I have a hacked DSi XL running TwilightMenu++. I recently upgraded the SD card from 2GB to 128GB, and loaded the entire English language DS ROM library on it (about 3,000 games in total).

All the games show up on the DS and play just fine, as far as I can tell. The issue is that TwilightMenu is borderline unusable for browsing them. The menu is divided into pages containing 40 files each. The pages have to be tabbed between with the L and R buttons, there’s no top level menu or directory for quick navigation. That would be annoying but still usable, if it weren’t for the fact that each page takes 15-20 seconds to load, and you can’t tab to the next page until the current page is done loading. There are over 75 pages with my current romset. According to my calculations, it would take at least 10 minutes to browse halfway through the list. That’s obviously completely unacceptable.

Are there any alternative front-ends for browsing ROMs on DS? I found a couple for 3DS, but TwilgitMenu++ seems to be the only option for the DSi without a flash cart. I’m surprised TwilightMenu isn’t better optimized for dealing with lots of files. Surely I’m not the first person to encounter this problem.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

I organize my ROMs in subfolders. Like, "A-H", "I-P", "Final Fantasy", "Mario", et cetera. The folder of folders seems to load quickly. Then I can quickly find a subfolder with some games. That folder will take a second to load depending on the amount of ROMs stored there.

I think I have a 128GB SD and it's manageable.

[–] WhoRoger 3 points 2 years ago

I heard some people keep their ROM files in a directory where Twilight can't see them, and then load only a smaller selection into an "actively playing" dir.

Not sure how it works, I don't have a DS myself.

[–] tomkatt 1 points 1 year ago

Either set up alphabetical folders for the roms (folder A, B, C, D, etc.) or you'll need to use something else to browse and run ROMs. I will say the R4i Gold 3DS Plus is a solid flashcart if you can get one, and it should have less issues with browsing and scrolling than TwilightMenu.