Balatro ended up being 2024’s best indie game, managing to combine roguelite gameplay with poker. This weird idea paid off, winning awards and becoming everyone’s surprise favorite from last year. Amazingly, fans have been able to make a homebrew port of this game for the Nintendo DS, showing that these old consoles can still have life in them.
Haynster on GitHub revealed this amazing homebrew port of the indie hit for Nintendo DS. However, fans should know that it’s not the complete experience. The missing features are listed below, showing that this is more of a novelty than a complete experience on DS. Still, this will be a neat few minutes for those who still own the clamshell handheld.
"The game lacks music, different decks, and only has 12 Boss Blinds and 15 Jokers, “ wrote Haynster (via NintendoLife). "As well as the system for finding what the current hand played is can't take hands that aren't the amount of cards that the hand should be, so say in Balatro you have a pair and 3 other random cards, in the port the game wouldn't recognize that as a pair. Trust me I tried so hard to make it work but the game never would've come out if didn't take the easier method, maybe sometime in the future."
Seeing this homebrew port of Balatro is pretty inspiring and makes us remember just how great these communities are.
Being able to pick up older systems and play anything remotely close to new on these is a treat for many gamers. Great examples of these include Tekken 8 on PSP and Fallout on 3DS.
With the rise of Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, it’s a shame we’re not getting these dual-screen handhelds anymore. However, this is for the better, as we now have console-quality titles in the palm of our hands. We do miss those smaller handheld titles.
At the least, fans can play the complete version of Balatron on Switch and Steam Deck.