Software Alternatives & Reviews

melonDS VS Drastic

Compare melonDS VS Drastic and see what are their differences

melonDS logo melonDS

A Nintendo DS emulator with support for commercial games.

Drastic logo Drastic

Drastic is a Android DS Emulator
  • melonDS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-10
  • Drastic Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-11

melonDS videos

Quickly Setup melonDS Emulator For Windows & Linux!

More videos:

  • Tutorial - MelonDS DS Emulator for Nintendo Switch - How to Setup & Overview - Homebrew CFW App
  • Review - MelonDS Version 0.8.2 for For Nintendo Switch CFW

Drastic videos

|Drastic NDS| Emulator Product Review

More videos:

  • Review - Drastic DS Emulator Review on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to melonDS and Drastic)
Gaming
68 68%
32% 32
Emulators
66 66%
34% 34
Gaming Tools
68 68%
32% 32
Gaming Software
70 70%
30% 30

User comments

Share your experience with using melonDS and Drastic. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare melonDS and Drastic

melonDS Reviews

Best DS Emulator: Are These Emulators Safe And Legal To Use?
MelonDS also offers high-performance graphics and sound emulation, making it a great choice for gamers who want an authentic DS experience.
Source: appletoo.us
5 Best Nintendo DS Emulators for PC
When we talk about best DS emulator for PC, we can’t avoid MelonDS. MelonDS is also one of the best Nintendo DS emulator. It has the following advantages:
Best emulators for Android in 2023
The Nintendo DS has such a wide back catalog of games to play, many of which are both incredible and not very computationally taxing. melonDS is the best way to enjoy those games on the go, and that's thanks to its ease of use. It's a free emulator that you can download from the Google Play Store, though it's not an official port (as melonDS is made for PC originally), and...

Drastic Reviews

We have no reviews of Drastic yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, melonDS seems to be a lot more popular than Drastic. While we know about 32 links to melonDS, we've tracked only 1 mention of Drastic. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

melonDS mentions (32)

  • help with bw roms
    Use MelonDS instead, it's the most recommended DS emulator. Source: 10 months ago
  • Pokémon emulators
    You mean emulators running on PC? It took some doing, but I finally got DS Download Play to work on MelonDS. First you need to get DS firmware files. I found one on Retrostic that did not work for me. Melon told me it was an old hacked dump, and trying to boot it just got me a white screen. I found another on the Internet Archive that works. Source: 11 months ago
  • I feel like people put down MelonDS too much here
    MelonDS is actually doing a lot of really cool stuff. I can't speak too much on the Android build, but on PC they have actually gotten multiplayer too work flawlessly and they are currently working on implementing netplay. You can keep up with their progress here. Source: 11 months ago
  • Hi, new to emulators. I had a question, can I run gba and nds games on this?
    No, you can use mGBA for GBA games, and MelonDS for NDS games. Source: 11 months ago
  • Completely new to emulation
    AFAIK randomizers are usually romhacks, and so they should work on most DS emulators, I personally use melonDS, however you can find a list of DS emulators here. Source: about 1 year ago
View more

Drastic mentions (1)

  • Will Drastic (DS emulator) ever will be completed/fixed on retropie?
    So for any progress updates, you'll have to ask the author/their forum: https://drastic-ds.com/index.php. Source: over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing melonDS and Drastic, you can also consider the following products

DeSmuME - DeSmuME is a freeware emulator for the NDS roms & Nintendo DS Lite games created by YopYop156.

RetroArch - RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players.

Citra - Citra is a work-in-progress emulator for the Nintendo 3DS.

mGBA - mGBA is an open source emulator of the Game Boy Advance. The goals are speed and accuracy.

nds4droid - nds4droid is a free, open source Nintendo DS emulator written for Android smartphones.

OpenEmu - Console and Arcade video game emulator for macOS.