The Revo K2DS

A couple of years ago the K-Team (the guys behind the hardware inside the K1 and Revo K101) were making some decent progress on a reverse engineered Nintendo DS solution. You’ve probably seen the video of their development board in action, but if not here it is.

Unfortunately development stopped in 2013 or 2014 due to lack of funds. Whether or not the team have now picked up where they left off, or if Max Zhou and his team are now carrying the torch I am not sure. I’ve reached out to the K-Team and will update if I get any news.

Anyway, the point is that the hardware has now reached a stage where it is small enough, and Max deems it stable enough to create a real functioning handheld with it.

The image at the top of the page is what looks to be the only real image of the device, but it obviously went through a couple of revisions first. I kinda like the flip out screen but it looks fragile.

696ab913632762d0c24a9157a5ec08fa503dc66c

 

This below is ingenious. It allows for turning the device 90 degrees anti clockwise and playing in widescreen mode. Nice in theory, but how many widescreen games are supported by the DS, either native or emulated. Perhaps none. Also it means you sacrifice the shoulder buttons.

revo k2ds renderThe final design (if indeed this is the final design) makes the most sense to me. It obviously takes a few design cues from the 2DS, but Max’s version is far better looking in my opinion.

revo k2ds blue vs 2ds

 

It has to be said that since the NDS can be hacked wide open with nothing but a $5 flash cart, it’s hard to imagine which market this is intended for. Perhaps the ‘curious geek’ market is big enough to make this worth manufacturing, but we will have to wait and see if it does indeed make it to mass production. My NDS days are pretty much over, but I’d probably get one if the price was right, if only for the novelty factor.

You can check out maxzhou88’s thread on the Baidu forums here.

Thanks to shicky256 for pointing me to the Baidu thread.

8 thoughts on “The Revo K2DS”

  1. Despite what people tend to say, I find the 2DS is be pretty uncomfortable, so this design raises a alarm for me. That sliding one does indeed look fragile, but it could’ve been amazing if they don’t cheap out on parts (who am I kidding, of course they’ll use cheap stuff). If it had GBA support, they could have it run in GBA mode with the slider closed with DS mode with it’s open.

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  2. I would have loved the version with the slide-out screen. It looks great. I never like the clamshell design of the DS, though it looks better and is more practical than the 2DS version. That looks like a brick.

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    • the way i see it is that it will make the hardware more accessible for devs so they can more easily take advantage of the ds’s capabilities as the ds still has a vibrant hombrew scene. it will also update the ds’s hardware as the original ds’s due to their age are starting to have problems e.g batteries dying, hinges breaking etc. secondly flashcards for the ds are actually illegal in the UK (where i’m at) making them like hen’s teeth so i assume these will be easier to procure from place like willgoo and the like. Finally one would hope that this wouldn’t have the volatility that flashcards had as in my experience with the r4 card, it was all to easy to have a particular homebrew game (looking at you legion) crash which then corrupted the whole card, meaning you had to wipe and refill the card with roms.

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    • Yes it is, just like K-Team’s previous SoC. They only do hardware clones afaik. Should have been clearer, sorry about that.

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        • My K101 review does explain that it’s a hardware clone and also condemns the useless X/Y buttons on the front 🙂

          Reply

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