DeSmuME, play the Nintendo DS on your PC with Ubuntu

Although the games are getting better and better and we can take them on almost any smartphone, there are still many of us who have several emulators installed on our devices, be they computers or mobile phones. My favorites are the MAME, which is an emulator of arcade machines that came with 5 hard drives (about € 0,15) and those of the SEGA Master System II and Mega Drive consoles. Anyway, one of the emulators that most like on the different platforms is that of the Nintendo DS, the console of the Japanese giant that includes touch screens among many other buttons. There's a emulador (at least) Nintendo DS that works on Ubuntu and its name is DeSmuME.

Although it is not an emulator that seems demanding, I have to say that on my laptop it does not work too well. Maybe I should have tried it on Ubuntu Mame, whose Gnome environment allows my little PC to run a little more at ease. In any case, the emulator weighs very little and, as you will see, it is very easy to install and run it. The community has created a .deb package, which makes things much easier for us, and more if what we see on the official page are command lines.

Download and install DeSmuME

• Although there is a package available in Ubuntu, I have tried it and it has not worked for me. I recommend that you download and install the package that is in uptodown.com/ubuntu/emulators. This has worked for me. You can try the one in the default repositories if you want, of course.

• It will download the .deb package for us. We just have to do Double click over it so that it opens to us in the Ubuntu Software Center. When it loads, we click Install.

Starting and playing with DeSmuME

• DeSmuME will put us in the launcher (we can remove it by right clicking). It we execute.

• A small window of a size similar to that of the console will open. In order to play our ROMs, we have to click on it folder icon.

• We look for the file with .nds extension and we open it.

• Finally, we see that in the window we have put the play symbol (the triangle next to the folder. See previous image, number 2) in green. We click on it to Start the game. You will see it as in the screenshot that heads this post (although it can be put in full screen, but it's the same).

controls

I have to admit that I am not someone who has played a lot of the Nintendo DS, but I can comment on how to control the games. The keys are as follows:

• Up, Down, Right, Left act as such.
• X: A button.
• Z: B button.
• S: X button.
• A: Y button.
• Q: left trigger.
• W: right trigger.
• Intro:Start.
• Right shift:Select.
• Space bar: Pause.
• Mouse click: touch screen.

The controls can be configured from the options. It is also compatible with controllers, which is especially useful in games where we have to touch little or nothing on the screen. If you install it, is it good for you? What do you think?