DS Game Maker - Fan Forum

Does anyone have a good recommendation for which DS card to use with DSGM and a 3ds?

I have an acekard 2i that’s supposed to be 3ds compatible, but it’s being not recognized by mine. (It works with my DS lite though)

It’s the original acekard I got when I bought a DSGM Homebrew kit from James years ago, and I don’t know if updating it will lose its ability to play DSGM games.

I saw the Flashcarts on the DS fan site, but I’m curious if there’s any particular one that is preferred or if there’s any additional setup required to run DSGM games.

Thanks for any input!

personally i wouldn't know.. but i'll ask James to login and answer your question..

i don't think there would be honestly.. i have only used the DSOne card

Thanks, that would be great.

I figure it’s not likely more setup is required to run DSGM games, but thought I would check just in case.

I’ve been doing some research and am sharing it here in case anyone else is looking for a flashcart.

• Acekard was discontinued years ago so it wouldn’t likely be compatible with the latest 3ds firmware
• R4 Gold cards 2019-2020 that are being sold right now have a “time bomb” where they are set to become unfuctional past a certain date.
• Time bombs on ds carts can be overridden by turning back the clock on your ds/3ds or using another ds cart firmware like YSmenu.

I might just get one of those cheap r4 gold cards and just installed the YSmenu firmware on it to remove the time bomb.

DS Two cards are looking expensive for the added features they provide. Like GBA emulation? Not sure how that one works.

Disclaimer: I haven't been on the hardware side of the scene for a super long time. Refreshing to hear you still have my DS Homebrew Kit tho, and it still works on a DS Lite! Quite amazing.

Based on your post, I'd recommend using R4 Gold cards with a better firmware. I have heard about the timebomb - it's to do with combatting fakes, right?

Changing the date/time is going to make some homebrew games do weird things, so it'd be great to avoid having to do that.

Thanks for your input James.

I believe the r4 gold card with better firmware will be what I’ll try out. Unless the dstwo has a sale.

The time bomb is most likely a form of planned obsolescence, so that you keep buying new cards every year or so. That’s what I heard.

The R4 gold cards are knock offs of the original R4 card so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true.

Thankfully the alternative firmware should fix it, so I don’t have to roll back the date.

Let me know what happens in the end on this - I'm genuinely super interested, and haven't been in this game for years (obviously).

Nearly every card, less SuperCard, AceKard (and a handful of others) were fake later reproductions of the "original" R4. In the early days we called all of these cards "slot 1 solutions" because before that, it was only possible to play games from the GBA slot (a la SuperCard SD + SuperPass/PassMe).

My R4 Gold Card came in the mail yesterday and I've been testing it out

It came pre-setup with the default R4 Menu and MoonshellV2 menu for media playback. I added the YsMenu to it as well and the card is recognized by both my 3DS and old DS lite.

Link to the one I bought:
https://www.amazon.ca/SDHC-2019-USB-Wor ... 741&sr=8-2


So far its compatibility with DSGM .nds files has been inconsistent.

The majority of DSGM maker games play from both the R4 and Ys menus but the ones that don't just load black screens and nothing else.

Unfortunately, all the .nds files I compile with my standalone installation of DSGM 5.12 just result in black screens even though they work perfectly on my Acekard.

I don't believe the problem is with DSGM 5, because Jame's Asteroid Game from the fan site works and it was created in DSGM 5.
However, When I try to compile the same game from his provided example files I get the black screens.

So it could be due to my installation of DSGM unless it's a problem specifically with DSGM 5.12 and not older versions of DSGM 5.0.

I'm not the only one with this issue as some demos made by old users: YoshiInAvoid, Nobody, and others also boot up to black screens on the R4 and YS menu.


Could anyone share me a complied .nds file from DSGM 4.9 and 5.12 using their VM installation of DSGM?

I want to test if the issue is still present there and I don't have the VM yet installed on my computer. (May change in the future)


Lastly, there is a work around to play the black screened games through the Moonshell menu.

Except they have no streamed audio. So there will be no background music when playing DSGM games.
Just a guess, but it might be because Moonshell is primarily for multimedia playback and there might be conflicts with some of its audio features.

I haven't compiled anything really in the VM - just some test stuff but nothing worth sharing or completing without some coders on here - so all of my projects are on hold..

I only use 4.9 anyways..

** LINK REMOVED **

It doesn't have to be anything like a complete game. Just even a background or sprite on the two screens would do at the very least.

The goal is to see if I can get anything else to show up besides black screens. So simple test .nds files is all I'm looking for.

Thanks your test .nds file boots up as normal

Hopefully someone else will share me a 5.12 test .nds file at some point.