Thoughts on Moonshell2

Moonshell2 is a mini operating system for the Nintendo DS. It is an homebrew application designed to work with a DS Linker - meaning it requires a micro SD card to work and is not fully contained inside an NDS ROM.

I have been using this program since 2015. Here are my thoughts on it.

Moonshell2 is designed to allow access to your generic media files on your NDS. It can play music, view pictures and read/write text files. There is likely some features that I am forgetting, but those are the main ones.

Music

The last few years, I have used Moonshell2 as my main audio listening device. It can play MP3 files very well. OGG files works but will slow down the OS (and thankfully not the audio). It can also play MIDI files. The performance of this really depends on the music files itself. For example, it struggles to play RuneScape MIDI files. As far as the soundfont is concerned, it is a replica of the one found on Windows XP.

Pictures

There is a built-in image viewer. It can open PNG and JPG images (and possibly other types) without any need for conversion. The viewer takes a while to render big images, but that's not surprising considering it runs on a Nintendo DS. There is also the option to set an image as a wallpaper which is really cool.

Text files

Moonshell2 can read and write into TXT files. By default it opens files in a read-only format. You need to boot up the text editor to be able to write into it. Sadly, the text editor keyboard is touch screen only and there is no way to type using only the d-pad. There is a handwriting mode but it does not work well and possibly only works with Japanese characters.

User Interface

The user interface is very easy to use. While it is heavily inspired by Windows XP, it still has its own distinctive charm. It has a very early 2000s look. The interface has a soul and it shows. There is also the option to have custom skin but I never tried to do anything, so I won't review this part.

Conclusion

Moonshell2 is a very neat homebrew application for the Nintendo DS. It can be a suitable replacement for an MP3 player. It has a very good user experience and from what I can tell, put every homebrew media player apps for the Nintendo 3DS to shame.

Written by manpaint on 20 August 2022.
Updated on 18 October 2022 (added image).