Do you own a Nintendo DSI?

Jay · Dec 23, 2009

Do you use it to play old roms? Like from old Gameboys, GBA or even SNES?

If so, please let me know. If your way is illegal than you shouldn't do it! But you can PM how you did it... for educational reasons... for a report. Yes.

That's right.

A report.

AshburnerX · Dec 23, 2009

I don't know if these work on the DSi (I know it'll work on a DSlite or standard DS), but the way most people have been doing it is via an R4 cart or the like. No matter what legislation Nintendo is trying to pass in Japan, these carts are quite legal to own at the moment. However (and this is the important bit) any Roms you put onto said cart are going to be illegal unless you already own the game in some form. So really, unless your doing this to have your collection at hand, it's going to end up being illegal no matter what.

Covar · Dec 23, 2009

Actually the worst part about the DMCA is that while you are allowed to create backups of media that you own you are not allowed to circumvent any copy protection and the backup must be on the exact same media and format of the original. Way to go Congress.

Ravenpoe · Dec 23, 2009

Most emulators that I know of are for slot 2 devices, meaning they require a gba slot (ds and dslite only). I know there are new flash cards that work with the dsi, and you might even get sd support with them, but since I don't own a dsi, I don't have any first hand experience.

Look for an R4 card for dsi, and read up on what it supports.

And as said before, an R4 is perfectly legal to own, its what you do with it that may be illegal.

Whatever you do, make sure to check out the homebrew scene. A lot of neat games and apps made out there that are completely free and legal.

figmentPez · Dec 23, 2009

Covar said:
Actually the worst part about the DMCA is that while you are allowed to create backups of media that you own you are not allowed to circumvent any copy protection and the backup must be on the exact same media and format of the original. Way to go Congress.

Yeah, so much for "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."

JCM · Dec 28, 2009

I avoided buying the DSI due to its pitiful battery life compared to the DSlite (which lasts me from 10-15 hours), but my sister's uses Acekard.

Avoid R4 for three reasons-
-its almost always never updated enough for newer game releases and homebrew.
-competitors' like M3 REAL and Acekard are regularly updated and have more functions
-its currently illegal to have an R4, as its being heavily sued against and taken away from stores, soon you wont even have any support

Do you use it to play old roms? Like from old Gameboys, GBA or even SNES?

There is no way to emulate the GBA on the DSI, but for gameboy/gameboy color use Lameboy, and snesDS for SNES emulation. snesDS runs on the DSlite overclocked, but should run without overclocking in the DSI due to its superior RAM.

Now, its legal to have emulators, however the legality of each rom varies, as some game companies no longer exist, while some got sold to others and some are still selling the roms in console stores and in game compilations.

Or you could say f*ck you to laws that go against consumer rights and are in legally gray areas (yes DVD regions, Im looking at you) and enjoy playing ROMs of games you have already bought, thankfully the game companies there havent started a witch hunt ala RIAA's. Yet.

AshburnerX · Dec 28, 2009

It's not illegal to own a R4 yet JCM. But it's likely they will be made illegal in Japan very soon, at the very least. They haven't been fighting them in the US yet though.

JCM · Dec 28, 2009

AshburnerX said:
It's not illegal to own a R4 yet JCM. But it's likely they will be made illegal in Japan very soon, at the very least. They haven't been fighting them in the US yet though.

Where have you been the past 2 years?

Its ILLEGAL to sell, buy or distribute it in Japan, Nintendo + 54 companies won that already in Japan-
http://exophase.com/ds/r4-ruled-as-illegal-in-japan-10350.htm
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/89792-Japan-Makes-DS-R4-Card-Illegal

In the US its a legally gray area, it has been taken away from Wall-marts, and thanks to Nintendo, has been permanently banned from Ebay and Amazon (you can find it sometimes, but flag it and it disappears.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/34374/Nintendo-cripples-DS-R4-piracy-threat

Its illegal (or in a legal gray area), due to its illegal status, its original team has disbanded.
Today's R4 you find on sale are cheap chinese knock-offs that depend on users making new firmware for it, and as other cards are selling better and allow for SDHC (16-32 gb SD cards, here we come!) its pretty much an idiotic decision to buy one.

AshburnerX · Dec 28, 2009

Odd... then why are people still selling them openly in Japan? It's not exactly the kind of place where the police will look the other way (unless your with the Yakuza or something.)

tegid · Dec 29, 2009

I don't know much aboutn this, but I got an R4i SDHC last week for my brother. I understand it supports this SDHC thing, whatever it is, and big microSD memories (Ooooh! SDHighCapacity maybe?).

EDIT: Ah, yes. It seems it's some kind of knockoff adapted for sdhc and DSi.

JCM · Dec 29, 2009

Yeah, its the knockoff, but at least the knockoff has firmware updates (made by users, not by the fabricant), the original's last update was the R4 v1.18 kernel in 2008-04-24.

Not to mention that there are pirate versions of the knockoff that only run the 1.8 kernel.

AshburnerX said:
Odd... then why are people still selling them openly in Japan? It's not exactly the kind of place where the police will look the other way (unless your with the Yakuza or something.)

The same reason I easily bought pirate dvds in Japan, or marijuana in brazilian Universities? Illegal is not always enforced.

The Kotaku blog has a guy in Japan who takes pictures of places he finds r4s for sale, if you happen to be in Japan and want the outdated R4.