MelonDS Android Setup Guide

Installation

Download Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.magnum.melonds

Download Link (Github): https://github.com/rafaelvcaetano/melonDS-android

Both the Play Store and Github versions are the same for MelonDS, choose whichever you’d prefer. Most users will likely use the Play Store.

ROMs

So right off the bat, you are of course going to need Nintendo DS games if you plan on following this guide, and I would suggest just simply creating a ROMs folder on your internal storage, and then an nds folder inside of it, where you will put your Nintendo DS games.

As far as finding the games yourself, the video in this post should help, and also this video here:

Setting up MelonDS

After you’ve decided on either the Play Store version or the Github version, make sure you download and install.

The first thing it’s asking for is for you to select your ROM directory, and ROMs is just another name for games, so it’s asking, where are your Nintendo DS games located?

Well, we did this earlier, they are on our internal storage, Roms folder, nds folder, so select that.

You should now see them all populate inside of MelonDS.

Settings > General

Let’s go ahead and select the three dots top right to jump into settings.

If we head into General, there’s an option here to set the fast-forward max speed, maybe you have a powerful device and it’s too fast for you at unlimited, you can cap it here.

Now if you have a low end device, this won’t do anything for you, and won’t magically speed up your fast forward, you’re limited by power.

You can also enable rewind, and there’s a disclaimer here where you need a pretty hefty device to use this.

Your call, I usually don’t enable this.

Settings > Save Files

Head back and into Save Files.

Now, by default, any of your saves and states files will be located in your ROM folder.

So, with our setup, all your saves and states will be right in your ROMs/nds folder that we created earlier.

However, maybe you want to have your saves and states separate, so this is optional, but what you can do is uncheck Save next to ROM file, select save file directory, create a MelonDS folder just on your internal storage and now all your saves and states will save into that folder, nice and organized.

This is what I usually do, feel free to throw this onto your SD card if you’d like and can share it with multiple devices especially with something like Syncthing.

You can also change where your save states are stored if you don’t want them with your saves.

Settings > Video

Back out and now let’s head into Video.

I would change Renderer to OpenGL because that unlocks upscaling, and now you see we can change the internal resolution and upscale our game if our device can handle it.

8x native might be too hefty for most devices, but feel free to try it if you have a hefty device.

Upscaling is a major feature available to MelonDS, especially for RetroAchievments users as no other emulator or core can do upscaling with RetroAchievments, so we’re eating well here.

Feel free to enable the FPS counter here now if you’d like to see how your games perform.

Settings > Input

Back out and this time head to Input.

If you have a controller or a handheld, turn off Show soft input to get rid of the on-screen touch controls.

Then let’s head into key mapping.

Go ahead and map the buttons to your device for a Nintendo DS.

I like to set R2 to fast forward toggle and L2 to Swap screens.

L3 for quick save, R3 for quick load.

If you want to map anything else and you have more free buttons, go ahead. 

One quick tip, if you map toggle microphone, you can use that in games that need it – it mimics a blow, but if you head into the Audio settings, you can change it to your device’s microphone if it has one.

Just more options for you, depending on the game and your needs.

Settings > Layouts

Back out and this time head into Layouts.

The default layout is selected and what’s used, but you can create your own layouts if you’d like, choose the Plus icon top right.

This will show you what the default is now, but if you don’t like things, you can adjust them.

If you hit Menu bottom right, you can revert changes, add your own background image, and all that sort of thing.

Settings > RetroAchievements

Back out and you can head into RetroAchievments and login with yours if you want. 

Settings > Cheats

Lastly, head back and into Cheats.

There’s an awesome cheat database on GBATemp, so let’s grab that.

Scroll down to Download and grab it from the Mega link, it’ll take some time to download.

It’s going to download as a zip, and you’ll need to extract it – I use the app Solid Explorer as a file manager and that has a built in extractor, the app is right on the Play Store if you want what I use.

Now let’s head back to MelonDS, and enable cheats, then click import cheats, head inside of the folder we extracted, cheat databases and select the XML file inside.

It’ll import a whole bunch of cheats for MelonDS.

When done, hit back and head to the main screen.

Per-Game Settings

On the main screen, hit the settings cog to the right of a game.

You can make per-game changes here, like for example, if you want a layout for one game – maybe you want a full screen layout, create one, then set it here for this specific game to use it.

You can also see the RetroAchievments tab to show you achievements for this game.

Booting a game

Go ahead and click a game to play it.

R2 will be fast forward, if you followed me.

L2 will swap screens.

My L3 is set to quick save and R3 to quick load for quick save states.

In-Game Menu

If you mapped the Pause button, push that to get an in-game menu otherwise you can also get it by pushing the Back button on your handheld or swipe up and hit the back arrow or sometimes you can swipe in from the left.

Few ways to do so, but if none of those work, feel free to map Pause to something.

Settings brings you back to the main settings to change things.

But there’s cheats here.

Open that and you can see all the Cheats for this game if they exist.

Go ahead and just select any cheats you want to enable to use them.

You can also reset or exit from this menu.