melonDS 0.9 is out!
It's been forever, but, finally, here it is. melonDS 0.9.

And it's big.



So, what are the highlights of this release?


- JIT recompiler

Brought to you by Generic (aka RSDuck), the new JIT recompiler enables melonDS to run much faster, and quite often reach fullspeed even when emulating DSi titles!

There are a few settings you can try out to get the most out of this JIT. While it has been heavily tested and worked on, it's still imperfect.


- DSi emulation

This is the other flagship feature of this release: melonDS now emulates the DSi!

You will need a NAND and firmware dump from your DSi, as well as augmented BIOS dumps (such as those that NO$GBA requires). The following BIOS dumper can dump the required BIOS files from a homebrew-enabled DSi.

Do note that this is still experimental. For one, direct boot will not work under DSi mode. Not everything is running yet, either, but we're getting there. melonDS does not yet emulate some hardware like the DSi cameras (but on the other hand, emulates DSi wifi).

melonDS has a small hack to bypass the region check. However, DSiware titles can't be run standalone yet, they will need to be installed to the NAND.


- GBA slot support

melonDS now supports loading a GBA ROM to simulate having a cartridge in the GBA slot. This is done by selecting a .gba file while your game is running. Note that we don't support emulating the GBA in any way.

We also support the Boktai solar sensor addon. Support for more addons is planned.


- New Qt UI

This means we get to do more without needing to work around the limitations that libui had. For the end user, this also means a bigger binary, but on the other hand, on Windows, all the dependencies are linked statically, so melonDS does not come with external DLLs anymore.

The new interface adds features that were long requested: for example, you can open the emu settings dialog to point melonDS at your desired BIOS/firmware/etc files, without needing to move/rename them around.


- Cheats

This is another popular request, and here it is. melonDS lets you enter Action Replay codes to mess with your games in whatever ways you want.


- DLDI

melonDS now supports letting homebrew access files and directories on a SD card image. Note that for now, you will need to provide an image file, melonDS does not yet build such images on the fly like DeSmuME can do.

Similarly, you can also use a SD card image to emulate the console's SD card in DSi mode.


- and the rest!

As usual, there are plenty of little improvements with this melonDS release, that are too many to list here, but you may discover them on your own! Or find them in the changelog (which we are still busy compiling - it's a big release).


Enjoy!


melonDS 0.9, Windows 64-bit
melonDS 0.9, Linux 64-bit

If you're feeling generous: here's our Patreon
Arisotura says:
Sep 24th 2020
what's wrong with RSS?
Dude says:
Sep 27th 2020
thank you bro, u sir are a useful human being.
Arisotura says:
Sep 27th 2020
thanks, I'm a girl tho
John says:
Sep 28th 2020
Thank you for the amazing work! Been waiting for this for a while.

Numpad not working though, hope you can address this in a coming patch :)
Ammako says:
Oct 1st 2020
Shame, requires Qt 5.12 but Debian Stable only has 5.11. Guess I'll wait until Bullseye, don't feel like messing with installing a higher version of Qt from external sources.
Maverick says:
Oct 4th 2020
Awesome work, greatly appreciate it! One request I have is that it seems like the .sav files are stored in the same folder as the games. Anyway to separate the saves in a different folder? This may already be possible and I’m just completely missing it so I apologize if that’s the case.

Thanks again!
WaluigiWare64 says:
Oct 4th 2020
Ammako: I tried running melonDS on Debian Buster and it worked fine after installing the dependencies through apt.
kevincrans says:
Oct 9th 2020
Wow, wasn't there for a while and now everything seems to come together with even homebrew!
Also, it'll be able to run on ARM, not requiring a 32-bit version thanks to Microsoft AMD64 emulation (Rip Arm Macs).
I've a weird GUI suggestion: touch controls for Windows 2-in-1 devices. In separate windows (from the TODO list), you can't drag buttons from the one to another. Solution: all buttons can be enabled on both windows separately. My motive is the surface Neo and big-endian compatibility.
WaluigiWare64 says:
Oct 9th 2020
melonDS can already be compiled for ARM64. There's no need for x86-64 emulation.
In fact the GitHub Actions CI builds for ARM64 Linux too.
kevincrans says:
Oct 11th 2020
Wow, that's even more impressive!
R1K says:
Nov 18th 2020
Thank you so much, Arisotura! I am planning to speedrun eCDP, the McDonald's worker instruction long lost game for the DSi. Best of luck through your life.
xw says:
Nov 23rd 2020
<i>hello</i>
Grant says:
Aug 4th 2021
Hi is there anyway for melonds to work on a ps vita?
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