protrude from the DS Lite already anyway. What’s another centimeter or two.
Here are some links of the things I’m most excited about:
- ScummVM DS – that’s right, Monkey Island, DOTT, and Sam and Max on your DS. Sweet!
- DS Linux – need I say more?
- Homebrew Nintendo DS Development – these tutorials look fun (more dev links)
- SylphIRC – IRC on the DS; useless? maybe, but still damn cool
- Homebrew Apps
- 4 color rebellion » State of the Homebrew – May 2006