awakening the little beast

[SNESFAN]

So I was digging though my closet the other day and I dug up my nintendo DS I havn't touched in over a year, and havn't actually played for several years. so I got a little man that's about video game playing age 5yrs old, and I thought to myself Hmm.. I wonder if I should start to get him into my hobby. Christmas is comming right around the corner.. good gift?


I wanted to make sure he has the latest and greatest on that system (of course) I currently have a DS Xtreme flashcart... I got swindled into thinking 16Gb was the same as 16GB, it actually works out to only 2 actual GB's very boo.. anyway.. I see they have some new developments in the NDS homebrew world, in case you didn't know.. to run NDS roms on a flashcart you actually have to unpack each .nds file patch each rom with an hacked arm7.bin file, recompress it and hope it works. It's not too hard, but it is time consumeing depending on the number of games you got... I know my snes rom collection is pretty massive, I can't imagine doing that for every single rom! ...Well.. I guess things have changed in the past couple years. I researched a bit and found a much improved flashcart than the one I had. It takes microSD and auto patches .nds roms so you don't have to... pretty freaking sweet. I'm just posting this in case you guys have a NDS floating around... there's still a community out there for one of these and it still seems sorta active. And cheap! $24USD flashcart vs the $100 one I originally had. Linkies below.


acekart 2i


http://www.gamersection.ca/product_info.php?cPath=30_34&products_id=862


akaio (custom firmware)


http://akaio.net/


one thing however... the snes emulation still has alot to be desired, the speed is totally there 100-150% on every game I tried but the graphics are horrible, layers are all dorked. They definately need some help over there figureing that out. Super nintendo doesn't intrest my little guy I guess... the graphics are just too poor to keep his interest. He's kinda picky, N64/PSX+ only aperently. If anyone feels like a side project there's a worthy one below.


http://www.snemul.com/ds/

 

[gruso]

I have edited out the bit which you should not post here.

 

[SNESFAN]

I have edited out the bit which you should not post here.

my bad.... let me say it like this then... more politically correct


"I did not realize there was 5000+ games for the nintendo ds"

 

[sold]

I hope you don't mind if I make some DS game recommendations, but the puzzle quest games and tetris party deluxe are must haves for adults and children alike imho. And dont forget mario kart The DS catalog is vast, but also rather crappy. There are some absolute gems in there, but most of the 5000+ games are utter shite. And I realise you are going to want games geared towards kids, but trust me when I say, those are often the worst of the bunch. It's almost like the developers realised that parents are most likely NOT going to be playing these games, so they can cash in and sell crap games based on a movie or cartoon show licenses to kids (via their parents wallets) and make a quick buck.


Emulation on the ds is pretty crappy, except dsx86 which allows you to play quite a few dos games surprisingly well. Snes and Genesis emulation sucks. MSX is kinda slow and frustrating. NES is ok, as is gameboy and gameboy color, but compatibility is occasionally an issue, but depending on which games you really wanna play that may not be a problem for you. There is a good port of opentyrian, and there are good ports of the doom and quake engines which are also pretty cool.


EDIT: If you have a slot 2 device, the GBA catalog makes for many a wasted hour.

 

[SNESFAN]

I hope you don't mind if I make some DS game recommendations, but the puzzle quest games and tetris party deluxe are must haves for adults and children alike imho. And dont forget mario kart The DS catalog is vast, but also rather crappy. There are some absolute gems in there, but most of the 5000+ games are utter shite. And I realise you are going to want games geared towards kids, but trust me when I say, those are often the worst of the bunch. It's almost like the developers realised that parents are most likely NOT going to be playing these games, so they can cash in and sell crap games based on a movie or cartoon show licenses to kids (via their parents wallets) and make a quick buck.


Emulation on the ds is pretty crappy, except dsx86 which allows you to play quite a few dos games surprisingly well. Snes and Genesis emulation sucks. MSX is kinda slow and frustrating. NES is ok, as is gameboy and gameboy color, but compatibility is occasionally an issue, but depending on which games you really wanna play that may not be a problem for you. There is a good port of opentyrian, and there are good ports of the doom and quake engines which are also pretty cool.


EDIT: If you have a slot 2 device, the GBA catalog makes for many a wasted hour.

Yea I got my little guy into super smash bros, mario kart, zelda oot&mm, kirby, stuff like that, he doesn't care for the snes version of most those games so I think the gba will be waisted effort, but loves the crap out of the N64 style games... basically any n64/ps1 game onward... he's not too into tetris and puzzles, he likes the fast action and cometition either human or computer. I'm trying to filter through all those titles now and find some good little known gems, I'm pretty on top of the classics though as I grew up on nintendo systems. I'll be sure to filter the crap games from the good ones before I put them on there, I know that used to frusterate the hell out of me growing up, altough I was renting these games or buying them just to realize they sucked horribly and then going and trading them in for a better one.


I'm reading and that cart does gba rom bypass or something jazz like that, I'll test it out more when I get it. The more I read, the more I like it... the actual community on the official board of the AK2i kinda sucks, I mean REALLY good software releases and support, but there's a real douche mod over there, he closed a topic in a suggestions forum of a sugestion that he felt that could be done as a plug-in rather than inherent feature.. closed the thread for being off topic with only the o/p... treats that forum as his little world and he's the self proclaimed god... big ol douche... anywhoooo

 

[sold]

I'm not sure, but I thought in order to launch gba from slot 1, you would need a slot 2 device with on board memory. I could well be wrong. Just putting it out there.


And also, fuck all these online forum police types that like to wield the mighty hammer of ban for evil instead of... something else... and thingy.

 

[WolfSpider]

The Supercard DSTwo has a GBA emulator that works very good since the card has a 396mhz processor built in.


http://eng.supercard.sc/manual/dstwo/

 

[gibberish]

what wolfspider said. get a dstwo, it's far and away the best cart money can buy.

 

[SNESFAN]

what wolfspider said. get a dstwo, it's far and away the best cart money can buy.

that was several weeks ago.... already bought and useing the acekart 2i, it's a great little cartridge microsd card slot, drag and drop custom firmware updates


games "just work" as advertised, even maplestory ds that doesn't work on my pc emulators. I have to say for ~20usd + 15 for the 16gb microsd .... I have about 75 games on it and it isn't even flinching. I'm very satisfied with that purchase

 

[second exodous]

I got the acekard2i for the sole reason of playing Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled. The game is made by a very very small team and is one of the best RPG's I've ever played. One problems is random crashes and the non-relenting monster encounters. When played through an acekard2i there are no crashes and there is a cheat where you can turn off encounters unless a key combination is pressed. Like I said, best RPG ever, ever, but has bugs and annoyances that the acekard2i fixes, when those are out of the way it is a blast to play.


I went a little over board and played a lot of crap, a lot of crap, and looking at how much these games cost retail it is a scam as far as I'm concerned. All these games cost at least $20 and around 98% of them are utter crap. I now have 10 games on my acekard2i, all that I own, but it is nice not needing to switch cards. I don't have much respect for the DS anymore, Nintendo has no quality control on what it allows on it's system.


Maybe it is because we're older, the NES, well, every system had crap on it and as kids we just didn't care, it was normal. DS is probably the same as system of yesteryear in that respect.


Anyway, Black Sigil is a great game for a first RPG.


EDIT: Woops, missed the part where you mentioned he was 5 the first time I read your post, I guess he is a little young for RPGs.

 

[Caine]

I got the acekard2i for the sole reason of playing Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled. The game is made by a very very small team and is one of the best RPG's I've ever played. One problems is random crashes and the non-relenting monster encounters.

It was quite enjoyable. I certainly wouldn't call it the best. I kinda like RPGs where the encounters are a bit more than a distraction. Though with a bit of decent leveling they weren't too bothersome either.

 

[second exodous]

It was quite enjoyable. I certainly wouldn't call it the best. I kinda like RPGs where the encounters are a bit more than a distraction. Though with a bit of decent leveling they weren't too bothersome either.

You didn't think the random encounters were a little on the heavy side? The terrain that was present in some(most?) of the encounters just proved that the guy that was in charge of that hated me. The monsters in some encounters were not that difficult but some of the fighting maps restricted movement so much that it just took waaaaay too long to beat them. And the same encounter over and over, it got annoying. Also, I'd beat a boss, tough boss, and then the encounters after it were just way way over his toughness.


I'm not alone in thinking this, I read reviews and the majority of the bad ones mention this. I like RPGs that you need to grind to get where you need to be levels wise, not ones that try to get you to the right level on just traveling there. Maybe I'm a little rusty but I would get close to getting through a dungeon, die, have to do it all over again, not make it to save point and die, have to do it all over again until I would find the save/heal area without dieing. After the 3rd time of going through a dungeon I would set it down for a few days or weeks because I was so mad at the thing. The crashes added so much pain to this, so so much, the heavy encounters were not bad enough so they threw in a few crashes just to make sure your fun didn't end too quickly.


Anyway, the acekard2i was made for this game, much more fun when you can focus on the story, characters, grinding, and finding all the secrets rather than paranoia of encounters and crashes. It is hard to recommend this game because I don't condone piracy and the only way to really enjoy this game is through the acekard2i. I thought maybe it would be cool to ask these guys to port to the Pandora and fix all the crashes and lighten the encounters but I can't find how to contact them. They're a small studio and maybe they would like the idea of a few more sales.

 

[SNESFAN]

that's why we need some sort of coding ninja/genie/santa/griffon/unicorn/zombie/what-have-you to make a nintendo ds emulator unlike any the world has seen before


... still keeping my fingers crossed on that one

 

[Caine]

You didn't think the random encounters were a little on the heavy side? The terrain that was present in some(most?) of the encounters just proved that the guy that was in charge of that hated me. The monsters in some encounters were not that difficult but some of the fighting maps restricted movement so much that it just took waaaaay too long to beat them. And the same encounter over and over, it got annoying. Also, I'd beat a boss, tough boss, and then the encounters after it were just way way over his toughness.

The encounters themselves were a challenge yes. That part I liked about it. In most RPGs you just easily win by only using your basic attack, this game was a bit better in that regard. I do agree with you that the encounters would become boring due to the fact that there was a constant stream of identical encounters. Somewhat slightly less frequent and more diverse would have been better.

Maybe I'm a little rusty but I would get close to getting through a dungeon, die, have to do it all over again, not make it to save point and die, have to do it all over again until I would find the save/heal area without dieing.

Hmmm, that didn't happen to me. I just barely survived most dungeons, but I survived. That's not bad at all. Keeps you alert. I did recognize the game quite early on to be like this so I spent some extra time just leveling (especially once I finally made it into the desert, those worms were nice for experience ).

 

[second exodous]

. . .especially once I finally made it into the desert, those worms were nice for experience ).

Ha, that makes me want to play it again! I see your point, you like some of the tings I dislike but I guess they had your type of gamer more in their mind than me.


Anyway, I kinda derailed the subject, I should have just said that the acekard2i helps with some games not being stable and the cheats are nice. My nephew has one and I didn't put the cheats on it, I guess I'm a hypocrite but he's only 9 and I think he would enjoy games more without the cheats but stabilization for some games is a huge plus.