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Tetris DS - First Nintendo DS Homebrew Game

Posted by Zonk on from the old-school-russian-action dept.

gbaemufan writes "Desktopman released a Tetris clone for the Nintendo DS, at the moment the only way to play it is via a passthrough device until a homebrew DS cart is released."

31 comments

  1. Xilinx??? by fdawg · · Score: 2, Funny

    I see an FPGA connected via ribbon cable to the DS. How the...

    Im confused.

    1. Re:Xilinx??? by Leknor · · Score: 1

      see: http://www.bottledlight.com/ds/index.php/Hardware/ Passthrough (The link actually goes to a Coral CDN mirror)

  2. sweet by l33t+m4st3r · · Score: 1, Insightful

    very nice. how long do we have to wait until we can make games that use the touch screen??

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    -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d-- s+:+ a18 C++ L++ P+ E--- W+++ N+ o K- w--- O---- M+ V-- PS PE Y+
  3. Tetris is great by Pan+T.+Hose · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I play it on a regular basis. Tetris, Pac Man, Tron, Xonix, Sokoban, Bourdel Dash, River Raid, Net Hack, they don't make games like this any more so it is essential to port them to new platforms so they don't get forgotten. Today sex and blood is all kids want, no wonder that the society slowly turns into a sociopathic dystopia. We need to preserve the games that stimulated intelligence instead of only lust, aggression and mindless clicking speed. This leads to a society of pornography, violence and car chases, i.e. a boring society with no higher values. Have you noticed the games on the cell phones? No Tetris, no Sokoban, no Xonix. Why is that? Anyway, kudos for the DesktopMen for making this game! I like the screenshot in this article. It looks like a time bomb! And who doesn't like a little dose of adrenaline while playing Tetris? In fact, I think I'll play some Gnometris right now (with my custom manually drawn blocks, no less!). This is the research I can fully sopport. Making games that make people more intelligent instead of wasting the open source resources on making yet another mp3 player so people could listen to Britny Spears. Bravo. The next should be Sokoban or Tron-like game.

    --
    Sincerely,
    Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
    "Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
    1. Re:Tetris is great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Certainly, that would be an honour for me. In fact, I have been thinking about it for quite some time and I think the best name would be: The Temple of Pan Tarhei. Sounds nice, doesn't it? And it looks great in the default header font on Wikipedia.

    2. Re:Tetris is great by MindStalker · · Score: 1

      Wow, that was longer than the article.
      On the other hand, anyone know an easy way to get tetris on a Nokia 3595?

    3. Re:Tetris is great by SetupWeasel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Today sex and blood is all kids want, no wonder that the society slowly turns into a sociopathic dystopia.

      It's the children's fault! Their carnal urges and hormones is ripping the very fabric of society. People would never learn to torture prisoners or "pop the coochie" without the evils of modern video games.

      If only the world were simple like tetris, where blocks fall from the sky and no one has a penis.

      Woe! Oh WOE is the world of Street Fighter II. If it weren't for such gastly abominations we might live in a crimeless world where all the restaurants are Taco Bell and every curse word is fined! CRAZY VIDEO GAME NINJA SKILLS, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!?!?

    4. Re:Tetris is great by MilenCent · · Score: 1

      Well, they certainly make games like Nethack these days, since Nethack has never actually had its development ended (though the DevTeam is infamous for leaving multiple years between releases). Also note that recent versions of Nethack, themselves, contain an implementation of Sokoban.

      But there are actually new classic games being made today, and even popular ones: Grand Theft Auto and Katamari Damacy, provided they don't wreck them in further sequels, may very well be destined for that same kind of longevity.

      It's just that there are not a great many of these games, certainly not as many as there were back in the golden ages of arcade gaming.

    5. Re:Tetris is great by cgenman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      If only the world were simple like tetris, where blocks fall from the sky and no one has a penis.

      What do you think that 4-block line is?

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      The ______ Agenda
    6. Re:Tetris is great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm waiting for One-Line Puzzle.

  4. First Steps by MBCook · · Score: 3, Insightful
    These are the first steps. It's quite cool. I actually saw this about a week ago somewhere, but at that time the person could just get crud on the screen (just stuff to prove that it was working) and wasn't an actual game yet.

    Still this is very cool. When someone figures out how to get thing on through the wireless (since the DS is designed to be able to boot stuff that way) the scene will probably explode.

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  5. finally... by drkfdr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's about time the works on the DS got slashdotted. Too bad it's just a short post. It should say that Nintendo did a bad job in protecting this system. I'm in the greets because of the first working pass-through btw :) Of course I don't want to brag about it. -> http://darkfader.net/ds/

    1. Re:finally... by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 1

      darkfader, good job. ;)

      I haven't been following the work of you guys for the last month or so, but it seems you've gotten some serious work done. Last I saw was the vieo with the pass-through thing set up where you hacked the metroid hunters screen to show yer website.

      --



      ...spike
      Ewwwwww, coconut...
  6. Out of curiosity, by Aggrazel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What challenges are there to hack a wifi card to emulate the DS's wifi stuff (which I understand is horribly proprietary) and load code on the DS over that?

    I know it'd be kinda silly to have a portable that needs your laptop to load custom code, but it would just be interesting to use to see what you could get the system to do.

    1. Re:Out of curiosity, by mrseigen · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, so far the guys at DSDev have managed to get the DS's "Play Downloaded Game" feature to display a title and icon of their choosing. I'm not aware of the particulars, try joining the forum and going along.

    2. Re:Out of curiosity, by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 1

      It's not proprietary. It's 802.11b. The protocol is proprietary. Packet dumps of the DS communicating have been out there since a few days after it was launched. The guys at XLink almost have the thing tunneled(I should go check on that) and a few other people are working on figuring out the protocol.

      Anyway, any prism2 chipset card should be gtg on linux, you could use a linksys WRT54G router flashed with custom firmware, or a broadcom chipset card on windows/OSX.

      If it works with kismet/netstumbler, you should be fine, but don't buy anything yet.

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    3. Re:Out of curiosity, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the guys at xlink are dicks and have dropped the project blaiming nintendo and the nintendo fanbase for their failures... the general concensus from the ds hacking community is that xlink just "couldn't hack it"...

    4. Re:Out of curiosity, by zonker · · Score: 0

      Heh, here's a link. Looks like they took down their forums for the entire project.

      --

      Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

  7. Whoa by Headcase88 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's some inventive use of the bottom screen ;)

    Well, seriously, that's a good start. Nice to see some homebrew stuff on the DS.

    --
    "When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
    1. Re:Whoa by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 1
      I am not sure (don't own a DS...yet) : But with all Gameboy games, you can choose to either use the bottom or top screen ; But not both at the same time (splitscreen) :

      Since this game has to be inserted using the Flashrom GB cartridges, it makes sense it would not use both of the screens.

  8. More of a "GBA Homebrew Plus" by TheoB · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There wasn't much info in TFA or the download, but it kind of looks like the pass-through and software are GBA based, and taking advantage of DS backwards compatibility. Is there a rundown someplace of the DS-specific work that went into the project?

    1. Re:More of a "GBA Homebrew Plus" by Dwedit · · Score: 4, Informative

      The GBA cartridge is used to hold the code. It runs the code completely in DS mode after booting it up.

    2. Re:More of a "GBA Homebrew Plus" by realityfighter · · Score: 1

      Is that possible? I mean, as I understand it the DS processes the code differently depending on where you choose to load from, the DS slot or the GBA cart. Am I wrong?

      --
      A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
  9. Re:KOTOR 2 spoilers by SetupWeasel · · Score: 0, Troll

    Luke and Leia are SIBLINGS!

    Their father is DARTH VADER!

  10. Proper Credit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Looks like Nintendo is still making money off of Alexey Pajitnov's invention. I bet he doesnt see a dime of it...

    1. Re:Proper Credit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From what I understand, you are correct. He is sleeping in a gutter and eating half-finished plate lunches behind an L&Ls.

    2. Re:Proper Credit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlexeyPajitnov shows that he's finally getting royalties and is employed by Microsoft Research.

    3. Re:Proper Credit by Schmendr1ck · · Score: 1
      Alexey Pajitnov is part owner of The Tetris Company, which handles the licensing for all official Tetris products (though they obviously don't see a dime for the unlicensed clones out there).

      You'd be surprised at how much TTC makes in Tetris licensing - several million a year. There are scads of handheld games, games that plug into the TV, cell phone versions, and the PC/console versions. Tetris is still making a LOT of money for Henk Rogers and Alexey is getting his share of it too.