Balatro Fan Gets Game Running On DS

Someone Just Made Balatro Playable On A Nintendo DS Published Aug 6, 2026, 11:42 AM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life 3, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Sign in to your TheGamer account Downloading Balatro on Steam Deck dealt me a pretty dangerous hand. Suddenly I could lie in bed and lose hours whittling away at each ante, or swap out my book for a quick game (or ten) at a coffee shop. I'm not even going to think about the mobile port and the all-consuming obsession it might bring. But one fan has taken things even further, getting the game to run on a Nintendo DS. I hate to insult the millennials reading this (and the millennials I work with), but the DS is pretty retro these days. Yes, even the DSi — it launched in 2008, nearly 20 years ago. So while Balatro isn't the most demanding game, it can't exactly be ported to an old handheld 1:1 without cutting a few corners. Thankfully, Reddit user kooler_duck had a solution. They booted up the fan-made Balatro GBA demake on a modded DSi through GBARunner2, a hypervisor that runs GBA games on DS, DSi, and 3DS handhelds. "If it has a screen, I WILL play Balatro on it," they posted. What's Different About This Fan-Made Version Of Balatro? It's a wildly impressive feat of modding, squeezing Balatro onto hardware from 2008, and unlike playing the native port on Steam Deck, the fan-made GBA version of Balatro isn't nearly as difficult to put down. That's because getting the game to work on "a device with less processing power than a modern graphing calculator" (as kooler_duck puts it, referencing the GBA) means a lot of it has been stripped out, essentially leaving us with a what-if? tech demo that reimagines Balatro as a retro classic. "This project is a non-profit fan demake of Balatro for the Game Boy Advance, meant to recreate it as accurately as possible including all the visuals that make it satisfying to play," the Github description reads. "It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Playstack or LocalThunk and is not to be sold." It's a testament to just how much enthusiasm Balatro has inspired that fans are already finding ways to cram it onto hardware Nintendo stopped making years ago. As OP put it, if it has a screen, someone is probably trying to play Balatro on it. It might just be the new Doom. Released February 20, 2024 ESRB E10+ For Everyone 10+ // Gambling Themes Developer(s) LocalThunk Publisher(s) Playstack Engine LÖVE Balatro takes the classic card game of poker and adds roguelike gameplay, using Joker cards with various abilities to build your deck and attempt to defeat pesky blinds.