The Nintendo DS is the one console where playing on a phone is arguably better than the original hardware — and that's not a sales line, it's just what the technology does.
The DS had a plastic stylus and a screen that only registered one firm press at a time. Your phone has a screen that responds instantly to the lightest touch. For a library built almost entirely around touching things, that's a real upgrade.
Two screens, one phone
The obvious question. The DS had a top and bottom screen; your phone has one. You choose how to handle that, and it depends on the game:
- Stacked, one above the other. The default, and closest to holding the original. Fine for nearly everything.
- Side by side. Better in landscape, and much better on an iPad where there's room to spare.
- Favour the action screen. Plenty of games only use the second screen for a map or your inventory, so giving the main one more space often just makes sense.
It's a setting you can change mid-game, so it's worth a quick play around when you start something new.
Getting started: the 30-second part
Already have the ROM on your phone?
- Get Haptic Emulator from the App Store. Free, ordinary install, nothing expires.
- Tap import. From Files, a folder, or the clipboard. Zipped files are fine.
- Let the box art land. Covers download automatically and games file themselves on your Nintendo DS shelf.
- Press start. Touch controls just work — your finger is the stylus.
Try it on an iPad if you have one
The DS gains more from a bigger screen than any other console here, because you're fitting two pictures instead of one. Side by side on an iPad in landscape, both screens are properly large and it stops feeling like a compromise at all.
What works brilliantly
Anything built around touching, drawing, tapping or dragging — which on the DS is an enormous slice of the library. Puzzle games, strategy games, the whole wave of experimental things that existed because the hardware was unusual. All of it translates directly, and mostly feels better than it did.
Games that used the buttons work normally too, with the layout on screen and every control draggable. Real controllers connect if you'd rather.
What doesn't
Two honest gaps. Playing wirelessly with someone else nearby needed two consoles talking to each other, and a single phone can't do that. And the handful of games that asked you to blow into a microphone or fold the console shut are, unsurprisingly, awkward on a device that does neither.
That's a small corner of a very deep library. Everything else plays properly.
For the curious (optional)
Background only — skip freely.
Each DS screen was 256×192 pixels, and the bottom one used resistive touch: a flexible layer that registered pressure at a single point, which is why it needed a firm press and a stylus tip. Modern phones use capacitive touch, sensing the electrical properties of your fingertip, which is far more sensitive and handles multiple points at once.
So the trade is real but lopsided. A fingertip is blunter than a plastic stylus, which very occasionally matters in games demanding fine precision. But the screen underneath is dramatically more responsive than the original ever was, and for most of the library that's the difference that shows.
Frequently asked questions
How do two DS screens fit on one phone?
Does the stylus work on an iPhone?
Does wireless multiplayer work between two devices?
Is Nintendo DS better on iPad?
Does Haptic Emulator come with games?
Your whole childhood. One download.
Haptic Emulator runs 21 retro systems on iPhone and iPad — free to play, and it ships no games: it plays the ones you already have.
Free to play · all 21 systems · iPhone & iPad