Drastic DS Emulator Pulled from Google Play Store | Hacker News Reader

Drastic DS Emulator Pulled from Google Play Store

play.google.com

148 pointstosh93 comments

Interestingly there's a Web Assembly port of DeSmuME (https://github.com/44670/desmume-wasm), so it works (to a certain extent) entirely in a web browser. You can ban from the stores, but as long as browsers are allowed, it'll never be banned completely.

The greatest scam of Google and Apple is convincing millions of developers to learn Swift and Kotlin to make apps on their stores that can be swiftly (pun intended) removed from their stores. Though the average developer is unlikely to ever be banned, why even risk it?

Think about the performance hit of apps that don't need to be native apps being ported to Web Apps. Let's be extreme and say it's equivalent to a Native App for a device 10 years older. Alright, so a modern Web App is equivalent in performance to a 2012 Native App running on a flagship. That's iPhone 5 and Galaxy Note 2. Make this conversion once and optimize your app and you'll never need to worry about your app being pulled ever again. Not to mention you can write your app once and it'll work on all platforms.

At least in the case of this particular app it can be sideloaded, so it'll be fine in the end, probably.

> The greatest scam of Google and Apple is convincing millions of developers to learn Swift and Kotlin to make apps on their stores that can be swiftly (pun intended) removed from their stores

I certainly won't defend Apple and Google's app store monopolies and control. However, Kotlin was actually a case of Google listening to the developer community. Google could have, and wanted to, push Dart (see Flutter) on Android. But the Android development community was already adopting JetBrain's Kotlin. Google listened and embraced Kotlin instead of pushing their own thing. It was not a hostile act.

Dare I say Google embracing and pushing Kotlin on the Android ecosystem was the last good thing I can remember Google doing. The language is such a joy to to work in without the pitfalls that come with Scala

I don't know, Compose is fantastic as well. The way the runtime, foundation, and UI libraries are layered make it a breeze to extend, and the layout system is the only sane one I've used. Overall Compose is a paradigm shift that is too-often compared to React, Flutter or SwiftUI by those who haven't written code using it.

Our dev team is looking to switch as soon as we have time to learn it. I assumed it was going to be like React from the one tutorial I've done of it so far, which already excited us.

Is this the best resource for learning it well enough to come out with your opinion that its even better? https://developer.android.com/courses/pathways/compose

I'm also a little worried about missing components currently available in XML, although I know you can mix and match, but not sure how that actually is in practice.

The one time I had to mix so far, to display a CameraX preview view, it worked fine.

They each have their place. Kotlin is super Java. Scala is it's own thing, in a similar sense as Clojure or Groovy.

As someone with a lot of java experience and a small taste of scala, what are the pitfalls that Kotlin avoids?

implicits

That is because only masochists use Scala

If Google actually listened to the Java developer community, they would have kept Java up to date instead of doing their own version of .NET.

Naturally after showing the finger to Sun and Oracle, "Android.NET" is the way.

I don't think the point was Kotlin and Swift vs. Java and Objective-C, but merely these native languages (listing the current generation) instead of, say, JavaScript.

Is Dart dead yet?

I narrowly won an argument with an evangelical principal engineer who wanted our whole company to switch to Dart around 7 years ago.

Not if you like flutter.

The solution isn’t for everyone to make web apps, it’s to regulate the app markets.

Web apps are still at the mercy of Apple and Google. Plus, they’re always lagging in features. Wordle for example wouldn’t have been able to implement the sharing feature before ~2019 because the web share API wasn’t supported by major browsers (even though it’s a thing native apps could do since forever)

> The solution isn’t for everyone to make web apps, it’s to regulate the app markets.

I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps arbitrarily?

> Web apps are still at the mercy of Apple and Google.

Not really. Apple and Google don't control the entire internet. Though they do have some level of control of the APIs available, ultimately they themselves use the same APIs as well, so...

In any case I disagree with you - web apps are the solution because every app that becomes a Web App instead of native app results in a loosening in the grip that is the Apple/Google duopoly. Once at a critical mass, sites will pop up to curate all of these new found web apps, APIs will be developed to facilitate payments for these apps, and so forth.

Ironically Google initially was not able to compete with Apple with respect to app store curation and promoted PWAs aggressively, but no one really bit. If people just went with that to begin with we wouldn't be in this situation now. So instead of going with PWAs, Google just ended up copying Apple and now both of them just rent seek instead of one.

Prior to PWAs, there were "responsive pages" and Steve Jobs in 2007 actually thought that it would make more sense of all iPhone apps were just responsive apps instead of native apps, and locked down the API to strictly first party apps.

Hackers jail broke the iPhone to unlock all of the functionality, forcing Apple to launch the App Store, resulting in the situation now before us.

We're being given a second chance here with WebAssembly. Let's not screw it up this time around, ya?

> I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps arbitrarily?

Regulate the markets by letting other stores compete, not by regulating the current monopolistic stores. Force OS developers to make it easy and practical to use alternative app stores, and able to compete fairly with the first-party ones. On iOS, you can't do so at all without jailbreaking, and on Android, there's tons of scary warnings, and there's some stuff like automatic background updates that are impossible for anything but the Play Store unless you root.

Why would regulation result in more permissiveness? From my reading most implemented regulation has resulted in more restrictiveness, and things like DRM.

If that happened I'd love it though, as the precedent would presumably allow for all stores, like game consoles, appliances, etc. to open up their operating systems to allow any arbitrary software to be installed.

Even if there were more app stores I bet it would result in all apps having to be signed by Google, in the same way anyone can purchase their own domain but are still limited in that DNS is centralized.

This may be the case nowadays with the pretty severe regulatory capture we have going on, but in the 60s, the FCC decreed that any lawful device may be electronically connected to the telephone network, despite what AT&T wanted. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone) Without it, we wouldn't have modems, fax machines, answering machines, etc. etc. etc.

Regulation can most certainly result in permissiveness.

> Even if there were more app stores I bet it would result in all apps having to be signed by Google

That's the kind of thing I'd want the regulation to ban.

I'm sure, but what I'm saying what proposals that are realistically going to pass do that? Look at the history of software regulation, it generally restricts things.

The whole point of regulating app markets is so that monopolies aren't the only ones capable of doing regulating.

I can see where the disagreement stems from. What you're attributing to regulation, is more accurately attributed to who is lobbying for that regulation. You are giving up on a useful tool, because you don't like how someone else is using it.

So there is precedent, OFC it doesn't exist in a vacuum, but whem Microsoft was forced to provide browser alternatives, most people went with other browsers. Sure, some used IE or edge still, but it meant people knew it was even an option, which was arguably big.

Of course, we are currently in danger of Chrome being the monopoly, and seeing already all the awful things that brings. But this is in part directly related to the scam going on with device lockin - it's not just Android, but that plays a large part in Chrome takimg majority market share.

Demanding app stores are allowed, or better that devices can be repaired by anyone, would mean more alt OS installs, more aftermarket devices, healthier software ecosystem, more economic activity.

The Irony of these tools not being widely available, means in Western countries there is not much of a third party market, not much software support, whereas countries like China can have built up the infrastructure to manufacture novel phones almost overnight...

> From my reading most implemented regulation has resulted in more restrictiveness, and things like DRM.

What reading is that?

DMCA for one

The DMCA gave websites carte blanche to host user uploaded content with practically zero copyright liability as long as they responded to DMCA requests and let the third parties fight over it in court. I wouldn't call that restrictive.

That was already possible before DMCA. All it did was give power to corporations to remove content. The DMCA is restrictive by definition

That is incorrect. Without the DMCA, the company running a site is liable for everything on the site if it does any moderation at all, and they wouldn't just be ordered to remove content, the financial penalties would be massive. Yes, the DMCA is deeply flawed, but it was passed to solve real problems.

Even with the DMCA in practice the safe harbor provisions have proven ineffective and sites in practice are still liable for content, see YouTube v Viacom. The main benefit for DMCA is for the ISPs, mainly.

In practice DMCA simply made it easier to take down supposed infringers of copyright violations and spread the popularity of drm. In theory, yes it’s good, and it probably made companies like YouTube and Facebook more comfortable with user content. The other benefit is that because you can accept DMCA requests and assume they are correct as long as you respond promptly your liability should be limited

In any case you’re probably right but haven’t heard of any high profile lawsuits prior to DMCA regarding internet content so it’s hard to really say.

What the law says though is that DMCA criminalizing circumventing drm and other access control and related technologies, services or tools.

> Why would regulation result in more permissiveness?

Why assume that people who have bought into devices with closed ecosystems want more permissiveness? Who does this benefit?

Most of this seems like question begging for ad-tech and similarly scummy business models.

> I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps arbitrarily?

Forcing them to allow alternative app stores for starters. The only reason they can get away with doing this stuff is because they each have 100% market share.

> regulations that are likely to pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps arbitrarily?

Any proposals?

> I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps arbitrarily?

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/271...

Wordle could have used copy to clipboard or link to share eg. Twitter https://twitter.com/home?status=blabla

Wordle does use copy-to-clipboard.

No it doesn’t. The share button opens a native share dialog, which is only possible with the web share API.

For me, tapping Share pops up a toast message saying "Copied results to clipboard", and then I go to my family group messaging thread and paste the results. I know that it's possible to invoke the native share dialogue because Reddit does it, but for me, Wordle does not.

Firefox on Android.

Same for me, Chrome on Windows 11.

Sounds like Firefox hasn't implemented the API. No surprise, Firefox is always miles behind on stuff users actually want. It works with the native share box on Edge Android.

You misunderstand. Firefox has implemented the API, because it works on Reddit and other websites.

You really think those regulations won’t be heavily lobbied by Nintendo and DRM loving lawyers, and somehow end up even worse for consumers or more importantly small developers?

Maybe I’m cynical but I highly doubt it’s going to be “make your app stores completely replaceable without DRM/billing/taxation/etc schemes and allow unrestricted sideloading”.

It can’t possibly get worse for consumers

I can think of plenty of ways where mega-companies and governments could make power-grabs and increase control/administration over app stores ("get your app approved by EU/US/Japanese agency to get a geo license to distribute your app"). As opposed to simply forcing tech companies to take a more hands-off approach.

I can think of 100x examples of the former in other industries and almost no modern examples of the latter happening (besides maybe right-to-repair, which hasn't meaningfully happened anywhere yet).

It can always get worse

I remember the DS being my most capable portable computer. Seeing an emulator for it in the browser feels weird.

(also, more on topic for your comment): Going the browser route now (counter intuitively) gives you more flexibility with language/tooling. I think as far as cooperate/closed source apps go the browser is absolutely the way to go. It's a very battle hardened sandbox and the W3c does a pretty good job accumulating portable standards for things. It even has push notifications and file I/O now (although Apple has been stingy with that.)

The developer is also missing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Exophase

Must have been banned.

Reddit thread discussing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnAndroid/comments/sx1tzw/...

I wonder if this is because of BIOS licensing. I haven't used Drastic in a while, but I do know that "perfect" DS emulation requires a couple files that are only available by dumping from your own machine... Nintendo has been on a copright troll-roll with the recent GilvaSunner takedowns, I almost wonder if this is part of that initiative.

In any case, this is another one for the "why sideloading is important" wall, it shouldn't be too big of a deal since the Drastic developers can continue distribution with or without Google's blessing. No Bleem! politics here, just a little bit of downtime so the devs can set up their own payment portal and dump the credentials of their paid customers for continued support. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they just open sourced the thing and threw it to the community. DS emulators are a dime a dozen these days, and the devs have probably already made their money here. Any way it breaks, it should be a win-win situation though.

It's been a very long time since I used Drastic but I remember it being vastly better than the other emulators at the time. Was the only one able to run DS games at full speed on my 2012 Nexus 7. The open source alternatives may have caught up by now though.

Drastic had its own, recently open-sourced, reimplementation of the BIOS which claimed to be clean-room.

interesting! I've got a lot of respect for anyone who can pull that off from scratch.

>Nintendo has been on a copright troll-roll with the recent GilvaSunner takedowns

That was not done by Nintendo, but rather someone impersonating Nintendo.

What's the latest evidence?

Last I saw there were suspicions but an official YouTube twitter account said it was really Nintendo.

I never saw that tweet

and yet the Beijing 2022 Games[1] app with known security vulnerabilities [2] is still on the Google Play Store.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.systoon.do...

[2] https://citizenlab.ca/2022/01/cross-country-exposure-analysi...

Can't even access it as someone who bought the app... That's really unfortunate.

I think this is part of why they make it so damn hard to find apps you already bought or downloaded before. AFAIK there's no way to search these, just a huge list to scroll through in no identifiable order, and anything that was removed or incompatible with the current device just isn't there.

Is there a way to request your money back? I'm surprised Google can just pull an app you've payed for. But well... Ts&Cs you never read.

If there were, I'm sure they'd do something horribly mean like force the refund to come out of the developer's pockets, even though the reason the refund is necessary is 100% Google's fault.

Are you saying that you have the app previously installed on your phone, and it has ceased to work on that same phone, even though you didn't do something like a restore-from-backup in the interim? That's my interpretation of your comment but I could be misreading you.

No it works on devices where I still have it installed :) just meant I can't install it from the store, which is different from Steam where you are still able to install games you bought even if their store page got taken down

Thank you for the correction!

You will probably have to uninstall the Google Play version and reinstall through sideloading

Drastic is due to be added to RetroArch as a new core, so it's not all bad I guess.

https://www.drastic-ds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13901&start=1...

I wonder why it was this specific Nintendo DS emulator that was banned? Other Nintendo DS emulators such as vDS[0] are still available.

[0] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.icorewwwi....

Please don't use vDS, it's an illegal ripoff of Drastic, which is closed-source.

There's a lot of assumptions in the comments that Nintendo is behind this. If you don't know much about DraStic, that would be a likely explanation. However, in the specific case of DraStic, that is not the most likely explanation. The more likely is that DraStic is abandonware, and this is Google's very Google-y way of cleaning this up.

The thing to know about DraStic is that it's not an actively maintained app. It had two major developers - one of whom dissappeared a long time ago, to the extent that the remaining developer has not been able to contact the former. The remaining developer is the emulation backend developer, but is by own admission no expert on Android, and the emulation's GUI and system integration. As a result, nothing much has happened to this emulator for years. Although _some_ compatibility fixes with the Play Store have been released a few years ago, DraStic has not been updated to use e.g. Android's Scoped Storage requirements.

What I think we're witnessing here is Google's extremely rough way of cleaning up (what it considers to be) abandonware. It may not even be related to DraStic not using the right Android APIs - it may be as stupid as developer fees not being paid, or some more kafkaesque Google thing.

The entire situation around DraStic is a bit of a shame. DraStic is a very impressive piece of software from a previous age - achieving full speed Nintendo DS emulation on 2010 smartphone hardware. In contrast, other Nintendo DS emulators - most notably MelonDS and DesMuMe - barely achieve full speed on certain DS titles on modern smartphone hardware.

The remaining developer has been promising an open source release of DraStic's emulator code for a long time, but has never delivered. They cited technical milestones to achieve before open sourcing, which are difficult to make if you're burnt out on your software. The biggest shame there is that the open source release would likely propel it to become the most versatile Nintendo DS emulator out there [1], but I'm afraid it's doomed to be a closed source, abandoned and outdated Android app.

Finally, Nintendo has never gone after emulators. In the US, there is only legal precedent that emulators are legal [2]. Nintendo risks cementing the legality of emulation more by trying (and failing) to persecute emulators. Having an abandoned emulator in the Play Store removed while keeping gazillions of other Nintendo systems up there doesn't seem like the way to fight emulation.

[1]: MelonDS is a more accurate emulator and fully open source, but it is much more demanding than DraStic - requiring a PC or recent high end smartphone to run all DS games full speed. DraStic would be efficient enough to allow for enhancements like runahead input lag compensation that cannot as easily be achieved on MelonDS without very fast PC hardware. The remaining DraStic developer is also the developer of gpsp, a Game Boy Advance emulator that is fast enough to run most GBA titles on Sony's old 2004 PlayStation Portable - there's a real reputation of efficiency there.

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....

Based on my own interactions with Google, this seems the most likely.

We have a niche educational/medical app directed to children, to help them understand their treatment with kid-friendly characters talking to them on their level.

The app was taken down because some form had been added to the Google Developer console (the backend of google play) years after we had published and we hadn't answered it. We only found out because someone else in the company heard from a customer that they couldn't find the app online.

A cursory glance showed that the app wasn't listed any more.

After we logged in to Google Developer console, and explored through google's ever changing menus and product renames, we had found an alert to fill out a form. We only had to tick no to a handful of questions on the form and submit it.

The questions were things like: "Is your app a news app?", "Does your app feature sexual content?", etc... All things that google should have been able to figure out based on the rating stuff we had to fill out when the app was first published.

About 2 days later, the app was available again.

I'm not sure I buy that; the Drastic UI is a bit odd on Android as it uses its own game-style renderer for UI rather than Android UI. But I frequently find apps that give you an actual warning when launching that the app is out of date (in terms of target platform and API level) and you should contact the developer to see if there's an update; and often the permissions API used pops up the "old style" permissions UI where you have to accept all, rather than granular permissions. Those apps haven't been taken down, to my knowledge, and I still come across apps that do this as recently as last week. Drastic doesn't have such a warning, and it uses the modern granular permissions API.

Not sure if this is relavant but the app was last updated April 4 2020 according to a post on the Drastic forum. Development may not have been active anymore.

Nintendo as a brand is dead to me.

They seem very polarizing to the adult community. I loved video games from all kinds of companies when I was younger and had hours a day to play games. But as an adult I can't imagine buying a non Nintendo system. The few hours a month when I actually want to play video games and have the time I'd rather load up some guaranteed fun, versus sit through huge chunks of AAA game story plot points just to shoot the Nazis, monster, etc or spend those same hours researching indie games that might be as fun as whatever Nintendo has put out recently.

Only thing really worth taking the risk on these days is music games, but the good ones are few and far between. The international Bemani community has seemingly fully committed to the arcade rip and Konami doesn't seem to care to try and bring them back to the home console since they aren't cutting into arcade unit sales.

Yes. As I grow older I'm more drawn to Nintendo ecosystem than any other due to games that are so much packed with fun and pretty immediate in their delivery.

I guess it's a cultural thing + buyer's remorse or how you call it, since that's what you've been exposed to for the most of your life.

I grew up in the other part of the world, the only popular games being Quake 1/2/3, Half Life, Star Craft +BW, Diablo 1/2+LoD, Red Alert, CS and later Lineage 2. I have no recollection of Nintendo at all. It was non existent in this part of the world (except the "Dendy", the bootleg hardware clone of NES for us, we all played mario and mortal kombat for a while, but then it died just as quick as it appeared).

Looking at Nintendo games now, I could see why they might be popular with younger kids, buy I'll never buy into the fact that an adult might like them, that just seems like some advertising ...

Today I can't even imagine not gaming on a computer, both AAA, indie games and big name games are shit though.

I can confirm that the above is an accurate description, seeing how I could almost instantly tell the part of the world in question.

FWIW I do think that countries where gaming consoles weren't as common and/or arrived later - i.e. much of Eastern Europe - have a more PC-centric gaming culture in general.

I've always loved Nintendo. My only complaint right now is how hard it is to play homebrew and online games on the same switch, I guess I can afford to just buy a second one though.

i once thought of purchasing an android based handheld console like the ayn odin, i'm now more convinced the Steam Deck is the perfect choice, linux to the rescue, as always

Android uses Linux too.

GNU/Linux, then? That's still not quite right - Alpine is perfectly good - but I'm not aware of a nice short term for "user-respecting open source unixy system".

>GNU/Linux, then?

You can install a terminal emulator like termux and install a GNU userspace bash, coreutils, etc.

Kind of, unless Termux folks come to accept Android's userspace is Java, you'll be doing that on legacy Android versions or rooted devices.

These are the only APIs a NDK shared object file is allowed to call.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

And grafting a GNU userspace back on top does make the system lot more useful, but you're still undermined by the base operating being designed with user control as a non-goal. Heh, maybe "Freedom/Linux"?

android is not the same thing, and this news doesn't encourage me to depend on them

Can it be put into the FDroid store?

What was this app meant to do?

Nintendo DS emulator

Honestly, I don't see an issue with this specifically.

Yes, I think the emulator _should_ be allowed on the store, but on Android it's pretty easy to manually install apps.

For a monetized app, I may take a different position, but for something like an emulator that's already on shaky ground as far as monetization goes, I don't see that much of an issue.

One day Nintendo will realize that the only way their IP will be truly preserved in the future is by DRM-breaking law-breaking rabid digital archivists who are seemingly more intent on getting their old titles running on newer hardware than Nintendo themselves are.

I mean seriously... quick, someone tell me which emulator of old hardware or software was actually supported in any way by the original creator of said hardware or software?

Not trying to sound like a jerk, but do they care? It'll take away from their money made on remastering old classics for new machines. I wonder how much Nintendo as a company really cares about this stuff, as in the unprofitable sentimental stuff

They already realized it over twenty years ago when they hired the developer of the iNES format for Animal Crossing.

https://twitter.com/LuigiBlood/status/1378736192875810818

OK, interesting find!

Nintendo already has developed their own emulators for various platforms. For example, the one for SNES is called Canoe, it was used for the SNES Classic (just a little ARM Linux box), and now on the Switch.

Yes, I really wanted to buy something like that, the first time I heard about it.

But then, looking through stores, seeing these second-hand mini-sneses being at least 35 pounds, sometimes up to 100, even though I could definitely afford one while I was working full time in UK, just kinda left a really bitter taste in mouth.

Really? Are they really milking everything out of us? I had for a while forgot what name emulator on my phone I wanted to play some pokemon, worked fine. Why would they want to price their devices so high? Just because people can afford it?

I refuse to buy it, it's that simple.

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