This Nintendo DS Thinks It's a PlayStation

First released over 20 years ago, the Nintendo DS is more than a little long in the tooth as far as game consoles are concerned. But the distinctive design of this handheld system, with dual displays and a touchscreen interface, was revolutionary at the time of its introduction. When also considering the fantastic game library available to the Nintendo DS, it is no wonder why this console is still so popular with gamers today.

But after a couple decades of playing the same games over and over, they do start to lose some of their appeal. But even that does not turn away hardcore enthusiasts — they just look to mods to unlock new capabilities that will never be developed by the original manufacturer that has long since moved on to bigger and better things. While not officially supported, these mods breathe new life into aging hardware platforms.

If you are not familiar with this world, then YouTuber f4mi’s recent video is just what you need to get up to speed. In it, she discusses the long history of DS mods, starting with the reverse engineering of its BIOS back in 2006 when the console was still in its heyday. The understanding that came from this reverse engineering effort allowed modders to bypass the console’s security measures, which opened the door to flash cart development.

Flash carts are a convenient way to bring along a large library of games wherever you go, which is especially useful for a handheld console like the DS. But the innovations certainly did not stop there. Devices like the iPlayer allowed users to play music and video files on their systems. These devices were far more important than flash carts, because they included entire system on a chip (SoC) modules.

The SoCs were in many cases more powerful than the DS hardware itself, adding significantly more processing and memory resources. Perhaps the pinnacle of DS modding was achieved in 2010 with the DSTWO cartridge, which contained an Ingenic JZ4732 MIPS CPU. As demonstrated by f4mi, this cartridge could be coaxed to emulate the SNES and GBA, even if not particularly well.

Over time, x86 emulators popped up in the DSTWO community, which allowed classic DOS games like Duke Nukem to be played on the console. But even this did not stretch the limits of the JZ4732 CPU. A custom Linux distribution was also prepared for use with it, and this made it possible to run a far wider range of applications — including a PlayStation emulator. Not bad for a handheld console that was released on the coattails of the real PlayStation hardware.

Ultimately, while all of these things worked, none of them worked great. This is not due to a lack of computing resources, but due to a wonky SDK. The MIPS processor in the DSTWO cartridge is a completely different architecture from the Arm processor in the DS. The SDK that was supposed to glue them together was more of a hack job than commercial-grade software, so issues lurk around every corner. But if you enjoy hacking away at old hardware and do not expect perfection, be sure to check out f4mi’s video to help you learn the ropes.