Play every DS game from your modded 3DS SD card

The 3DS is already able to play DS games from the original cartridges. But it’s much easier if we can simply install those onto the console as a backup file and then have access to our full game library without having to use the original ROMs. This helps preserve them and just makes the whole system much more portable and user friendly.

So in this video I’m going to show you how to backup your DS ROMs and then install the game directly onto your 3DS SD card.

Obviously there are websites that allow you to download game backup files but please do check out my retro game copyright video to make sure that it’s legal for you to do that in your region.

To start with though you’ll need to get a few things ready.

You’ll need a modded 3DS. If you’ve followed my homebrew video you’ll have all the software we need already installed. For this tutorial we’ll need the Universal Updater app. If you haven’t got that installed just head over to the website at

https://universal-team.net/projects/universal-updater

Download the .cia file and install that onto your console using the FBI app as normal.

You’ll also need a computer that will let you copy files to your SD card, and finally some DS games to backup, or some already prepared backup files. These files need to be in the .nds format.

So with all that ready lets get gaming.

Installing TWiLight Menu++

The app we’re going to use to manage and launch our DS games is TWiLight Menu++.

On the 3DS open up your Universal Updater app. The TWiLight Menu icon should be in view, or use the search feature on the left menu to find it. Use the d-pad buttons to highlight it and then A to select it. You should see information about the app popping up in the bottom screen.

On the left hand menu click the download icon and you’ll see the available downloads for the app. We want the top option to download and install the stable release version.

This will take a few minutes to complete, but once ready go back to your menu screen and we should have a new app to unwrap which will of course be TWiLight Menu.

Open the app and we can go through the initial setup options. By default TWiLight Menu will use the system defaults for language etc. so just click A to continue, or make changes as you need. Next we need to select a default region for our console so I’m going to use Europe.

That’s setup complete so you’ll now see the main app startup screens before it starts to go through its boot sequence to generate some files. This will only happen on this first boot so let it run through before we drop into the main app interface.

You’ll basically see it prompting you to find your DS rom files, so getting those onto the system is the next step.

Backing up a DS Game

We can first look at backing up our original DS rom cartridges. To backup a DS game we need to create the .nds file which we’ll then put onto our SD card to use in the 3DS. This is actually a very simple process.

Turn off your 3DS and pop your DS rom into the slot. Now hold down the Start button and keep that held down as you press the power button. Keep the Start button pressed until the console boots into GodMode9.

GodMode9 is a great app that lets you do a whole range of operations on your system, one of which is extracting game files from the rom cartridges.

In the top screen you’ll see a list of storage locations. Use the d-pad to scroll down to the GAMECART option and select it with the A button.

You’ll now see a list of the files in the DS rom. We need to extract the .nds file so highlight that and press A again to select it. You’ll now see a menu appear in the bottom screen with options on what to do with the file. There are a range of operations you can perform on the file, but for now we simply need to copy it to our SD card. Select the Copy to gm9/out option and select that. This will start the file copy process so just let that run through.

Once you get the copy completed message press A to confirm and then we can power down the console from the GodMode9 menu by holding in the R bumper and pressing Start. Take out the SD card and pop it into your computer.

On the computer if we open up the SD card and go into the gm9 folder and then the out folder you’ll see our extracted DS game sitting there. Just copy that into your game library and we’re ready for the next step.

Downloading Backup Files

As I mentioned earlier you can of course find other people’s backup files online. Again these will be exactly the same .nds files that we’ve just created. As usual you’ll need to find these yourself and decide of you want to use them. But the option is there if you take that route.

Copying DS Games to SD Card

While we’ve got our SD card in the computer we should copy all the games we want to play onto our SD card.

Installing TWiLight menu will have created a roms folder on our SD card with sub folders for a range of systems. We’ll use this folder structure to store our DS games.

Simply copy any DS game files into the nds folder on the SD card, again making sure that they are .nds files. And that’s our games installed.

Playing the Games

All we need to do now is put the SD card back into the 3DS, power on and start up TWiLight Menu.

In the browse panel just go through the folders to find our game files, so select the roms folder, then nds and we should get a nice display of game icons for our DS game library. All we need to do is click on a game to launch it.

When you first run a game TWiLight Menu will take a bit of time to create the game files and get it all set up, but you’ll then drop into the actual game itself. The next time you run the game it will start a lot faster.

And that’s it. You’re now able to play any of your DS game files on your 3DS.

Adding games to the Home Menu

The chances are you’re going to have quite a few games on the system, so instead of having to go through the TWiLight Menu interface it would be great to put your favourites as tiles on the home menu.

To do this we need to install a homebrew app called ndsForwarder.

Again we can easily install this using the Universal Updater app. So open that up and search for ndsForwarder. You should see a cute Narwal icon appear. Select that, click the downloads icon and then install the app.

We’re finished in Universal Updater so back to the home menu.

The ndsForwarder app runs from with the HiomeBrew launcher, so open that up and you should see it sitting in there, probably near the bottom of your list.

Start the app and it will show you a number of folder locations in the top screen. There is an option to install all nds files but it’s best not to use that as it doesn’t quite work. Plus there are only 40 DS game positions on the home menu so you’re best off choosing them individually.

So use the d-pad to navigate through the folders to find the DS game files in the roms/nds folder. To place it on the home menu just select the game with the A button and click Yes to install it. You can repeat this for whatever games you want to put on the home menu and then click the home button to get out of the app.

Once closed you’ll get the new software notification, so unwrap the present and you’ll find a shortcut to your DS game. Launching the game will still go through the TWiLight Menu app but I saves you now having to find it in the folder system.

Next Steps

So that’s DS and DSi games up and running on your 3DS and 2DS. If you’re following my 3DS tutorials our next step is to get some other consoles onto the system to turn it into a full retro gaming centre.

So please do click the like button and make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss the next gaming, modding, making and coding videos.

Have fun playing all your DS games and bye for now.