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You're right that I shouldn't be too impressed with something as basic as Wolf3D running properly on an iPhone, but have you seen some of the other attempts at 3D games on the iPhone? ;) Some of them have really appalling frame rates and unresponsive controls.

Case in point, according to Carmack when Electronic Arts first ported Wolf3D to the iPhone they were just using the CPU for everything. It wasn't until Carmack took it on that the GPU was utilised. If you're interested Carmack talks about the development process here.

I probably played your Quake ports back in the day, as I used to enjoy putting all the games I could find on my Pocket PC. I remember enjoying Quake on there a lot, although the d-pads on the PDAs I owned were always a bit fiddly! IIRC there was a Casio Pocket PC with a d-pad that would only accept one direction press at a time! This port of Quake 1 on the DS works very well given the hardware it's on, with the stylus/touchscreen being used for aiming and the d-pad being used for movement.

There are a number of DS homebrew games I'd love to use, if I ever have the disposable income to spare on the adapters and cards. There's a painting app ( http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/about.php ) which looks neat, especially if you are traveling and want to sketch something, or just like to doodle. There are also some PDA-like programs which might be handy, though I don't know how I'd find them useful.

ScummVM ( http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/ ) is a homebrew app to let you play old LucasArts games, as well as newer (free) games made for the Scumm interpreter. (Yes, one could pirate the old LucasArts games. The morality of playing a no longer published game on a newer platform is not something I wish to discuss. I don't plan to pirate it, if that's any consolation to you.) There are some free games, such as several from Revolution Software, that have been re-released from Amiga to Nintendo DS.

There are even e-book and comic reader homebrew apps for the DS... though I've not used them. (I prefer paper books.)

I'd get a lot more geek cred if I were part of the nintendo DS demo scene, but I'm not. (: However, I hope I have adequately debunked your claim that all we'd want to do is use it to run pirated games.

Well, I don't know whether Quake is that much of a benchmark. I can run Quake on my Nintendo DS through homebrew, and it was ported by one guy on his own, although I think he is a professional game developer for XBox 360, but I may be confusing him with someone else or may have misconstrued a forum post by him. Here's the site for anyone interested: http://quake.drunkencoders.com/

can I assume the apps will use the card itself for storage?

Yes. DS homebrew programs that use libfat can read and write the FAT16 or FAT32 file system on the microSD card inside the adapter using C standard library calls (fopen family). But if you buy an SD card bigger than 2 GB, you'll have to buy an adapter that supports SDHC.

"Unlike Quake 1, there is simply no way of fitting Quake II into the memory configuration of a stock DS. To play the game you must have a supported slot-2 flash card that contains a minimum of 16 megabytes of RAM."
Quake2DS

I guess homebrew doesn't count here, just wanted to add that various consoles had hardware upgrades in the past as well as today.

Since I bought a Nintendo DS this year and was delighted to learn there's a port of SCUMMVM I think I might have to agree with your choice.

ScummVM DS. Just grab a decent homebrew cart and you're good to go.

The MMD officially has no support for commercial roms. However, soon after its release, a patcher program was released by an "anonymous" source that lets a few games run off the device. Compatibility sucks though, so no one would knowingly buy the product for that purpose. Interestingly, this patcher program was later modified so that the GBA Movie Player, which is electrically similar, could also run a small selection of DS games.

However, this device is different. While the MMD is a slot-2 device that comes with a slot-1 launcher, this new product resides solely in slot-1 and has a built-in launcher. However, until a DLDI file is created for this new product, very little homebrew will work on it, meaning that its main capability will probably be just playing music, which most likely will use Moonshell anyway.

It is possible that the Music and Games card here is actually a rebranded R4 or M3 Simply, in which case the existing DLDI files would suffice. Anyone know if this is the case?

I recently started again playing Sam and Max: Hit the road thanks to these lovely people porting scummvm to the Nintendo DS:
http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/
You'll need a Nintendo DS with some method of playing homebrew, which isn't as scary as it sounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_homebrew
I'd recommend getting a Supercard, as you can utilise the 32M GBA ROM space in DSLinux.

Are you interested only in DS homebrew or in both?

DSLinux and Scumm VM are most tempting, so I guess I'm mostly interested in DS homebrew. I've read that neither works with the M3 DS lite (which would'nt stick out of my DS lite), and Scumm VM has only restricted compatibility with Scumm VM + speech output.

Hmm, I guess since this is using the exact pin-layout of a CF flash card this implies high compatibility (i.e., will work with GBAMP NDS Firmware Hack and the GBAMP FAT driver. I was wondering which DS flash card to buy, and I was eying the M3 lite for DS, but given all the compatibility problems, I'm leaning towards a CF solution, now, even though this sticks out of my Nintendo DS lite as much as a mile..
Or can anybody recommend something else that's compatible with homebrew (M3 CF (or SD) lite, or one of the Supercards)

Hmm, I guess since this is using the exact pin-layout of a CF flash card this implies high compatibility (i.e., will work with GBAMP NDS Firmware Hack and the GBAMP FAT driver. I was wondering which DS flash card to buy, and I was eying the M3 lite for DS, but given all the compatibility problems, I'm leaning towards a CF solution, now, even though this sticks out of my Nintendo DS lite as much as a mile..
Or can anybody recommend something else that's compatible with homebrew (M3 CF (or SD) lite, or one of the Supercards)

Those of you interested in Nintendo DS Homebrew and Emulation should check out Nintendo DS Emulation, which has to be the most updated site for DS Related News, also Drunkencoders is another great site for Homebrew news. Those 2 sites are all you need to keep fully up to date with all the latest homebrew releases and news.

Maybe have a look at this

I wish they'd make the Myst games for DS. I know you can wedge 2GB onto a memory card the size of a DS cart, so it should be possible.

The largest known official DS Game Cards are 128 MiB (1 GiB) in capacity. Myst was bigger, but then you only have 256x384 pixels to deal with instead of 640x480, and image compression has advanced since Myst was first published. That said, you can already play many Lucasarts games on your homebrew-enabled DS through ScummVM.

I know I am heading offtopic but I had to let you know you can play Lucasarts games on the DS...

http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/

Why spend hundreds of hours making a game that no one can/would use. Seems like alot of work for no gain. Stick to computers for homebrews and cellphones for portables, easier and much bigger audiences.

The DS benefits because it can also run homebrew that was developed for the GBA, and consoles from the NES and earlier are emulated well. The SNES and Genesis emulators are just in their infancy, however.

Besides the emuilators, there are a lot of good homebrew games and applications, including most of the usual favorites from linux distributions. Congratulations to the coders of the DS homebrew scene for making such progress on a unique system!

For what it's worth, the Nintendo DS is cracked wide open and people are writing all sorts of fun homebrew for it. (And although this emulator is a favorite, games like this one are also a big hit.)

Those Slashdotters amongst you and those curious should check out the following sites for the latest in Nintendo DS Emulation and Homebrew news and downloads PDroms.com - Legal Rom Download and news site.
Drunken Coders - DS Homebrew News Site.
Nintendo DS Emulation News - Nintendo DS Emulation and Homebrew News and Downloads Site/Archive.
DS Development Forums - The Hub of the DS Development Scene.
All those sites provide you with everything you need to know about the Nintendo DS and its Legal Homebrew Community.

sadly, if a console is open, you can bet that the openness will be used 95% of the time to play pirated games, not homebrew ones.

There is a middle ground of legal emulation. If you own a copy of a Lucasarts adventure game, and you use your right under 17 USC 117 to use ScummVM DS to install it onto a CompactFlash card and then put the CF card into an adapter on your Nintendo DS, you can still play commercial quality games without piracy.

Quite simply because commercial games are of much higher quality than any homebrews!

Not always. Would you rather play Tetris Worlds for GBA, which actually breaks the concept, or would you prefer Tetanus On Drugs for GBA? Would you rather play Lumines on a PSP and Minesweeper on a Pocket PC, or would you prefer Luminesweeper on a GBA SP while your backside is cushioned by a wad of cash?

If you want homebrew, pick up a DS/flash cart+passthrough package(or SD reader cart + passthrough). They already have a mostly-working SNES emulator(Super Metroid works), a touchscreen-enabled version of ScummVM, and a bunch of cool little tech-demo apps(calculators and what not). Doesn't break DS game-capabality or GBA game-capability either. You also get that huge-back-catalog of GBA homebrew(which includes completely working emulators for everything pre-SNES/Genesis, Nethack, Ebooks, tons of craziness).

After using that touch screen, pointing with an analog is just so... primitive. About the only thing the PSP does better than the DS is graphics and platformers/racers.

Next up is the AGI 'emulator' already out there for the GBA. this will play the first couple Space Quests and something like the first 4 or 5 Kings Quests, etc. REALLY clever design on the interface for it to work with the GBA. Anyways, this will work on the DS with a regular GBA flash cart. http://www.bripro.com/gbagi/index.php

I really hope that the DS somehow spurs a resurgence in adventure gaming. It seems like a perfect match, with the touch screen and two screens for inventory, main game area, talkie/cutscenes, and the voice control could lead to some cool innovation in the genre. Plus, that sort of game seems like it would fit into the portable world... fire it up for a 15-30 minute session of trying to solve some puzzles and then save it and go back to work.

well... you can play Day of the Tentacle... is that close enough?

http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/

You forgot about the DS ports of Hexen and Heretic. I am currently in the process of creating a Lumines clone for DS. Tepples has already released a Lumines clone for GBA called Luminesweeper.

I also forgot to mention ScummVM, which ironically... I was flashing to my flash cart while I was writing that (it works great!).

You forgot about the DS ports of Hexen and Heretic. I am currently in the process of creating a Lumines clone for DS. Tepples has already released a Lumines clone for GBA called Luminesweeper.

I also forgot to mention ScummVM, which ironically... I was flashing to my flash cart while I was writing that (it works great!).

The PSP doesn't have many more emulators than the DS (although it does have an x86 emu....) and the DS has muchhhhh more homebrew going for it. Alot more. At least the DS doesn't have to load up an x86 emulator to run Linux. "Ultimate Emulation and Homebrew Console" my ass, the GBA has a much more active homebrew community than both the PSP and the DS by far. The only reason the PSP gets a steady amount of ports (i.e. not original software, like snes9x) is because homebrew'ers can unthrottle the cpu (which is normally scaled back during games to conserve battery life) and run things 100% in the cpu. Pretty crappy if you ask me.

A nice site for DS homebrew is drunkencoders