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
Noises! says:
Sep 4th 2020
Oh, and congrats on the release! This looks really good, amazing job!
Noises! says:
Sep 4th 2020
Oh wait, MelonDS as a whole is 64 bit. Wow, I feel stupid now.
Laka says:
Sep 4th 2020
Working flawlessly!
Just a question, is fullscreen implemented or planned?
Seems like the only thing missing in this emulator.
Maifa says:
Sep 4th 2020
When does the Switch version gonna get an update?
Anon says:
Sep 4th 2020
Just gave it a try and its amazing. A lot of cool additions, definitely a massive update well worth the wait. Great work! Been trying it out on some games and realized that it'd be great if one window can be full-screened and the other less important screen just overlaid in a corner. Would separable windows be something that may be considered in the future?
Arnie says:
Sep 4th 2020
Does the cheat editor support the readability of usrcheat.dat files?
Noises! says:
Sep 4th 2020
Specifically on the cheat part, does this mean it has Action Replay, Codebreaker and Gameshark accessibility? After all, there's a select few challenges and fun runs in certain games that involve them (like getting around version exclusivity in some games, or doing Single Class runs in FF3).
JRB says:
Sep 4th 2020
Will the texture filtering with xBRZ teased in January be in this release or a later point release?
poudink says:
Sep 5th 2020
I think the xBRZ stuff was only ever implemented in the dead Blackmagic II branch that never got merged.
thatguysN64 says:
Sep 5th 2020
Awesome! the wait is finally over! gonna try it out now! thank you for you and your teams dedicated work on this!
poudink says:
Sep 5th 2020
seems you forgot to add 0.9 to the Downloads page.
Tietscha says:
Sep 5th 2020
Cant wait for the switch version
AedraRising says:
Sep 5th 2020
Hey Arisotura! I just want to say that I really appreciate your work on melonDS, which I've heard about but haven't used since late last year. I've always been a little bummed that the old DS emulator, deSmuMe never implemented DSi features and that the proposed plans to add multiplayer support was intentionally sabatoged, so it's really admirable that you're working so hard on melonDS and providing an accessible way to finally play DSiWare games that were completely unusable beforehand!
TheRogueGrunt says:
Sep 5th 2020
I am losing reasons to use DeSmuME with every release of this. I mean c'mon, X16 UPSCALING?! Even if it sometimes causes black lines, at that high of an upscale you can almost not even see them! Now that it has AR cheats, I could probably delete the XRwhatever build of DeSmuME off Windows and use MelonDS as my main DS emulator on BOTH Linux and Windows! I literally only used that for the upscaling and its is MUCH harder on my GPU (though it is a perfect upscale). But being able to do x16 when that would drop frames at x4 is INSANE!
SSUPII says:
Sep 5th 2020
Awesome!
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