asie on Nostr: I highly recommend reading Shonumi's State of Emulation 2025 post, outlining the ...

I highly recommend reading Shonumi's State of Emulation 2025 post, outlining the current status of DS peripheral emulation: https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art40.html

Myself, I've been working on *unlicensed* peripheral preservation on the side now, so I'd like to introduce that subject matter a bit more here...

I don't really agree that this category is intrinsically in less danger of disappearing; if anything, the unofficial and low-volume nature makes many of them almost impossible to purchase today. (Though there are far fewer of them that are historically relevant.)

Many flash cartridges feature unique menu programs; as such, I think there is merit to emulating at least some of them to preserve those experiences and quirks. As much as the industry resents it, millions of people grew up with these things - more than the vast majority of games released on the DS platform! This rationale - the belief that unauthorized and underground experiences are not inherently less valuable than sanctioned ones - is part of why I added R4 emulation to melonDS in addition to its existing homebrew compatibility.

Some of these products were not even that underground, as they were sold in stores! The Datel Games'n'Music is essentially the unlicensed equivalent of the AM3 DSVision in this regard.

There were also unique *peripherals*, many of which are much harder to find for sale than licensed games. Here's the ones I'm aware of:

- DSerial Edge. For some time, it was the only way to use hardware MIDI communication in NitroTracker. I still don't own one, and have never seen one for sale.
- DS Fire Link's USB adapter. This is essentially an USB controller exposed via the Slot-2 bus. It received its own programs - USB HID implementations of a mouse and gamepad. I am the only person known in the community to own its earlier "D12" revision, while the "D14" revision is not that hard to find, thankfully.
- DS Motion Card and Pak. Not the Activision one, note, which is a simplified version of the original homebrew device. Homebrew programs for the DS Motion do *not* support the Activision variant. Thankfully, melonDS emulates both. I only own variants of the Card, myself, and I have never seen one for sale.
- EZ-Flash 3-in-1. It featured more RAM than the Browser pak (useful for e.g. DSLinux), as well as an enhanced Rumble Pak emulation with the ability to set distinct rumble strengths. These are a little expensive second-hand.
- SuperCard DSTwo. This is a Slot-1 cartridge with its own MIPS CPU on board, which received a fair share of unique emulator ports and even custom programs (in particular DS2x86). I still don't own one, and they are a little expensive second-hand.

There were also some peripherals which were sold, but I could not find any users of (like the GBAccelerator for the GBA - still in stock).