Blog

Development updates.

Notes from the people building melonDS — what changed, and why.

20 November 2025
Giving DSi games their voice back
DSi titles lean on a dedicated audio DSP that melonDS didn't emulate at all until 1.1. Here's what high-level emulation of it took, and what still doesn't sound quite right.
15 November 2025
The multiplayer crash that only happened locally
Tracking down a rare crash in local wireless multiplayer that turned out to be a straightforward data race in the input system, fixed for melonDS 1.1.
12 March 2024
Rewriting the geometry engine pipeline
A deep dive into how the DS's 3D geometry engine actually schedules polygons, and why the old emulation of it was wrong.
5 September 2023
Keeping the JIT honest against the interpreter
How melonDS keeps its ARM JIT recompiler consistent with the plain interpreter it can fall back to, and why that discipline matters more than raw speed.