melonDS

melonDS

Overview
melonDS is a free and open-source Nintendo DS emulator created by Arisotura (formerly known as StapleButter) and developed together with a group of contributors. It is written in C++, released under the GPLv3 licence, and available for Windows, Linux, macOS and BSD systems. The project aims to provide fast and accurate DS emulation, and it runs commercial games as well as homebrew software from ROM files. melonDS can also emulate the Nintendo DSi, although DSi support is still marked as a work in progress.

melonDS offers accurate and fast Nintendo DS emulation with upscaled 3D graphics, savestates and local multiplayer support.

Features

melonDS has a solid set of features that make it one of the most accurate Nintendo DS emulators.

- Nearly complete emulation core: CPU, video, audio and other DS hardware.
- JIT recompiler for fast emulation.
- Accurate software renderer plus an OpenGL renderer with 3D upscaling to higher resolutions.
- OpenGL compute shader renderer for high internal resolutions.
- Savestates with several slots, so progress can be saved at any point, and undo of the last state load.
- Real-time clock, microphone input and lid close/open emulation.
- Touch screen control with the mouse, tablet or touch input.
- Keyboard mapping and joystick support, including Xbox 360 pads and other controllers, with hotplugging.
- Various display position, sizing and rotation modes for the two screens, plus a fullscreen mode.
- Multiple windows and several emulator instances in one process.
- Local wireless multiplayer between instances, with experimental LAN play.
- Online Wi-Fi connectivity (work in progress).
- Action Replay cheat codes, including import from usrcheat.dat files.
- DLDI support for homebrew that needs file system access.
- GBA slot support, including add-ons such as the Motion Pak and Guitar Grip.
- Solar sensor emulation for games that use it.
- Loads ROMs directly from ZIP, 7z and other archives.
- ROM info dialog, RAM search and a DSi title manager.
- Pause, reset, frame step and framerate target presets.
- Audio interpolation modes and high-quality resampling.
- GDB stub for debugging homebrew software.

The emulator menu is simple: from the File menu you open a ROM, insert or eject DS and GBA cartridges, import save files, boot the firmware, and save or load states, while the System menu pauses, resets or stops emulation, enables cheats and opens the multiplayer options. In the video settings you can choose between the software renderer, which is the most accurate but uses more CPU power, and the OpenGL renderer, which uses the GPU and can render 3D graphics at higher internal resolutions. Local multiplayer is set up by launching several melonDS instances on the same computer; it is still experimental, and disabling the framerate limiter can help to get a stable connection.

Since version 0.9.4 melonDS includes an open-source BIOS replacement, so games can be started with direct boot without extra files. Booting through the DS firmware menu requires BIOS and firmware dumps from an original DS or DS Lite, and DSi mode requires DSi BIOS, firmware and NAND dumps. Version 1.1 added DSP emulation for DSi titles and cheat import, and development continues on GitHub.