hb08
Latest
Best of 2008: The most delicious DS homebrew
Time to face some harsh facts, people: this time next year, none of us will have two pennies to rub together, and nobody will care anyway, because we'll all be fighting to the bloody death over scrap metal, rat carcasses, and clean drinking water. The good news? You can slow your inevitable descent into abject poverty by no longer paying for your DS games, and instead download totally free homebrew. Hurray! Not that you shouldn't be selective in what you download -- after all, for every StillAliveDS or Pocket Physics, the homebrew community churns out plenty of garbage. With this in mind, we decided to compile a list of the best homebrew we personally encountered this year. Have any recommendations that we missed? Tell us in the comments! And don't forget we dedicated a whole week to homebrew earlier this year -- you can head here for more recommendations!
DS Daily: Who's been converted?
Our most evil and dark attempt to introduce you to the disgusting world of legal homebrew has concluded. Now that the dust has settled, we want to know how many of you actually managed to give something a try? Did you rush out and start downloading like crazy? Perhaps turned your DS into a PDA?All of you who've now decided to take the plunge, what are you enjoying? For those of you that didn't, why? What's keeping you from the wide world of possibilities that come from the DS homebrew scene? We overcame our fears, you should at least try to overcome your own!
Homebrew week: the recapping
This week, the staff at DS Fanboy dedicated themselves to all things homebrew. If you own a DS and aren't checking out some of these hobbyist applications, you're missing half the fun of the system. Let us help you get started, find the best games and other software, and troubleshoot your problems, and you'll be reproducing Rembrandts* in Colors! in no time. *provided you actually have some shred of artistic talentGetting started DS Fanboy's (semi) ultimate homebrew guide Covering some of the most common Slot-1 cards that can turn your DS into a lean, mean, homebrew machine. Homebrew glossary DLD-what? Slot where? We've got the answers. Filling up that SD card Widen the horizons of the DS The best apps for making your DS do all the things a handheld was never meant to do. Japanese homebrew games that will blow your mind From the wacky to the completely awesome. Emulating the gaming world on DS Your favorite old consoles, back in handheld form. Don't buy these: homebrew recommendations There are dozens of amazing homebrew apps available, and we've got a small sampling of our favorites. Homebrew: Using the DS as a PDA Why carry two things when one will do just fine? More Naughtiness on the Nintendo DS All the pornographic puzzles you can fit on a single microSD card. Checking out the community Confessions of a Homebrew Virgin New to this whole deal? You're not the only one. Homebrew dev dishes on the DS scene The man behind Laser Hockey DS on the scene, his recommendations, and the lessons Nintendo could stand to learn from homebrew. Homebrew support group Got problems? We bet someone has an answer.
More Naughtiness on the Nintendo DS
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Naughtiness_on_the_DS_Pornographic_homebrew'; If there's one thing we love to cover, it's mature games for immature gamers. Unfortunately, adult games for the Nintendo DS are rare, especially in the US -- some publishers have even made sure to censor the most trivial details in its games to protect our eyes and innocence, lest they suffer the wrath of parental watchdog groups.Homebrew developers, however, have no such concerns, and have released pornographic projects that no commercial game could ever get away with. We've previewed five of these homemade releases, even providing you with screenshots; the naughty bits are blurred out, of course, but the images are still very much NSFW. Brush your teeth, clip your fingernails, and get down to business past the post break. Oh yeah, it's business time.
Don't buy these: homebrew recommendations
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Don_t_buy_these_DS_homebrew_recommendations'; What's a week of homebrew without a few recommended apps? A waste of time, that's what, and we're happy to inform you that we won't be getting up to those shenanigans. Whether you're a homebrew newbie looking for a good place to start, or a grizzled veteran ready to trade recommendations, this wrap-up of homebrew week is dedicated to you. After all, homebrew is all about the community, right? So let's get together and rap about some of the gems the scene has on offer. Our favorite freebies >
DS Daily: Homebrew Support Group
All week, we've been presenting articles designed to turn homebrew noobs into homebrew ... oldbs. Or something. But there are a lot of DS Fanboy readers who are adept homebrewers, experienced with all kinds of different hardware and software.If you've got questions about homebrewing, let us know! If you're having some kind of problem getting up and running, someone around here, on staff or otherwise (most likely otherwise!) will be able to help. Be warned, though: we don't want to see piracy talk. Legal homebrew only, please! If you're having trouble running commercial DS games from your flash card, good.
Homebrew: Using the DS as a PDA
One thing that's been brought up countless times in DS-related discussions is "if only it could be used as a PDA." Well, with the right combination of hardware and software, it can! But just how well does it stand up to other devices with that classification? Read on as I take the DS through its paces to see how it performs as a personal digital assistant.
Emulating the gaming world on DS
One of the first things homebrewers do when they gain the ability to run unsigned code on a game console is to see what other console's games they can get running. Although the use of commercial ROMs varies from legally ambiguous (in the case of backup copies of your own software) to unambiguously illegal (in the case of just downloading stuff), emulator programs are perfectly legal -- and capable of running legal homebrew software designed for the consoles. We don't really want to get into the legal and ethical issues. We think that programs designed to run like old hardware are just cool.Just like every other console, the advent of DS flash cards has brought with it a booming emulation scene. And since homebrew is so easy to run on the DS, and MicroSD cards so copious, it's easy to turn the humble DS into a classic gaming Swiss Army System.We've outlined some of the most important DS-based console emulators below, along with a ton of lower-profile emulators.
Confessions of A Homebrew Virgin
Write us something about homebrew, my overlords command me, and my heart skips a beat. You see, I have a dark secret that, until now, has remained private: you could write what I know about Nintendo DS homebrew on the back of a postage stamp. And not even one of those bigger special edition stamps they introduce at Christmas, but a regular tiny stamp.A lot of you, I suspect, will be in the same boat as me, and this article is addressed to all of my fellow homebrew neophytes. Rather than simply pretend to know what I'm jabbering about, I thought I would be open about my newbie status, and write something about my first tentative steps into the world of homebrew.For this exercise, I deliberately set aside three hours (spread over a few days) to learn about and download as much homebrew as possible. I had several questions I wanted to answer: Was getting into homebrew as difficult as I always imagined? What would I gain from it? How useful are current online resources to somebody who knows nothing on the subject? Is it worth the expense? Find out by heading past the break for a view of Nintendo DS homebrew through the eyes of a rookie!
Japanese homebrew games that will blow your mind
Whenever the topic of internationally developed homebrew DS games comes up, as it often does among hip and attractive people, most people in "the scene" immediately think of France, whose homebrew community rivals North America's in both size and production. You'll see an occasional release from other countries, such as Spain or Korea, but you'll rarely see much activity elsewhere. But what about Japan's scene? For a country with so many DSes and a strong independent game development community, outside of Infantile Paralysiser's MoonShell media player, we've hardly seen any DS homebrew projects cross the Pacific. Where are all the doujin developers? At least one programmer in Japan has been working on creating games for the DS, and we're bringing him out of the shadows to highlight three of his projects, likely games that you've never even heard of, let alone seen. If you're interested in homebrew development at all, you definitely need to pay attention to MeRAMAN!
DS Fanboy's (semi) ultimate homebrew guide
Where there's a system, there's a community of hobbyist programmers willing to tear it down, build it back up, and make it better, and they've been doing it to the DS from nearly the moment the handheld hit shelves. As the necessary hardware has grown cheaper, easier to use, and more widely available (when not sold out), the DS homebrew community in turn has grown stronger, producing some applications that are so good, they rival (or better!) similar commercial products. But with all of the homebrew solutions available, how does someone new to the scene know where to start? A quick search for guides returns information that can seem complicated and confusing, and many DS owners are wary of spending money on hardware that may not work with their particular system or with the applications and homebrew games they're interested in trying out. The reality is that homebrew on the DS is much easier than it seems, thanks to breakthroughs in the scene, and DS Fanboy is dedicated to helping you navigate the ocean of user-generated content available. From searching out Slot-1 solutions to taking you through them, we've got all the information you need to get started, no matter how little you know about DS homebrew. If you're really lost, check out our handy homebrew glossary for help. It's worth mentioning that we're focusing solely on the newer flash carts for DS homebrew here. With the advent of the all-in-one Slot-1 flash cart, there's little reason for anyone to go with the more complicated Slot-2 devices. While we cover some of that terminology in our glossary, we do so only to help provide a guide for those DS owners just getting started, who may encounter such terms as PassMe and wonder just what it might be.From here, you can hit the jump to see an index of this article's contents, or simply follow the arrows if you'd like to go through step by step. Comments are open on every page, but you can always return here to the main discussion by way of a DS Lite icon on each page. CycloDS Evolution
Widen the horizons of the DS
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Widen_the_horizons_of_your_DS_with_homebrew_applications'; Homebrew on the DS isn't all emulation and old movies. Clever programmers have been able to write programs to make the DS do ... well, things that seem beyond the ability of a game system. Nintendo definitely never had some of the extended uses of the DS in mind when they designed the system. In terms of DS-extending software, DSOrganize stands alone in its class. It plays music, it runs files, it (of course) functions as an organizer. It has a web browser and can download demos. It even has a voice recorder. But it's not the whole world of applications designed to make your DS do amazing things.We've rounded up some apps that make your DS into more than a DS. Ever wanted to use your DS to find networks? Or to play PC games? Read on and find out how you can do those things, and more! Well, we'll just tell you right now how to do it, in general: by downloading stuff and running it on your DS. But read on for specifics.
Homebrew dev dishes on the DS scene
We sit around on our butts and enjoy the fruits of homebrew laborers every day, but we don't often think about the awesome individuals responsible for the free games and programs we're loading up. What drives someone to create a game for which they won't be paid? Love of games and love of the DS, in the case of MrTyzik, who is working on the homebrewed Laser Hockey. We recently sat down with the programmer (and DS Fanboy reader!) to discuss both the DS homebrew scene and his work in progress.
Kicking off a week of homebrew!
The DS has a thriving homebrew community, packed with fantastic (and free!) games and apps, and all this week, we're going to dedicate extra coverage to the scene. Whether you're a clueless beginner or an old pro who just wants to kick back and discuss the benefits of various programs, we'll have something for you this week. Watch this link for more!
