Enjoy high speed NDS Emulation on your Smartphone

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Enjoy high speed NDS Emulation on your Smartphone

Enjoy high speed NDS Emulation on your Smartphone

Emulation on Android has been very rocky so far. The development scene has tried its best to allow Android to run older gaming devices. Why would you go that far? Simply because games on older handhelds are a lot more fun in many cases. Any hardcore mobile gamer would feel a bit lost in the sea of games in mobile. While fun, they don’t really offer the same depth and completion that you would get on a Gameboy for example.

While Gameboy emulation has mostly been a success, NDS emulation has been rocky at best. They can’t even get it to run perfectly on PCs. The fact that you need a touch screen to make NDS gaming actually enjoyable is a factor why it isn’t catching on PCs. That is why development has moved on to focusing on mobile devices with touch displays, such as the Android smartphones and tablets.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have it right when they started. What people usually did is try to port the codes written for Windows PCs to Android. This has left many emulators working far less than intended. The app was so resource heavy that it didn’t play anywhere near full speed. Fortunately for us, someone thought of something Facebook did.

DraStic DS

DraStic DS is an NDS emulator built from the ground up as a native application for ARM devices. Just like how Facebook significantly improved after going native, this native coded app can run NDS games as smooth as Project Butter.

Resource heavy games that I couldn’t get to work on other NDS emulators ran so smoothly on this app that I couldn’t wait to purchase it after the demo. Yeah… there’s a purchase involved. While other emulators for the NDS were free, this app costs some cash. Still, it’s very worth it since it can do what those free apps could not – run NDS games like it were made for Android.

Unfortunately, if you are rocking a Tegra 2 powered device, you are out of luck. It seems that the app is not compatible with it at all, and there are no signs that they will bother with making it available for them. Still, a good number of smartphones and tablets work perfectly with the app, allowing you to carry your pocket monsters right in your pocket, all the time.

Sixaxis Controller

Sure enough, gaming on a touch display could be a bit difficult for more robust titles in the NDS roster. To help you play these games on your smartphone with easy controls, you can get the Sixaxis controller app. You may need root to get this working though, but this is definitely an awesome way to be able to play NDS games with hardware controls even with a smarphone or a tablet.

Still, with the bulk of a PS3 controller in consideration, it may be easier to pocket an NDS lite with you for that long trip. If you don’t have an NDS, then this would be perfect, provided you have a copy of the game you want to emulate. Go and get gaming!

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