Dual Station Prototype Turns an Original Nintendo DS Motherboard Into an HDMI Home Console

The Nintendo DS was built around a form factor that home consoles have never quite duplicated: two screens, one of them touch-enabled, folded into a device small enough to take anywhere. That design made the handheld distinctive, but it also makes playing its library on a modern television more complicated than simply connecting an HDMI cable. A new hardware project called Dual Station is exploring one answer. Created by modder Kouzex, the prototype repurposes an original Nintendo DS motherboard inside a home-console-style setup with an HDMI port, original cartridge support, wireless controller compatibility, and a way to handle touch controls.

Rather than presenting the DS as a conventional handheld, Dual Station is intended to put the system's original games on a TV or monitor while retaining core parts of the experience that make the platform unusual. The current design includes slots for both Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance cartridges, meaning it is built around the backward compatibility available on the original DS hardware. The project is still at the prototype stage, but Kouzex is also designing kits intended to allow other people to build a Dual Station of their own.

An original motherboard at the center of the project

The most important detail behind Dual Station is that it uses a Nintendo DS motherboard. This is not described as an emulation box or a software recreation of the DS environment. By centering the build on the original board, the project is designed to run physical cartridges using the hardware they were made for, while changing how that hardware is housed and displayed.

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That distinction is particularly relevant for a system with such an unconventional layout. DS games were designed with a top display and a lower touch screen in mind, and some titles regularly move information, menus, maps, or play fields between them. Others use the stylus as an essential part of their control scheme. A home-console conversion therefore needs to address more than video output; it needs to provide a practical way to see and interact with both screens.

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Dual Station's enclosure is meant to take the motherboard out of the familiar clamshell handheld format and place it into a dedicated console configuration. Players would insert their DS or GBA game cards into the unit and connect it to a television or monitor over HDMI. The design avoids requiring someone to dismantle a complete, working DS simply to attempt the project. Kouzex's concept calls for the motherboard itself, which could make the approach more appealing to people who have spare boards or non-working systems with reusable internal components.

Single-screen and dual-screen viewing options

One of the project's notable planned features is a choice between single-screen and dual-screen modes. That flexibility matters because DS software does not use its two displays in a single universal way. Some games keep the main action on one screen and place supporting information on the other. Some require regular attention to both. Others make one display far more important than the other at a given moment.

A single-screen mode could be useful when a player wants to focus on the primary action or when a game's second screen is not central to play. Dual-screen mode, meanwhile, is closer to the basic visual language of the original handheld. On a television, the ability to choose between these approaches could make the setup more adaptable than a fixed presentation, especially across a catalogue as varied as the DS library.

The project also covers the Game Boy Advance slot found on the original model of the DS. That hardware compatibility was a defining feature of the first DS revision, and preserving it gives the proposed console an additional retro-gaming function. The announcement does not detail display behavior, controller mapping, or other configuration options for GBA titles, so those aspects remain unclear. Still, physical support for both kinds of cartridge is a central part of Dual Station's appeal.

Touchpad support tackles the DS's biggest obstacle

Getting a DS image onto a TV is only half the challenge. The harder issue is replacing the lower resistive touch screen in a way that feels usable from the sofa. Dual Station's answer is touchpad support through compatible wireless controllers. When using a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 controller, the controller touchpad can be used for the actions normally performed with a DS stylus.

That includes tapping, typing, swiping, and drawing. It is an ambitious feature because these actions cover a wide range of DS interactions. A game may only need an occasional menu selection, but another could ask the player to trace paths, write characters, make quick gestures, or use a touch-driven interface throughout a session. The touchpad approach does not attempt to make a television itself into a touch screen. Instead, it translates the idea of stylus input to a controller feature already familiar to many console players.

How it feels across different games will be one of the major questions for the finished kit. A large TV display and a controller touchpad are naturally different from holding a DS close to the player and using a stylus directly on its lower screen. Precision-heavy games, drawing applications, and software designed around rapid stylus movement may present a different experience. Yet the feature is significant because it directly addresses the input method that has often kept the DS from fitting neatly into a living-room console setup.

Wireless controller compatibility also gives Dual Station a more traditional home-console feel. The DS itself relied on face buttons, a directional pad, shoulder buttons, and the touch screen. Bringing much of that input to a wireless pad could make the system easier to use away from a desk, while the touchpad serves as the bridge for touchscreen-dependent software.

A modding project, not a retail console announcement

Dual Station is currently a prototype, not a finished retail product. Kouzex is developing the design and working toward kits that would let users assemble their own units. No launch date, price, final hardware specification, or complete compatibility list has been announced. The project should therefore be viewed as an in-development maker effort rather than a ready-made replacement for a DS, a new official Nintendo device, or a guaranteed consumer product.

That in-progress status is important for anyone following the project. Prototype hardware can change substantially before a kit is finalized. Enclosure details, installation requirements, controller support, video behavior, and the practical implementation of touch input may all evolve as the design is refined. There is also no indication that a builder would receive a Nintendo DS motherboard as part of any future kit; the concept is specifically based on supplying or sourcing the original board.

For preservation-minded players, though, the direction is compelling. The DS has an enormous library, but its two-display layout and touchscreen controls have long made it awkward to translate to a single television. Original hardware modifications such as this offer a different route from software emulation: keep the original board and cartridges, then rethink the shell, display connection, and control method around modern living-room use.

Building on an interest in unconventional Nintendo hardware

Kouzex has previously worked on Nintendo-oriented hardware ideas, including a Nintendo Switch-style dock project for the Nintendo 3DS and an effort involving Wii Remote-inspired Joy-Con concepts. Dual Station continues that interest in adapting portable Nintendo hardware for alternate ways of playing without abandoning the systems' defining features.

The DS is a particularly interesting candidate for that treatment. Its identity was never just about technical power. The system's appeal came from the interaction between two screens, physical cartridges, stylus input, local wireless features, and a design that made the hardware feel immediately different from its contemporaries. A successful home setup cannot reproduce every part of holding the original handheld, but Dual Station is trying to preserve the important pieces while making the library more accessible on larger displays.

For now, the most promising aspects are clear: HDMI output, DS and GBA cartridge slots, wireless controller use, selectable screen arrangements, and touchpad-based stylus functions. Those features form a thoughtful response to the specific hurdles involved in moving DS play to a TV. Whether the final kit can make that experience feel natural across the system's broad catalogue remains to be seen, but the prototype offers an inventive vision of what original DS hardware could look like outside its clamshell shell.