Nintendo DS

The Nintendo DS is a portable handheld created by Nintendo in 2004. The system featured many games that made use of the latest 3D technology, but also contained its fair share of sprite-based titles.

Ripping Tools

DS Tools

• Wood Dumper
• NDS Backup Tool Wifi

PC Tools

• Apicula (Command line tool to convert nsbmd to Collada DAE with rigging & animations) Dev's Forum Post
• Tinke
• DSLazy
• Oil of Vitriol
• Every File Explorer (AKA EFE)
• NDSHeader (aka NDS Header Viewer)
• NSMBe (aka New Super Mario Bros. Editor)
• SM64DSe (aka Super Mario 64 DS Editor)
• 54634564's NDS Icon Ripper

Console Tool

Console Tool is a program that allows you to view the files in an NDS ROM, and export them.

MKDS Course Modifier

MKDS Course Modifier views the common NDS model format (read below) and allows the models to be exported in .OBJ format.

Physical Tools

• NDS backup Adapter+
• NEO SMS4

Common File Formats

NITRO File Formats

For more details on this file format, please visit the Nitro Files page.

The Nitro file system is a set of basic files created by Nintendo that helped developers quickly and easily develop titles for the console. Because of the simplicity of these files and the way they're created, it is the easiest common format on the DS to rip.

Formats include, but are not limited to, the following:

NCLR → Palette (Nitro CoLoR)

NCGR → Graphical Tiles (Nitro Character Graphic Resource)

NBGR → Graphical Tiles (Nitro Basic Graphic Resource)

NSCR → Maps/Images (Nitro SCreen Resource)

NCER → Tile Arrangement Information (Nitro CEll Resource)

NANR → Animation Information (Nitro ANimation Resource)

NSBMD → 3D Model Data

NSBTX → Model Texture Data

.SDAT

SoundDATa: where sound and music are stored. To access through Tinke, highlight the file containing the .SDat icon (A musical note) and click "View".

The only folders with accessible files are SWAR (for sound effects and individual sounds for music compositions) and STRM (depending on the game, contains fully assembled musical numbers, or cover songs broken into small segments of roughly 5-11secs each).

Suggested Emulators

Despite being a popular handheld, DS emulation has not progressed very well. For years, the most popular one has been DeSmuMe however the developers of the emulator have a certain dislike to a popular series and has a result affected emulation of the handheld even making it worse just so people can't play Pokemon on it. People have been using Drastic on Android and ironically runs faster than DeSmuMe when using an Android emulator.

There are two emulators that are very early in progress and look hopeful, they are MelonDS and CorgiDS. In the future, those two emulators will be recommended however currently both are at an early state so compatibility currently might be a bit low even though it can run many games, it might not be stable and is missing features. MelonDS also requires 3 ROM dumps (two for the ARM processors and a firmware one) to run.

Specific Game Pages

• Corvette Evolution GT (DS)
• Elite Beat Agents
• Lost in Blue
• Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
• Monsters vs. Aliens
• Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
• Race Driver: Create & Race
• Sonic Rush