Jun 14, 2009 - Asphalt 4 Elite Racing is potentially one of the best driving games on the DS, although some would say that's damning with faint praise. The Nintendo DSi uses the same title scheme and introduces separate DSi update servers; Also. Game, KA4V (4B413456), Asphalt 4: Elite Racing, 800 Nintendo Points. 00030005, HNDA (484e4441), DS Download Play, 256, 256.
99Bullets American Popstar-Road to celebrity AQUIA-Art Style Series Arcade Bowling Brain Challenge Calculator DIGIDRIVE-Art Style Series DRAGON QUEST WARS Electronic Keyboard FIELDRUNNERS Fishing Resort-GO Series Legends of Exidia Master of Illusion Express-Deep Psyche Master of Illusion Express-Funny Face Master of Illusion Express-Shuffle Games Mighty Milky Way Paul's Shooting Adventure Pinball Pulse-The Ancients Beckon precipice-Art Style Series Retro Keyboard Shantae-Risky's RevengeThis list is a WIP. All games have saving issues.
Even the ones that boot up and play cannot save. A lot of games won't even let you play, they'll just lock up at a screen telling you there's an issue with the save data. EDIT: It actually looks like DRAGON QUEST WARS saves. It seems to be the only game out of all tested that saves.
Thanks for testing! Saving problems are more or less expected since the SD/MMC hardware isn't yet emulated. It's surprising that the DSiware games are working without SD/MMC anyways (using the 'Card Cmd' logging function in no$gba's 'TTY Window', it looks as if they are loading extra data from Cartridge ROM instead of from SD/MMC - apparently there's some 'boot source' setting in RAM, which is telling them to load data from ROM). Initial RAM content is probably a big problem, too. There may be still some missing stuff at 2FFxxxxh in Main RAM.
And, I may be wrong here, but some DSiware/system files seem to require a DSi flag at 308FFC8h, without that value they seem to believe to run on a NDS console (hitting the swi 000006h glitch (aka swi 00h with 16bit fractional part 0006h), which is typical for DSi-only-games-running-on-NDS, the swi bug is seen when enabling warning messages in the 'Xcept' setup tab). And the most-unknown-RAM-content is that Cart header entry 1D4h, which is said to be a 'Pointer to base address where various structures and parameters are passed to the title.' I have no idea where that info comes from, and what data should be stored in that location. For games with missing text, somebody suggested that they might require a file called 'TWLFontTable.dat'. I have no idea how they would access that file though, either it needs to be stored somewhere in RAM, or the games are supposed to load it via SD/MMC ports (but they are apparently not doing that since SD/MMC accesses would stop the emulation). After dumping some of my own DSiWare, I can say about a few more (all EU version unless noted):.
X-Scape/X Returns/3D Space Tank: Playable. It detects the region and changes accordingly (!), but detects no$gba as JP region, so is stuck as X Returns. Flipnote Studio doesn't work, but Ugoku Memo Chou (J) freezes at title screen. Seems to hit a breakpoint. Chotto Magic Taizen series (J): Playable. Nintendo DSi + Internet (Aus): Watchable (nothing to play per se). Nintendo DSi Browser: Runs but fails to connect to the internet.
Art Academy: Breaks on bad opcodes in DSi mode (this is using a complete DS/DSi dump) Other completely not working games. DSiware images are currently loaded as if they were DSi cartridges rather than DSiware files, and that's resulting in a bunch of problems with DSiware. Most DSiware titles should (hopefully) work okay if you've installed them on your eMMC image, so that the DSi firmware could load them from that location. For doing that, you would either need to buy the games, and then dump your whole eMMC from real hardware,.
One could probably also manually install commercial or homebrew DSiware titles on eMMC images - I don't think that anybody has ever done that yet, but it should be possible: one would just have to copy the file to the eMMC image, and, log it as installed title in one or two system files. Thank you for the information, nocash!
And thank you for sharing all of your hard work, by the way. I've learned a lot from your website.
That said, my DSi is currently in a box (moving), so I'm unable to do anything with dumping the eMMC at the moment. (Should have kept it with the 3DS.) In the meantime, if anyone much smarter than I am knows how one would go about manually installing a DSiware title on an eMMC image, I would love to look at a tutorial, but I'm too unlearned to figure out such a thing for myself. Otherwise, it'll likely be a few months before I'm able to test anything out.
But I'll keep you updated on my tests unless someone beats me to it. I only have a few titles on my card - the aforementioned Zelda Anniversary Edition and Dr.
Mario are the most worthy of note. And Zelda interests me particularly since it was only available for a short time and may not become available again. Update - I finally dug up my DSi to dump my files and I'm still unable to get Four Swords Anniversary Edition to run through this method (nor Dr. Mario, for that matter). So it appears that no$gba 2.8b is currently the best method to run this particular game unless someone knows something I don't. By the way, the game is functionally playable, even with the corrupted graphics in that version, although difficult.
Managed to get past the first area a while back. All the same, thanks so much to nocash, who's done more for dsi emulation than anyone.
Those games are mainly using the camera as enhanced feature, aren't they? The camera emulation is only producing a dummy white noise picture (since windows doesn't seem to provide api functions for accessing cameras).
Personally, I've tested only one enhanced game: Cooking Coach. And that one does additionally use the teak coprocessor, which is still miles away from being emulated. So, no, the DSi emulation isn't suitable for gaming purposes.
You've also asked about system files (in v2.8e release thread): No, DSi enhanced cartridges don't have any access to the system files on eMMC storage, so that files would be needed only for DSiware, not for cartridges. I wrote this guide on how to copy DSiware titles into NAND a couple days ago on GBATemp, and thought you guys might find it useful. Copy the '4xxxxxx' folder from the 3DS TWL nand to the DSi nand (in the 300004 folder, i could be off a couple zeroes), delete the 0000000.tmd file and cmd folder. Make sure you copy over both the 'content' and 'data' folders 2. Look up the title ID in that giant TMD archive, cut off the end so HxD says the length is 208, save and rename to title.tmd 3. Look at offset 1E7 on the tmd, rename the.app's last digit to the last digit listed.
Decrypt any ticket in the ticket/300004 folder, change title ID to your injected app's title id, encrypt ticket and save. Note that I was able to install a few games that were never preloaded on a DSi by modifying the DSi Browser ticket, so it doesn't seem that there's a lot of verification going on there. This is after downgrading the launcher to the 1.4.1 one so you may have to do that (it's downloadable using NUS downloader). I don't know what (if any) security features were added in newer versions.
Looking at the ESRB site, you may see these games coming in the next coming weeks: Asphalt 4: Elite Racing This is an action racing game in which players drive high-performance cars through city streets. Players can race against other drivers, crash into them, or simply push other drivers off the tracks. In the 'Cop Chase' mode, players race through roadblocks in an attempt to outrun police vehicles and to achieve bonus points. BRAIN CHALLENGE 'This is a collection of 'brain training' puzzle games that include math, memory, and logic exercises. Players perform educational tests and receive scores based on their speed and accuracy.
In a 'stress test' exercise, a police officer yells at the player, pounds on the screen, and sometimes breaks the glass when an incorrect answer is given.' American Popstar Road To Celebrity 'This is a social simulation game in which players follow the storyline of a young girl who aspires to become a pop star. Players can engage in a mixture of musical challenges (e.g., dance battles and playing guitar), social objectives (e.g., developing a friendship or scaring a rival), and even maintenance of health and hygiene. During the course of the game, players will need to guide their characters into bathrooms in order to relieve themselves, which is depicted by a toilet paper icon and an opaque star covering the character.' BRAIN CHALLENGE 'This is a collection of 'brain training' puzzle games that include math, memory, and logic exercises. Players perform educational tests and receive scores based on their speed and accuracy. In a 'stress test' exercise, a police officer yells at the player, pounds on the screen, and sometimes breaks the glass when an incorrect answer is given.'
ANOTHER port of Brain Challenge? It's already available on XBLA, WiiWare and the DS already as a regular game card. I guess they figure if people will buy the express versions of Brain Age, then they will buy this. I decided to give Real Soccer/Football 2009 a try. I'm not sure why because I'm never any good at these games, and this one proves to be no exception. I have yet to score a goal in about an hour of play, so it has gotten very frustrating, but the main thing I can't get hold of in sports games (including Madden, etc.) is how when on defense the game keeps changing the player you are controlling.
I start running toward the player with the ball and then suddenly I'm controlling someone else who is closer to the ball, but who is now traveling away from it because that was the right direction before but not now! Then a second later I'm controlling someone else. I wish the game would allow me to play the offense only, with it controlling the defense entirely. I think I'd enjoy such games a lot more if I could do that. There are both button-only and touch controls, which is a combination of the d-pad to move, L button (hold to run) and the touch screen to pass, shoot and do various moves via gestures. The touch controls partly work really well, most notably the basic pass, but then there are some gestures that I can't get to work reliably such as a 'GK rush', which means the goalie rushes out to the ball. Most of the time when I try the pictured gesture it interprets it as a long pass, which does nothing in this case since I'm on defense!
I did find that if I drew the gestures larger and faster then pictured they tended to work better. Probably with practice I could get better at it, and the fact that the passing is so much better (draw a line in the direction you want to pass), I tend to want to use the touch controls, but then I also find myself performing moves I didn't mean. Probably I should just stick with the button controls. In any case I don't score a goal and the computer does. Now, if you like soccer/football games, I think this is a probably a good one, so I say go for it.
EDIT: the camera integration, while a gimmick, is amusing to play with. The results aren't entirely satisfactory, but with experimentation you can get interesting results. American Popstar Road To Celebrity 'This is a social simulation game in which players follow the storyline of a young girl who aspires to become a pop star. Players can engage in a mixture of musical challenges (e.g., dance battles and playing guitar), social objectives (e.g., developing a friendship or scaring a rival), and even maintenance of health and hygiene. During the course of the game, players will need to guide their characters into bathrooms in order to relieve themselves, which is depicted by a toilet paper icon and an opaque star covering the character.'
LOL following a young girl into the bathroom. Im shocked there isnt a outrage over this yet. Art Style™: PiCTOBiTS™ (Nintendo, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone, 500 Nintendo DSi Points™): Your goal in Art Style: PiCTOBiTS is simple: clear large blocks that fall from above ('megabits') by combining them with 'bits' (square blocks) of the same color.
Add in the ability to pick up bits and place them anywhere on the touch screen, and you'll quickly find that strategy is critical to your success. By clearing the bits, you gradually reveal each stage's hidden game character - look for favorites from classic NES™ titles - and earn coins that can be spent to unlock DARK stages or to listen to the game's soundtrack in MUSIC mode. This grand mix of familiar elements and new game play leads to the uniquely enjoyable experience that is PiCTOBiTS.
So Picopict is out, so I'm happy. But what is their obsession with giving these games a different name in every region?
Also, from Cao Cao's link: So yes, this is the first of six exclusive DSi titles that Intelligent Systems and Square-Enix are working on. We don’t know if the other five titles will be DSiWare, or retail DSi-only projects.Exciting.