Running An Entire PS1 Emulator In A DS Cartridge

PS1 logo on the top screen of a white DS

Gaming on a Nintendo DS can bring back great memories of long car trips from the past. But looking back, we remember wishing to play more than the DS could ever hope to handle. [fami] looks into the SuperCard DSTWO in her recent video, a solution to our past sorrows.

Able to play anything from the very games designed for the DS to emulated PS1 games, the DSTWO is more than capable of surpassing the abilities of the DS itself. More impressively, all games are run directly from the cartridge itself rather than on the DS’s hardware. While this emulated console within a handheld is impressive, it is far from simple to get running.

The DSTWO runs with an Ingenic JZ4732 as the CPU, completely different from any native architecture of the DS. Pair this with the unhelpful SDK made for the cartridge, and the aging hardware is held together by the community development behind any improvements. This is aided by the CPU similarities of another widely modded game console, the Dingoo A320.

When not having a fit, and after going through hours of troubleshooting, you might find the DSTWO running a game of SimCity 2000 or even Spyro the Dragon inside a DS. Even with the difficulties of use, the fact that these games run at all is impressive. If you want to try the DSTWO emulation yourself, check out the forums.

This is far from the only example of extreme care going into emulation. Here at Hackaday, we have covered similarly impressive projects such as this completely DIY handheld made for any retro game emulation you throw at it.

Thanks to DjBiohazard for the tip!

8 thoughts on “Running An Entire PS1 Emulator In A DS Cartridge

    1. Yea but only in nds mode not 3ds mode

      They had a dstwo plus that could emulate gateway3ds but that apparently didn’t get far, before the gateway bricker

      The dstwo could also do gba emulation without needkng a gba cartridge

      But the dstwo will cripple your da battery especially when using the CPU for emulation of things like MP4 and video playback without dpg conversion

      New3ds XL is basically a android tablet compared to the original ds

        1. You’d be just better shoving a bunch of ram, microcontroller and a fpga on a gba cartridge and use the slot one card either as a passkey, or use it as a ds expansion pack

          Like ez flash and etc

          1. Another problem is the nds cartridge port (multiplexed)

            Is known for being a huge bottle neck because of the bandwidth

            Dsi and 3ds are better faster throughput

            So having a dsp or coprocessor is more useful

  1. Great video but they definitely buried the lead! I think I saw this in my YouTube recommendations and ignored it!

    If they called it something like play FFVII on your DS that’d get the clicks

    1. Hilariously the first comment on the thread was someone complaining about the title of the original post.

      And here I am complaining about thumbnails and video titles.

      Will the internet ever rid it self of whingers like me?

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