Alternatives to melonDS
A Nintendo DS and DSi emulator focused on accuracy and speed, with local wireless between emulated consoles. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
melonDS
A Nintendo DS and DSi emulator focused on accuracy and speed, with local wireless between emulated consoles.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as melonDS.
DeSmuME
Long-running Nintendo DS emulator with high-resolution rendering.
DeSmuME is an older Nintendo DS emulator with high-resolution 3D rendering, a large cheat database and movie recording, but releases are infrequent and it is slower and less accurate for many games.
RetroArch
One front end for dozens of emulators, with unified settings, shaders and a controller setup you only do once.
RetroArch runs emulator cores inside one front end with shared settings, shaders and controller setup on desktops and phones, though standalone emulators are sometimes more accurate than the equivalent core.
NooDS
A fast, portable open-source emulator for the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance.
NooDS emulates DS and GBA with multi-core software rendering and adds an Android build, but has a smaller feature set, no local wireless mentioned and a single main developer.
SkyEmu
A low-level emulator for the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.
SkyEmu covers DS alongside Game Boy, Game Boy Color and GBA with low-level emulation, but lists only macOS and Linux and its platform support is not clearly documented.
Also worth comparing
These listings name melonDS as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
no$gba
A Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and DSi emulator with a source-level debugger.
melonDS is an open-source GPL-3.0 DS and DSi emulator for Windows, macOS, Linux and FreeBSD with local wireless play, but it lacks no$gba's source-level debugger and GBA support.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Azahar
Run Nintendo 3DS software with an open-source emulator.
mGBA
A Game Boy Advance emulator that gets the accuracy right and still runs at full speed on weak hardware.
SameBoy
Highly accurate Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator.
PPSSPP
A PSP emulator that needs no BIOS file and runs handheld games in HD on phones and PCs.
Gearboy
An accurate Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Super Game Boy emulator with a built-in debugger.
