3DS: Play NDS Games from your SDCard thanks to NDS Bootstrap and TWLoader

nintendodsgamesYes, the dream has finally come true. We can say goodbye to our flashcards and play our NDS Games directly from the 3DS SDCard. This has all been made possible by the efforts of ahezard, Gericom, Apache, Robz8, _catcatcat, and shutterbug2000 so huge thanks to them for this awesome work and also huge thanks for the nice Christmas present:3.

Now comes the catch though. For now only very few DS Games work and you won’t be able to save if you don’t own the real cartridge. This will be fixed in later updates though until we will have perfect compatibility 😀

So what if you wanna try it? All you need is a CFW 3DS and TWLoader.
1. Download TWLoader.7z and extract it. Copy the CIA to your 3DS SDCard and the contents of the sdroot folder to the root of your 3ds SDCard.
2. Copy some Roms that you want to try to the nds folder on the root of your 3DS SDCard. Currently known working Games are:
Warioware: Touched
Mario Kart DS (if you have a physical MKDS card for saving)
Bomberman
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
Space Invaders DS
MegaMan ZX
Yoshi Touch & Go
3. Install “TWLoader – TWLNAND side.cia” that’s in “sdmc:/_nds/twloader/cia/” to SysNAND (also to EmuNAND, if you have EmuNAND) and then TWLoader on your 3DS and boot it up. You can now try to run the Games from your SDCard and see if they work yet. BEFORE PLAYING ANY GAMES: Make sure you don’t have a ANY Cardtridge in your 3DS Slot. Currently if you save in TWLoader it will write the save on the Card in the 3DS Slot and it will overwrite any save that will be there if the save CHIP matches.

If you want to get the latest NDS-Bootstrap version without always having to use your PC and copy the files you can easily use ReBootstrap by Alerdy which will do the work of updating NDS Bootstrap for you ^^
Simply install the App on your 3DS and run it to update NDS Bootstrap and you can also directly launch TWLoader when it finished updating 😀

If you want to have Banners for your Games you can easily create them with Forwarder3-DS
forwarder3-ds-twloader
1.Download Forwarder3-DS.
2.Open it, and click on the TWLoader tab.
3.Select “ROMs on 3DS’ SD card”.
4.Make sure “Automatically set ROM path” is set.
5.Pick the ROM(s) that are on the SD card.
6.Click the button with the floppy disk to generate the .png files.
7.Copy the .png files to “sdmc:/_nds/twloader/bnricons/”.

If you would also like to have Boxarts follow these Steps:
-Download this box art pack. Credit to @Link_of_Hyrule.
-Rename the .png file to the same filename as the game, but with “.png” added to the end (ex. SD card: game.nds.png, Flashcard: game.ini.png).
-Save it to “sdmc:/_nds/twloader/boxart/” for games on the SD card, or “sdmc:/_nds/twloader/boxart/flashcard/” for games on the Slot-1 flashcard.

I can’t wait until we’ll have full Compatibility and Save support and hopefully somewhere in the Future Cheat Support for the Games 😀

Source: nds-bootstrap, TWLoader

About Darthsternie

Interested in everything Technical. Loves self-repairing Tech. Collector of Firmwares. Enthusiast Gamer and Anime Fan ^^

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One comment

  1. This is good news. we’re not far off from having this run at full throttle. the suckie thing is there needs to be full screen which on flashcards we can only play 4:3 views..