The ROM ReportWelcome to the third installment of The Rom Report! Today we’ll look at several SNES games that I’ve tried to run on the Nintendo DS using SNEmulDS.

Without further a do, here’s what really works, what works somewhat and what doesn’t work at all.

  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past -This is a classic on the SNES, and even though it plays well on the SNEmulDS, the sound is totally skewed, with loud static being the order of the day. Recommended but play it with the volume turned off.
  • Metal Warriors – A platformer from LucasArts and Konami featuring mechs, this game is prone to hang at the options screen and actual gameplay lags with a number of graphical glitches. Gamer beware.
  • Prince of Persia – This Broderbund classic looks pretty, but you’ll need to adjust the emulator’s GFX settings constantly to let the game look the part. There are Minor but manageable graphical glitches both at the title screen and in-game. A difficult game to play notwithstanding, it’s hard not to like an old classic like PoP.
  • Prince of Persia 2 – Graphical glitches are somewhat worse compared to its predecessor and the lack of sound makes it a flop on the DS.
  • Samurai Shodown – A personal favourite of mine, this 2D brawler is in the vein of Street Fighter, but with weapons. The graphics are sharp and a marvel to look at despite playing the game on the small DS screen. There’s a minor glitch whereby the life bar doesn’t seem to show a decrease when hit. No worries though, it starts flashing when you or your opponent is near K.O. Recommended.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time – Another personal favourite of mine, this time it’s from Konami. Control one of the four Ninja Turtles through 2D platform levels full of enemy ninjas and a boss at every end. Recommended.
  • X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse – This is a rather tough game in terms of difficulty, or maybe it’s because of the controls that lag abit. I faced no problems running this game.
  • Zombies Ate My Neighbours – Graphical glitches abound on the main menu but once past that, you’ll find the game not hard to love, as it is with the campy title. It’s recommended that you set the emulator speed to normal, instead of the default “Fast” to cope with the frantic gameplay.

Side notes: SNEmulDS doesn’t really like running .fig files and I wonder why. I’ve two games, Mechwarrior and Yoshi’s Island in .fig format and both don’t run properly (no graphics, sound only).

For previous editions of The Rom Report, here’s Part 1 and Part 2.