How to play GBA on Drastic?

[Kyousuke753]

I know someone made a thread about renaming the GBA to NDS for it to work. I didn't understand what to rename like GBAslot2 or NDS?

I just simply put the game into my phone and load it up like a normal Drastic game?
Also does it support cheats to use with GBA?
Does GBA games work on Drastic with external controller support?

Can someone explain step by step please?
This all for convenience sake, because my DS sold long ago, but my sisters pink DS is still here but lost charger, I still kept my GBA game cartridges that my friends gave me in grade 6 when I still had my GBA console.

I want to play Dragonball Z Legacy of Goku 2, Medabots RPG Metabee, Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town and Dragonball Z Buus Fury. DS games now have 3D and it looks and feels weird and I'm more used to GBA one screen and the pixel graphics (old times).

Don't post telling me to get a GBA emulator because the DS has a GBA slot for a reason and this is a DS forum. Thank you

[TkSilver]

I know someone made a thread about renaming the GBA to NDS for it to work. I didn't understand what to rename like GBAslot2 or NDS?

Renaming gba games to work with DraStic's slot 2 functionality is designed to allow for the handfull (I think around 15 but it is probably less) of games that have either a feature unlock or transfer from a GBA cart to a NDS game. That is why a Slot 2 GBA game (and possibly relevant save depending on what the NDS game needs) needs to be named either slot2.gba (universal title) or named the same as the NDS rom (to only load that slot2 functionality in that one NDS rom)

I just simply put the game into my phone and load it up like a normal Drastic game?
Also does it support cheats to use with GBA?
Does GBA games work on Drastic with external controller support?

You can not actually play any GBA game in drastic the emulator does not emulate GBA games only NDS games. So both cheats and external and virtual controllers do not work with the non working GBA games.

Can someone explain step by step please?
This all for convenience sake, because my DS sold long ago, but my sisters pink DS is still here but lost charger, I still kept my GBA game cartridges that my friends gave me in grade 6 when I still had my GBA console.

I want to play Dragonball Z Legacy of Goku 2, Medabots RPG Metabee, Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town and Dragonball Z Buus Fury. DS games now have 3D and it looks and feels weird and I'm more used to GBA one screen and the pixel graphics (old times).

Don't post telling me to get a GBA emulator because the DS has a GBA slot for a reason and this is a DS forum. Thank you

I won't tell you to do anything, but it woukd be better if you thought of DraStic like a nintendo DSi in terms of GBA compatibility.... well DraStic is better since at least with DraStic you can transfer a pokemon from gba pokemon to nds pokemon.... but you can not play actual GBA games.

Another examplewould be Pcsx2 (a PS2 emulator) and PPSSPP, both of which can not play original PS1 games despite that functionality being in the consoles. Emulators for various reasons do not alway emulate every function of the console they are based on.


So I won't tell you to get a GBA emulator, unless you want to play GBA games on your android device then well that woukd be the only way.

[Kyousuke753]

You can not actually play any GBA game in drastic the emulator does not emulate GBA games only NDS games.

Thank you for your reply Tksilver so there is no support for GBA despite the actual DS console having a GBA Slot. I'll stick with Drastic for now, since it's a legit emulator.

[TkSilver]

If you want a free GBA emulator you could use retroarch which can load the gpSP/vba-m/vbaNext/and a few other gba emulators as liberato cores. The gpSP core has the honor of being originally developed by Exophase for the psp before getting royally forked...

Personally I use GBA.emu by Robert Broglia. I try to avoid retroarch due to disliking their menu system and some of the other choices made due to it being a multisystem fronend. Also GBA.emu handles even Boktai: the sun is in your hand (a very odd gba game that required a solar sensor on the cartridge) that most emulators (on android) can not handle for some reason. The down side is it does cost $4.99, but there is a "free" ripped of version in the play store by some random company who added ads and I am not sure wht else (possible security risk so I avoided) and just got the real deal.

[Kyousuke753]

RetroArch...I've never been so confused in my life using this emulator...but it was able to run DS games but laggy.

[TkSilver]

RetroArch...I've never been so confused in my life using this emulator...but it was able to run DS games but laggy.

There are very very few mobile emulators that can even come a little close to DraStic in speed of NDS emulation, but luckily GBA emulation is far far easier/faster even on mobile devices.

[Kyousuke753]

GBA uses 16 bit rendering pixel graphics which doesn't require much CPU power...and yes RetroArch can run DS,PSP,GBA and other types of games too many to list but not at full speed as a proper emulator like Drastic.

If Drastic ever got support for GBA games I would've had 4 emulators in my collection on my phone.

[TkSilver]

GBA uses 16 bit rendering pixel graphics which doesn't require much CPU power...and yes RetroArch can run DS,PSP,GBA and other types of games too many to list but not at full speed as a proper emulator like Drastic.

If Drastic ever got support for GBA games I would've had 4 emulators in my collection on my phone.

Retroarch runs psp games as fast as ppsspp.... especially since it uses ppsspp as its core for psp games. My issue with retroarch stem from it's ui/menu system/other side issues (like the fact that the ppsspp core is based off of 1.0.1 and ppsspp is already past 1.2.2), but all of these are common issues with multi system emulators/frontends.

[Kyousuke753]

Until RetroArch becomes a paid app things will start to be fixed in time...for now you have to stick with the pain of messy and scattered UI...but thanks your your recommendation Tksilver.

[kaikun97]

Until RetroArch becomes a paid app things will start to be fixed in time...for now you have to stick with the pain of messy and scattered UI...but thanks your your recommendation Tksilver.

Retroarch is open-source so why would it become paid?

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch

And the fact its open source means it available for tons of platforms:
http://www.libretro.com/

Code: Select all

Platforms RetroArch runs on:
Linux (x86 and x86_64)
Windows (32bit/64bit)
Mac OSX (Intel/PowerPC)
Playstation 3 (PS3 SDK)
PlayStation Portable (PSP)
PlayStation Vita/TV
Xbox 1 (XDK)
Xbox 360 (XeXDK/Libxenon)
Gamecube
Wii
Nintendo 3DS
Raspberry Pi (and various other ARM hardware through Lakka)
OpenPandora
GCW Zero
Android
Blackberry (10/Playbook)
iOS
Javascript (ASM.js – Enscripten)

It's UI is indeed a bit messy but the developer is re-doing the UI. Also the UI for desktop versions of Retroarch is a lot better.
The developer's twitter if you want to follow updates: https://twitter.com/libretro