When it comes to emulation on iOS, it seems that Delta (from the AltStore creator) is the cream of the crop. However, although DS emulation is basically ready, it isn’t in the public release yet. So, instead, I’m temporarily trying out iNDS for my iOS DS emulation needs.

The emulator runs fine enough, nowhere near perfect but I don’t necessarily expect perfection. My biggest issue with this is the control scheme, which is completely inescapable here. For instance, I can’t play Mario Kart well because it requires 3 fingers instead of 2.

On a normal DS setup you’re using four fingers: one for the d-pad, one for the face buttons, and one for each of the two shoulder buttons. This works because the shoulder buttons are behind the screen and behind the other buttons.

On a phone, using four fingers would mean losing a lot of grip on the phone. It’s also ineffective, as the way we hold phones bring our thumbs pointing down while our pointer fingers point sideways. That’s why the shoulder buttons work so well on a DS, and so terribly on a screen

Basically TL;DR: don’t expect to enjoy Mario Kart on your phone

(Not without an external controller, anyway)

Touchscreen controls test here. Not sure why this game is visually glitching so badly. But hey, touch works pretty well.

Eventually I realized I should change the control scheme for this specific game, making it much easier to work with.

Anyway, yeah. It works, but I definitely wouldn’t replace my DS with this. Once again, mobile emulators are a really neat idea completely tainted by phone control schemes.

They have a right to exist because controllers exist that can be used on phones, but I feel like that goes against the purpose of putting an emulator on a phone in the first place. If you have to get a big bulky controller to carry everywhere, why not just get a 3DS?

That’s my opinion, anyway. I still think these are neat and, if anything, they’re nice for showing off. Plus, I still think playing NES is great on them. And they’re not bad for RPGs, puzzle games, and other slow-paced titles.

Now, onto this specific emulator, I’m not sure how the efforts compare to those being done on Delta. I was in the Delta beta for a while, but that was on a different phone, so I dunno. Guess I’ll have to wait and see how it compares.

So yeah, that’s it. End of thread. Bye. The lesson of this thread is that you should buy a 3DS and CFW it to play every Nintendo handheld and every Nintendo console before the GameCube