Be Excellent To Each Other

Sorry if it's been mentioned before (I did a search here for NeoDS and came up with nothing) but I just heard about this today.

It's a Neo-Geo emulator released earlier this year for DS (flash-card required of course) and it apparently runs the majority of Neo Geo games almost flawlessly (full sound, full speed with just an occasional bit of slowdown in some games).

Seems very impressive from what I've read about it today.

DO a search for "Neods" on you-tube and there are several videos of people playing the Metal Slug games (1-5), King Of Fighter games etc.

I couldn't find an official site for it but this forum on pocketheaven.com seems to the best place for discussion about it : http://boards.pocketheaven.com/viewforu ... 44eac8e365

I gather it might be a bit fiddly to use (I think the game roms need to undergo some kind of conversion before you can use them in the emulator ?).

Still, looks great to me.

Anyone tried it ? I'm certainly going to when I have some time to research it more thoroughly....

If you have tried it, how is it (in terms of ease of use/installation, compatiblilty with Neo-Geo roms etc.) ?

It's a minor faff getting the ROMs set up, although assuming you follow one of the better-written guides and have a PC to hand (or Windows running in a VM on the Mac), the process takes maybe a few minutes. After that, the majority of titles run very well, and the scaling is really very good indeed.

Of all the emulators on the DS, this is the most impressive, and aside from SpeccyDS it's the one I use most.

Cheers Craig, that's certainly peaked my interest.

Can you point me towards a good, moron-proof guide for setting it up ?

I did a bit of googling and came across a couple, but as is usual with homebrew stuff, they were written for people who understand techno-jargon-speak (I've never understood why homebrew developers automatically assume that just because you bought a flash-cart, that means you are a computer expert and will understand all the techno-babble they spew in thier guides).

I've got the jist of it but I don't understand all the stuff about using different Bios' to convert the games (don't even know what a bios is to be honest).

I'm also not clear about which Neo-Geo roms are compatible. I gather (from reading a couple of forums) that they must work on Mame ?
I've got a huge amount of Mame roms (3 dvds worth) that a mate gave me a few years back. I've seen a complete list of Neo-Geo games, so if one of my Mame games has the same title as a Neo-Geo game on the list, does that mean it's compatible ?

Cheers.

Essentially, if you've a Neo-Geo MAME ROM, it should work with NeoDS. The DS emulator isn't 100% perfect, but almost everything I've thrown at it works fine (including the likes of Last Blade). As for BIOS stuff, there are a few converters out there—you just drop copies of your ROMs into a folder, and it spits out files that the emulator can read. There are instructions here and here. Yell if you get stuck.

but you need windows for it? i have my brothers laptop at home at the moent so maybe i should do something today..

rj

Unless someone's written a Terminal tool for the conversion, you need Windows, yes. I did the ROM conversions months back, so I've no idea if anyone's written anything for the Mac since.

EDIT: Here's the official forum, by the way.

Pretty amazing that you can emulate something that was so expensive and technologically impressive only a few years back. My mate'll be pleased - he's already shelled out for the Neo Geo cartridge system and a load of £80+ games.

Ack, I thought this thread was about the NGPC and was all excited about playing Card Fighters Clash and Gals Fighter again!

Original systems are best, though.

As for NeoDS, here's a step-by-step guide.

Especially as one Neo Geo cartridge is probably at least the size of two DS consoles. I'd rather have the real thing but it's a bloody costly system to collect for.

It's the AES he's got. Don't know if that was the original one or not. It's very nice and all, but really not worth it unless you're a major beat 'em up fan.

I think Craig just meant that having the original system is better than running an emulator.

Yup. Hell, if I was absurdly rich and had a spare room the size of my office, I'd be actively snapping up arcade cabs, to have original versions of Frenzy, Bomb Jack, Bubble Bobble, etc., rather than pissing about on MAME.

Ditto. I might compromise one day and get some kind of Supergun type thing.

Cheers Craig for the useful comments and links.

Should have some time over the weekend to give this a try.
Seems like an amazing achievment for an emulator running on DS.

It's mind-boggling and shows what could be done with other emulators if people had the time and expertise. It'd be great, for example, to see a C64 emulator with interlaced graphics, or an Atari ST emulator that actually works. I doubt we'll ever see either, sadly.

Aaaah, NeoDS. Truly a masterpiece in DS homebrew if ever I knew one.

I've played about with the thing for ages now, so if anyone still needs any direct help, I'd be more than happy to oblige.


I should point out that with the current converter tool included, some games will display graphical problems (missing gfx) mainly due to encryption related issues. But fear not! Some genius of a soul has made available an alternative version of the program that'll accept decrypted graphic roms for these particular titles, sorting out the graphics issue.


Finally, I really should recommend the alternative NG bios - Universe Bios - as it offers the ability to run a game in either MVS or AES mode, in either region, and offers plenty of built-in cheats for nearly all known titles.