Desume and Super Mario 64 DS

Hi, I am a rookie to emulation, I do not have a lot of knowledge as some others, and I was wondering if someone could give me some insight. So I downloaded a ROM of Super Mario 64 DS from another website (theiszone), due to emuparadise not having it and I downloaded it. The game was working fine the first two days I played it. I should have used some save states, but instead used the games save feature and it saved my game and for the first couple of times I used it. However, after I beat Bowser and got a few stars one level, I saved it, in the file and the next day, my save files were deleted. I assume this was due to the game realized that it was emulated, and not played on a legit cartridge. It still doesn't save correctly, however, I can get around this issue by using save states. However, I tried searching the internet to see if I can find the anti-piracy tricks the coders programmed into the game, but I couldn't find much. So I do not get super far into the game and figure out I cannot beat it in this state or something, are there any other anti-piracy quirks I should worry about? Thank you so much for your help.

Yo HufflePuff,

First of all welcome to the forum and the emulator scene.

From my experience I have never seen a DS ROM have programmed piracy lock features since it is basically a copy of the original game made to run on other hardware.

I take it you are running Desume on your Windows PC.

Well in my experience I have also had saved games disappear on me, this is usually after a virus scan, or a file purge or a windows update which sometimes gets rid of foreign files such as any files the emulator might create when games are played.

So what I do is just use both actually I'll save the game (in game) and on the savestate. Just the other day my copy of Pokemon Black deleted my in game save because I used a cheat code! but save state still worked so I am able to carry on. (phew!)

Otherwise just get the same game from another website like romsmania.com or loveroms.com

Also I noted you are playing a DS game. Well there is also a emulator called Drastic that will let you play this game on a phone or tablet so you can play it in a handheld way.

hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the information. This helps a lot as someone who has little experience with emulation.


Actually, when emulating, I use my windows laptop with a touch screen, so I am fine with portability and the touch screen capabilities.