Retro Porting Toolkit · The classics, rebuilt to run anywhere

Nintendo DS

ARM9+ARM7 · 2026

Two CPUs, one recompiler: very early pre-alpha research that already has one public game consumer to its name.

ndsrecomp goes after both of the DS's brains at once, recompiling the ARM946E-S and the ARM7TDMI to C. It is research, and it says so: "very early pre-alpha (v0.0.1)", "an experimental developer snapshot, not a ready-to-use emulator or a stable framework". What ships is a source-only developer snapshot with no compatibility promise.

What works today

The firmware-menu boot works. A bounded interpreter tier handles code the guest copies into RAM. melonDS is used as a validation oracle. BIOS and firmware are user-supplied and hash-verified, with an opt-in FreeBIOS path. The one public game consumer is Metroid Prime Hunters, which is in public alpha.

Enhancements

Adaptive 21:9 widescreen exists in the Metroid Prime Hunters consumer. The framework itself is too early for a general enhancement layer.

Known limitations

This is research, not a product: it is a developer snapshot with no compatibility promise, and it is not usable as a general DS emulator or framework.

Games

Reading

ndsrecomp distributes no BIOS, firmware, or game data; everything builds from your own legally dumped copies.

Links