How Tos

How to play Minecraft on your DS via DScraft

Crafty

How to play Minecraft on your DS via DScraft
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DS
| DScraft (Minecraft DS)

Indie world-building phenomenon Minecraft has migrated to a few different platforms during its meteoric ascent.

While the game started life on PC, you can now try your hand at building a blocky utopia on Xperia Play, and soon on Xbox Live.

But, for the systems that don't have access to Minecraft yet, you can be sure that a few plucky pioneers will put in the hard graft to port it over, and squeeze it onto every console, smartphone, and bread maker in existence.

So, if you want to play the game on your Nintendo DS, look no further than smealum's effective Minecraft port DScraft.

It has recently become available to download, and here's how to get it onto your dual-screen handheld in a few easy steps.

(For our hands-on impression of DScraft, check this out.)


To play DScraft, you're going to need a flashcard. These are cheeky little devices that manage to bypass the console's copy protection and let you play games and downloads that Nintendo hasn't given the thumbs up to. We won't go into the intricacies of which flashcard you should buy - mostly because they're illegal in some parts of the world for facilitating DS piracy. All we'll say is that DScraft works on the majority of major cards, including the M3 DS Real and the infamous R4. You can find out more details about card compatibility here. how-to-dscraft-minecraft-01
Head over to the DScraft website and download the game. It comes in two versions: the NitroFS edition and the Fat Only version. This depends entirely on your card, but using the wrong version will simply throw up an error message - your flashcard and DS will be unharmed. Download the NitroFS version, follow the next few steps, and if you encounter an error, come back to this step and download the Fat Only version. how-to-dscraft-minecraft-02
Installing the game on your card couldn't be easier. Open the downloaded RAR file and find the folder 'dscraft' and the file 'DScraft.nds'. Put both of these files onto the root directory of your flashcard or its included memory stick. 'Root', if you're unaware, simply refers to the main directory you see when you first open up your card, i.e. the first or top-most directory in the hierarchy. how-to-dscraft-minecraft-03
Now plop your flashcard into your DS and load up the menu. Use the onscreen navigation to find the DScraft.nds file and load it. You might see a screen that asks whether you want to load the game to your DS card or a Game Boy Advance card. For flashcards that use the GBA slot to run games, choose the latter. For all other cards, load it directly onto the DS cart. how-to-dscraft-minecraft-04
If all goes to plan, the game should now be playing. Choose 'Singleplayer', choose 'Testmap.map', and get started! You move around with the D-pad, look by moving the stylus over the touchscreen, and create (or destroy) blocks by pressing the L shoulder button. Double-tapping the screen makes you jump, and pressing select saves a BMP screenshot to your flashcard. You can toggle between create and destroy, open your inventory of blocks, and save your map on the touchscreen. To use different blocks, open the inventory and drag objects from the main area to the nine-panel dock at the bottom of the screen. how-to-dscraft-minecraft-05
To load different textures and maps, you just need to find them online and drag the necessary files to the appropriate folders. Inside the DScraft folder on your flashcard, you'll find the directories 'Worlds' and 'Textures'. Drop your .map files into the Worlds folder and your texture folders into the textures directory. Load up the game again, and find your new options under the 'Textures' and 'Singleplayer' menus. how-to-dscraft-minecraft-06

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer