Home Brew Apps Galore…
Get more from your DS with a host of free applications!
There’s more to the DS than just playing games. With MAX Media Player, you can run all sorts of exciting applications on your happening handheld, turning your console into an MP3 player, a movie viewer, a photo display and more just by downloading free software from thriving DS home brew sites.
Home-brew programmers many hours go into building an application they can be proud of, and when ready, they share their efforts with the rest of the DS home brew scene by uploading it to the internet. After receiving comments and bug reports from fellow enthusiasts, they often return to their program and make improvements.
As home brew is put together by non-professionals, their programmers usually lack the resources to check every title with every configuration of utilities required to play them on a DS. Luckily, MAX Media Player has taken the DS home brew scene by storm – many programmers and programming teams are currently optimising their apps specifically to run well using Datel’s devious devices, so compatibility is increasing all the time. So if the program you’ve downloaded runs poorly or not at all on your DS with MAX Media Player, return to the downloads site in a few weeks and see if an updated version is available.
Remember, though, none of the home brew listed here are programmed or supported by Datel. Please direct any questions you might have about them to their programmers.
Our Favourite Home Brew Applications
If you hate being caught out of doors when it rains, download DSLiveWeather. Using the console’s WiFi functionality, this interesting app gives you a local weather forecast, drawn from Weather.com. You can get a forecast for any location supported by Weather.com, and store up to 64 locations. Who said the DS was only for games?
Infantile Paralysiser has released a new version of MoonShell, the DS’s most popular home brew multimedia player to date. This versatile utility is capable of playing music files in WAV, MP3 or OGG formats, displaying text or pictures as JPGs and BMPs and also playing video files.
There’s an excellent user guide to MoonShell at the Max Console site. Check it out here…
After a substantial rewrite, DS2Key has returned. This is a nice little app that allows your DS to act as a PC game pad. A WiFi app, DS2Key will automatically search for access points and display them on the top screen.
Ever fancied yourself as a budding Roger Taylor or Joey Jordison? The drum app DrummerS won’t get you into a band, but it’s pretty good fun. Set up the samples to suit yourself, then go to work with your stylus, hammering the skins and striking the symbols for all your worth.
No prizes for guessing what this is. It’s a simple paint program with a choice of brushes, colours, shapes and more. It’s great fun to use – you can scribble till your heart’s content, and even write little messages on the screen.
It’s one of the best DS home brew sites on the net! At DS Emulation, you can check out all the latest public domain games, applications and emulators, as well as reading about the latest DS news. And as well as the apps, games, emulators and more stored on the site, it also offers links to plenty more home brew programs elsewhere on the net.
As well as being the ultimate DS home brew solution, MAX Media Player is perfect for running GBA programs. GBA Emulation is a News and downloads site for the Nintendo GBA Micro & Game Boy Advance.
Troy Davis is one of the top home brew developers on the DS. Known as GPF online, GPF Development is his own site, where he shares his wares on the Dreamcast as well as Nintendo’s happening handheld.
MAX Console is one of the best games enthusiasts’ sites on the net, and they've a great download section – just follow the link on the home page.
NDS Home Brew is exclusively dedicated to bringing you Nintendo DS home brew – it’s as simple as that. Not the jazziest site on the net, but it’s packed with quality downloads and is easy to navigate.