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Ever wanted to play Mario Kart DS with your buddies again? Or get back to the days of old with versus matches in the Mario vs. Luigi mode from New Super Mario Bros? Maybe play some Kirby Super Star Ultra in Co-op? Or just throw hands at DBZ Supersonic Warriors 2?

That sure sounds like a nice idea for a fun evening with a friend...but none of you have DS consoles anymore, right?

Well, thanks to melonDS's latest developments and the release of 0.95, the implementation of local multiplayer emulation that was still on the works (as it was functional before, but highly unstable) finally made it into a quite stable implementation! This means that for some games, you can finally emulate them in multiplayer again!

I've tried several games, though only two or three with real players and for a good amount of time, but so far the results look quite reliable!

Co-op first impressions

I tested games some co-op gameson my own to see if they connected, and they worked like a charm! I didn't have anyone to test as the second player though, so these are basically screenshots showcasing that these games can work in multiplayer thanks to this new feature.

Bangai-O Spirits

Kirby Super Star Ultra

One screen screenshot because both players see the same one. If you think that the Helper AI is smart enough to do something like this, you're wrong lol

Nanostray 2

New Super Mario Bros Co-op mod

The legend of Contra 4

Contra 4 is one of those games that I played a lot as a kid because my brother owned it, but it still is one of the hardest games I've ever played. To this day I haven't beat the game in Normal mode (only Easy mode due to extra lives and powered-up weapons...but you're locked out of the final levels in it), and I thought that it would be great to finally try the challenge again with my brother thanks to local multiplayer allowing for a co-op run.

And sure enough, it worked like a charm! At first.

Game's as brutal as ever, and while I narrowly clawed my way through the first stage without continuing, I failed to survive the first half of the second one between how my brother ran out of lives at the first stage and then accidentally borrowed my last spare one in the worst moment at the second stage.

...and we got struck with a "Connection Error" screen after selecting Continue. This is likely one of the games I would want to co-op run the most, and yet seems to unfortunately be a coin-flip whether the game will succesfully keep going after selecting to Continue or drop us out in that moment. And before you say "guess you'll have to beat it without continuing", that's likely because you NEVER played this game. It is THAT hard even in Normal (let alone the actual Hard difficulty) and there's a fair amount of stages...so it is quite the long stretch to beat the game already, let alone beating it without continues.

But that said, hopefully this will get mitigated/addressed in a hotfix or even in the upcoming "melonDS 1.0" major stable update. At least it was a nice taste of how close we could be to the full Contra 4 Co-op experience, even if it will still be tough as nails.

Nothing like a good versus trash talk

But of course, some few games for the Nintendo DS actually had a lot packed for versus modes. While a sizeable amount of them is not practical to emulate because of heavy touch-screen usage (like Zelda Phantom Hourglass and several Mario Party DS minigames), a few of them use traditional controls which make it completely feasible to play in multiplayer in this way.

And wouldn't you want to play Mario Kart DS with someone else once again?

You could say that "eh, there are better Mario Kart games nowadays", and that's maybe a thing...but of course there's a special charm about MKDS between tracks and the battle mode that's irreplaceable. That and even if you would want new tracks, there's CTGP Nitro for custom tracks included.

But if you really want a real throwback that hasn't been brought back again, try Mario vs Luigi in NSMB for size. I was the Luigi player in this screenshot, but after that happened, I got my vengeance full force with a 3-0 streak myself :)

And there's a few more games that I tested alone but that they seem to work! SM64DS is the only one here that requires Download Play, so its a bit harder to setup (plus a bit unstable with more than 2 players, from what I tested once) but also works!

Tetris DS

Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors 2

Super Mario 64 DS

The veredict?

Yes.

Aside from Contra 4's issue, and even then Contra 4 being much more playable than before like this (it wasn't even possible to connect before), everything is rock-solid stable and even made easier to setup thanks to an option to open new Multiplayer instances integrated into the emulator, which also saves separate controller configurations so that its far easier to setup. So...yeah, if you got the interest (and the knowledge to set this up), then you can start burning rubber in Mario Kart DS with your friends through your PC in multiplayer once again!

You can download melonDS here and also support the developers :)

today's bonus image

no bonus image

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BUT YES BONUS VIDEO WATCH ME THROW HANDS AT MARIO WITH THIS

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Spanish translation with DeepL. All screenshots were captured by myself.

Español

¿Alguna vez has querido volver a jugar a Mario Kart DS con tus amigos? ¿O volver a los días de antaño con partidos versus en el modo Mario vs. Luigi de New Super Mario Bros? ¿Quizá jugar a Kirby Super Star Ultra en modo cooperativo? ¿O simplemente echarle mano a DBZ Supersonic Warriors 2?

Seguro que suena como una buena idea para pasar una tarde divertida con un amigo... pero ninguno de vosotros tiene ya consolas DS, ¿verdad?

Pues bien, gracias a los últimos desarrollos de melonDS y al lanzamiento de la versión 0.95, la implementación de la emulación multijugador local que aún estaba en marcha (ya que antes era funcional, pero muy inestable) ¡finalmente se ha convertido en una implementación bastante estable! Esto significa que para algunos juegos, ¡por fin puedes emularlos en multijugador de nuevo!

He probado varios juegos, aunque sólo dos o tres con jugadores reales y durante una buena cantidad de tiempo, ¡pero hasta ahora los resultados parecen bastante fiables!

Primeras impresiones del modo cooperativo

He probado algunas partidas cooperativas por mi cuenta para ver si se conectaban, ¡y han funcionado de maravilla! Sin embargo, no tenía a nadie para probar como segundo jugador, así que estas son básicamente capturas de pantalla que muestran que estos juegos pueden funcionar en multijugador gracias a esta nueva característica.

Espíritus de Bangai-O