Nintendo DS Homebrew

Nintendo DS homebrew software is unofficial software written for the Nintendo DS by hobbyist programmers, versus software written by a game production company or corporation using the official development tools from Nintendo. Homebrew software is typically used on the DS via third-party rewritable game cartridges, SD cards, emulators, or rewritten game cards. It is made using libnds and often using the libfat FAT library.

The Nintendo DSi also has homebrew applications developed for it. However such homebrew is rare, as Nintendo has put significant effort into blocking 3rd party devices and content from the DSi.

Since the Nintendo DS is not sold with a storage medium, a third-party storage device is needed to store homebrew.

The earliest systems for homebrew employed a storage device in the Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridge slot (referred to as SLOT-2) and a booting tool in the Nintendo DS cartridge slot (referred to as SLOT-1). This two-tool combination is commonly referred to as SLOT-2 or 1st Generation. Later on, cards that only used the DS slot (SLOT-1) to store and run homebrew software were developed. These devices are referred to as 2nd Generation cards.

There are a few main differences between the two technologies used:

SLOT-2 devices include basic Game Boy Advance flash cartridges, the GBA Movie Player and the related M3 Perfect, the Max Media Dock, and the SuperCard.

SLOT-1 devices include the DSTT, DS iPlayer, R4DS (Gold), M3 DS Simply, and their clones, R4i, N-Card, MK5, iTouch DS, SuperCard DS One, SuperCard DS Onei, SuperCard DSTwo, CycloDS Evolution, EDGE DS, iEDGE, the AceKard, Acekard 2, Acekard 2i, the DS Link, the DS-Xtreme, the NinjaPass X9, EZ-Flash V, the Datel Games n' Music, M3 Real, M3i Zero, G6 Real, and DSTTi.

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