Attn: Nintendo DS owners

(NOTE: This headline was not just a gratuitous excuse to post a pic of Carrie Underwood - She actually is a DS Owner...)

Ok, so I know these 3 posts in rapid succession don't really make up for not posting in like 3 weeks, but hey, its my lunch hour and I'm bored.

Anyways, if you own a Nintendo DS, you really should own a R4 card (or similar type card) for it. It is truly a great invention, and for the uninformed, I'll show you guys how to get one, how to utilize it, and what it does for ya. I've done this via email for a few friends in the past, so I figured I'd just do a blog entry here so I can refer people to it in the future.

Alright, I'll try to explain this as simply as possible: Do you like playing games on your DS? Would you like to have more games to play, but don't want to pay that pesky $19.99-$39.99 for each game that Nintendo is currently charging? Would you like to have access to almost the entire library of Nintendo DS titles (plus some old school NES games) and spend a total of about 60 bucks? OK, then you will love the R4 card.


Esentially, the R4 card is an SD card that goes into the game slot of your DS. It looks just like any other game cartridge, and fits in there like any other game. You can buy one on the cheap from here. You will also need a microSD card to store the games on. You can get cheap ones from here (I got a 2GB one).


Alright, now all you have to do is decide what games you wanna put on that bad boy. You can look at this site for a list of compatible games. About 98% of all DS games are compatible (the ones highlighted in green), and they are listed in that site by release date. The ones with the (U) are the US version of the games, (J) are the Japanese games, and (E) are the European games - all 3 will work with the card, but unless you are fluent in japanese, you may want to pick the US versions.


So how do you find the games? Go to this site, and search for the game you want. You will note that they are organized and ordered on that site in the same way they are listed on the wiki compatibility list I linked to above, so they are easy to find. Once you find the game or "ROM" (the name for the file you will be downloading), then click on it, download it, and unzip the file onto your computer. Search for the file that has an ".nds" extension, as that is the only file you actually need to put on your R4 card (for example: Newsupermariobros(U).nds). You can delete all the other junk that's included in the .zip file.

Now its just a matter of putting those downloaded ROMs (the files with the .nds extension) onto your R4 card. You do that by copying them onto your microSD card. Just plug the microSD card into the USB adapter that came with your R4, plug it into the USB port of your computer (it should appear as just another "storage device" on your My Computer screen), create a folder to put your games (i.e. "NDS games"), then copy your ROMs into that folder. That's it.

Then slide the microSD card into the little slot on top of your R4, put the R4 into your Nintendo DS, turn it on (it should boot up to a different screen than usual), select the game you want to play, and voila!!!!!! Enjoy!!!

You can also put mp3 music files on the R4 card that will play on your DS, and you can download a Nintendo "emulator" that will play old school Nintendo games. More instructions on how to do that in a later post, or you can email me.

Congrats, you're now an R4 user!!!