What is NDS-GBA Emulator? It is what we all thought was impossible ages ago, an emulator for a slot 1 flash cartridge, allowing a slot 1 cart to run GBA roms. The emulator is created by DarkChen, and his blog is a bit sparse but it has more information regarding the emulator. It runs pretty well, and there are lots of features worth checking out. I’d say this is yet another EXCELLENT reason to purchase an iPlayer. The cart is certainly the most unique out there and I think the team behind it should definitely get at least some credit for being a bit creative and thinking out of the box.
It is such a significant release that I had to immediately update my iPlayer review to reflect this piece of homebrew, the new section can be read below or with the actual updated iPlayer review (updates span more than just these few paragraphs).
Early on in the iPlayer’s life, many had suggested the possibility that the extra power of the iPlayer can be harnessed to do great things for the homebrew community. I actually doubted it because of how tight the iPlayer team was keeping their product. I can happily say that I was proven wrong. The very first success seen on the iPlayer is a project created by darkchen. Believe it or not, it is a GameBoy Advance emulator.
For years people such as myself have talked about how it was impossible to run GameBoy Advance games from the slot 1 of a DS. There was a bit of speculation early on that the iPlayer and its extra power could do the impossible, but I was skeptical, thinking that it would take quite a bit of time if it was even possible. However, On September 18th, 2009, the first version of the emulator was released to the public. Being a first release, it was impressive. A lot of games ran full speed without any video or audio glitches. The compatibility is far from perfect, but for a first release, this is really impressive. Within my personal tests, I’d say roughly 80% of my games worked flawlessly, although admittedly I tested only around 50 games.
What is more impressive are the features available, there is the ability to save state (save anywhere in game), take screenshots, remap your buttons and even frame skip to speed up the game. What is even more shocking is that these features work perfectly without glitches. I’m quite excited to see what the iPlayer can do in the future.
The emulator isn’t perfect yet, there are still compatibility issues, some glitches, but for the very first release, this is surprisingly problem free. Asides from several games having trouble to run, the emulator looks polished, has a substantial amount of features, and most importantly the features work as intended.
If you are wondering where you could purchase a lovely iPlayer and play some GBA games on your DSi, then please support our sponsors who will in turn support us by buying from 4CoolDay.com:
This should be enough to get the company who makes the iPlayer a good amount of money 😛
I agree with the above post.
This is like making a PC game that will only run on Dells or something like that.
The iPlayer Company are definitely smiling from ear to ear.
(P.S: If I win the contest, it will be the first think I do with it!)
Oh man…I wish I was lucky enough to have this. My R4 broke and no flashcart. =[
Hope to see a similar project when the new DSi features (2xCPU and 4XRAM) unlocked with the exploit shared by drukencoders so we don’t need a second card exclusively for GBA games
It’s nice to see an GBA emulator released and all, but I really hope he releases his source, because, you know, both VBA and gpSP are GPL’d. If I’m not mistakend, he just ported gpSP (as iPlayer is a MIPS CPU).
’bout time.
I’ve been waiting to be able to play gba games without a slot 2 for years.
Yea this is pretty cool. Darkchen is a smart guy.
hmmm, well, i already have an EZ-3in1, so the gab emulation isnt a reason for me to buy the iplayer, unless i get a dsi… if they move down in price >.>
nice, thinking of getting one tho i have a supercard SD slot-2 device already, the funny thing was i was told repeatedly that the whole GBA emulation on the ds via slot one was impossible.
Wow awesome, who would have thought this would happen this fast ? I still remember those naysayers that kept dragging on that the DS would never have a fully working gba emulator.
Now where is the “Donation” button to repay this guy for his splendid work ?
Epicly aweseom 😀
Worth it just for the key config (save state is just the icing on the cake, lol)
I love this… Now if only I had an iPlayer to use it…