Summary
- Drastic DS emulator was made free months ago, and now it’s gone from the Play Store
- Lead of the project, Exophase, plans to release the source code, fostering potential community-led development
- Nintendo’s battle against emulators will roll on, while the emulation community will persist with game preservation efforts.
Nintendo’s war on emulators has been raging for some time. Both the Skyline and Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulators fell in 2023, though Yuzu lives on, thanks to opening its source. Once the dust settled, news broke that another Nintendo-based emulator would be sunsetting sometime soon, the Drastic DS emulator.
Back in March 2024, we learned the lead Exophase had plans to pull the Nintendo DS emulator from the Play Store at an undisclosed date in the future. Well, the deed looks to have been done (via Android Authority), as the Drastic DS emulator is no longer listed on the Play Store, with the listing leading to a dead page.
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After going free, the Drastic DS emulator is no longer available on the Play Store
We were warned the day would come
About eleven months ago, Drastic’s lead Exophase made an announcement on Discord that the Play Store listing was changed to free in a move to ensure there is no incentive to not release the source code, something Exophase says they want to do. They also announced that the listing wouldn’t be available for that much longer. Today this proves true, the Play Store listing is now gone, though the forum still appears to be up for now.
So now that Exophase has made good on their promise to remove Drastic DS from the Play Store, all that’s left is to release the source code. If this happens, then much like Yuzu’s forking to Suyu, perhaps an enterprising dev or two will take on the mantle of furthering Drastic’s development. It would seem people were pretty happy with the app’s performance despite the fact development stopped sometime back in 2017, so there are likely a few interested parties who would like to see development picked back up.
At the end of the day, this is why Nintendo will never win its war against piracy. Like the many heads of a hydra, cut off one, two more will take its place. This is an inevitability; those interested in game preservation vastly outnumber Nintendo’s lawyers. So even though emulation fans have lost another tool in their belt, there’s a chance this isn’t the last we’ll see of Drastic DS.
