R4 for Nintendo DS & DSi

The best thing about owning an R4 for Nintendo DS is the ability to play homebrew games and use homebrew applications. But you won’t be enjoying these features if you don’t know where to look for these games. Here are 10 great titles to pick from.

Essential Games

1. Puzzle Maniak

If you love puzzles, you’ll definitely get a real kick out of Puzzle Maniak because it manages to squeeze over 20 games in a 3 MB file. These games include simple games like solitaire and samegame as well as other nice puzzle games of various names. This game can also play back any mp3 files in your R4′s mp3 directory so you can set the mood of the gameplay.

2. DS Doom

Doom is one of the oldest and best first-person shooters of all time and although it came out on GBA, the Nintendo DS never got a piece of it until the R4 homebrew community came along. Perhaps the best thing about this version of Doom is the ability to play multiplayer over Wi-Fi.

3. WordUp!

Any word game executed correctly can be really addictive when you start playing and WordUp! happens to be one of them because it combines block-falling gameplay with word elements. It features nice colourful graphics that will really get you hooked.

4. Tyrian

Vertical scrolling shooters are not very common with the Nintendo DS, but now with Tyrian being ported to the DS by the R4 homebrew community, now you can enjoy one of the best arcade shooters in history. It uses both screens so you can experience gameplay without distractions and it has lots of levels to keep you busy.

5. Lemmings DS

Another game that was popular older consoles that failed to be ported in the latest Nintendo handheld is Lemmings. Now with Lemmings DS, not only you get the same fun levels from the old ports, but additional levels that were included in the original Amiga Lemmings. That’s 220 levels total for this fun puzzle strategy game where you need to lead Lemmings to the exit by assigning them various jobs.

Essential Applications

1 DSOrganize

While the DS does have some useful applications built-in, their organizer is pretty basic. This is why the DSOrganizer can make your life much easier because it comes with so many mini applications that make this one of the best homebrew applications for the Nintendo DS. It is capable of storing memos, to-do lists, addresses, and stylus drawings. A calculator and file browser is also included where the file browser has support for viewing images and playing back different audio formats and text formats as well. It even comes with an IRC client for communication. As long as you have a flash card solution, you can really put this application to work.

2. NitroTracker

If you want to create your own music, you need to get yourself an instrument or special software because most portable devices do not come with a feature-rich music creation tool. But now with NitroTracker, you can create very good music in the popular XM file format easily using the stylus and touch screen. Even the Nintendo DS microphone can be utilized to make samples. This is truly a R4 application that has commercial quality.

3. PointyRemote

Now you can see a scaled version of any PC desktop that you are remotely controlling through VNC and use the second screen as a zooming tool. PointyRemote is an ingenious VNC application that actually utilizes both screens the best way possible. With the stylus, controlling your computer couldn’t be any easier.

4. Colors

Because the Nintendo DS uses a stylus, painting applications would work very well and so Colors was developed and since November 2008, over 250,000 downloads were made. It features powerful painting tools that basically turn your DS into a drawing tablet. It can be used for simple doodling, basic painting, or advanced sketching. Colors is one of the must have applications on your DS if you want a good sketchbook.

5. SavSender

The problem that people face with their game saves is that they cannot be backed up. SavSender is a very simple backup that provides this function. It can restore these saves to the cartridge any time so you basically have unlimited saves. It also gives you an easy way to transfer save game files between DS consoles.