Emulation Retro consoles enulation on og 3ds/2ds vs ds lite

[seseiSeki]

Gladly I have New 3DS XL. I can hold Select button and load DS games in original resolution without blur. Same goes with flash cards.

This. I wonder how no one mentioned this sooner
You can hold Start or Select when launching anything that is not a 3DS game to launch in them in their native resolution. All the official Virtual Consoles and injects (except SNES, where you can set scaling in the settings), DS games and DSi Ware support this feature.

DS/DSi isn't the greatest pick for emulation, because the resolution is too low for non-handhelds, so you either get a squished or cut off image. Gameboy (Color) works well enough, the GBA emulator is a POC, the hypervisor, gbarunner2, works better but also isn't perfect (visual bugs, sound bugs), Neo Geo Pocket (Colour) seems to have improved over the years.
But for home consoles... You're outta luck. NES is too high res and the emulator doesn't emulate everything yet, so no extra sound channels in the Japanese Castlevania 3, the DS is too weak for SNES emulation and the resolution is also too high for it, same for Mega Drive/Genesis. I couldn't get Turbo Grafx 16 to run and Neo Geo works surprisingly well, but you'll run into resolution issues again. And that's pretty much how high you can go.

 

[darkworldq8]

This. I wonder how no one mentioned this sooner
You can hold Start or Select when launching anything that is not a 3DS game to launch in them in their native resolution. All the official Virtual Consoles and injects (except SNES, where you can set scaling in the settings), DS games and DSi Ware support this feature.

Many people never knew of this feature. I only knew of this feature maybe in 2022 or 2023, and I had a 3DS since 2011. From my experience, the screen size of DS/DSi/GBA games on a 3DS XL with native resolution is around the same size of a regular DSi, which defeats the purpose of getting a 3DS XL IMO. I can't imagine how the native resolution would look on a regular 3DS.

DS/DSi isn't the greatest pick for emulation, because the resolution is too low for non-handhelds, so you either get a squished or cut off image. Gameboy (Color) works well enough, the GBA emulator is a POC, the hypervisor, gbarunner2, works better but also isn't perfect (visual bugs, sound bugs), Neo Geo Pocket (Colour) seems to have improved over the years.
But for home consoles... You're outta luck. NES is too high res and the emulator doesn't emulate everything yet, so no extra sound channels in the Japanese Castlevania 3, the DS is too weak for SNES emulation and the resolution is also too high for it, same for Mega Drive/Genesis. I couldn't get Turbo Grafx 16 to run and Neo Geo works surprisingly well, but you'll run into resolution issues again. And that's pretty much how high you can go.

I totally agree with you. My DSi keeps crashing when I try to quit the GB emulator, both "quit to launcher" and pressing the power button once crashes after using that emulator. As interesting as it is to be able to play GBA on a DSi or using a DS flashcart, the compatibility isn't great. I had much better compatibility and performance using GPSP on my PSP back in 2008 or so than on GBARunner2, and it had extra features such as save states and fastforwarding.

I plan on buying a less than $100 retro emulation handheld to emulate retro handhelds, but have not decided which one to get. I am probably going to get an Anbernic RG35XX H for that purpose.