This Cheap Dual-Screen Handheld Is the Best Way to Recreate the Nintendo DS

The Nintendo DS deserves to live on. Despite the popularity of the original Switch and sweeping sales of the Switch 2, the original dual-screen handheld continues to be Nintendo’s best-selling device of all time. The budding retro handheld market has finally sought to tackle the dual-screen design, though only Anbernic with its RG DS can claim to have a handheld that’s best suited for emulating DS games.

The $100 Anbernic RG DS (yes, it costs less than the original $150 Nintendo DS did at launch in 2004) appears closest in looks to the DSi XL. It’s packing twin 4-inch, 640 x 480 resolution displays. There are preorders already available with or without a pre-loaded SD card (these devices sometimes ship with games pre-installed, though Gizmodo does not suggest or condone piracy).

Most importantly, every version comes with a large capacitive stylus used for playing old-school titles that relied on fine precision. Anbernic put out a video showcasing the device emulating several classic DS games, including Nintendogs (yes, it has a built-in microphone to call your pups), Kirby: Canvas Curse, and Trauma Center: Under the Knife. In a new video posted Thursday, Anbernic showed off more of its special stylus, which includes a small clear puck at the end of the pen that seems to be an attempt to reduce the possibility of damaging the touchscreen.

Unlike the original DS, which included a stylus tucked into the device itself, it appears the one for the Anbernic RG DS doesn’t. It’s unclear which stylus protocols the handheld supports, so you may have to mix and match until you find a digital pen that works best for you. Otherwise, the Anbernic RG DS supports six-axis motion controls for those Nintendo 3DS games that will run on the relatively lower-end RK3568 Quad-core 64-bit Cortex-A55 CPU. Other, more expensive DS emulation handhelds out there are using more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile chips. Still, I may prefer Anbernic’s RG DS if I want to edge as close to the original DS as possible.

Other DS emulators are missing the stylus

We’ve seen multiple attempts this year to provide a DS-like design. We started things off with the OneXSugar that folds in on itself like a Transformer toy to allow for single- or dual-screen gameplay. Ayaneo offered a slimmed-down, Android version of its previous handheld PC with the Pocket DS. That thick device has a high-end Qualcomm mobile chip plus two large OLED displays for $400. AYN came through and undercut the competition with the Thor, a $250 device better suited for 3DS emulation thanks to its larger, 6-inch top screen.

None of these handhelds bothered to offer a stylus in the package. That’s a pain, since there were so many games that depended on a digital pen. The Nintendo DS used a resistive touchscreen. This type of touchscreen detects pressure and was more responsive with a fine-tipped stylus than with an ungloved finger. Today’s glass-based, capacitive touchscreens don’t rely so much on pressure but on electrical currents.

Russ Crandall, who runs the Retro Game Corps YouTube channel, recently posted a video showing off his attempts to find the best stylus for devices like the Pocket DS. The one issue you’ll find on capacitive touchscreens is there will be much more input latency than you used to have when playing on the native device. This is an issue caused both by the nature of emulation—which recreates hardware as software—and the capacitive touchscreens. Anbernic’s video also shows there will be some input latency depending on how fast you swipe across the RG DS’s screen. With such a small screen, you’re better off with a stylus that comes to a thinner tip than the squishy rubber ball pens. Even then, you may still find it too imprecise for games that require pitch-perfect timing, like Elite Beat Agents.

There is no perfect Nintendo DS emulation device. If you’re a purist, you can always try modding a 3DS. Nintendo effectively abandoned the dual-screen design when it dropped all support for its eShop in 2023. Perhaps—eventually—Nintendo will offer us an official way to return to the DS, perhaps with a Virtual Boy-like dual-screen Switch add-on.