It's been a very long time since we've heard from Martin, the German dev you guys may remember for creating the No$gba v2.3 programming tool for professional developers. In case you're wondering what martin's been up to, we're happy to report that he's recently finished work on No$gba v2.5.

As a point of clarification, this particular freeware release is for the gamer's version of the emulator. It will allow PC owners to run DS games on their computer. Here's a sample of the emulator's latest changelog:

* help: updated gbatek standalone version 2.5 (about one hundred news since 2.3)
* vram viewer: supports extended palettes in bg map windows (eg. magnetica demo)
* nds/help: added ds 3d overview chapter (basics on geometry/rendering engines)
* nds/help: added ds technical data chapter (containing some basic overview)
* nds/help: replaced ds various chapter by new ds memory control/timing chapter
* nds/sound: fixed major unreported bug in 80x86 code sound_bias SWI function
* nds/3d/help: corrected shininess formula (ie. fixed that max cos 2 angle mess)
* nds/3d/help: added caution: specular reflection WON'T WORK on camera rotation
* nds/3d/help: maths basics of vector-by-vector multiply (and purposes thereof)
* nds/3d/softlight: allows light+color nonsense double def (eg castlevania clip)
* nds/3d/softlight: much better light-accuracy, and now supports shininess_table
* nds/3d/softlight: lighting fully calculated by software (without opengl light)
* nds/timing: split timings for nds7 (fast access) and trashy nds9 (slow access)
* nds/timing: split addr_clks_table to CODE/DATA addr_clkc_table/addr_clkd_table
* nds/timing: emulates "half" cycles on 66MHz/nds9 (tcm/cache and n32/2 thumb)
* nds/timing: emulates nds7 exmemstat gba-slot timing bits (like nds9 exmemcnt)
* nds/timing/help: added detailed/tested nds7/nds9 code/data memory-timing chart
* nds/timing/cache: allows more CPU load on bios/mainram when cache is enabled
* nds/timing: emulates shared N32 access time for two NDS9 thumb 16bit opcodes
* cpu/speedup: precalculates opcode-timings on interseg-jumps (usually faster)
* cpu/speedup: faster conditional opcode handling (maybe yet another 3% faster)
* cpu/speedup: thumb: uses 16bit reads (3% faster on non-32bit-aligned addr's)
* cpu/speedup: replaced dumb jmp exec_opcode by exec_opcode_mac (ca. 10% faster)
* cpu/speedup: added more code alignments in cpu-core (not significantly faster)
* nds/help: added note that 66MHz-nds9 actually runs MUCH SLOWER than 33MHz-nds7
* nds/cpu: emulates superslow nds9 memory access time (bios,wram,vram,oam,etc)
* nds/cpu: emulates operand-independend ARM9 multiply time (eg. slow thumb time)
* nds/wram: emulates wramcnt mapping (no idea if it's used by any games though)
* nds/3d: adjusted z-rounding (avoid opengl-clip-plane in club house games demo)
* cpu: emulates cp15-trace-id, debug: disass auto-comments on trace-id and bist
* nds/help: fixed key1 [scratch] writeback lsw/msw are exchanged (thanks simon)
* nds/help: cp15 info on trace-id, bist, cache debug/test, supported cache cmds
* cheat: fixed occassional crash on delete cheat (push/pop) (thanks Hiei Youkai)
* thanks: rockmanrotties for submarine (timing) and clubhouse (clip) bugreports

We strongly advise would-be users to view the included file readme for installation and usage instructions. On a last note, if you happen to be a programmer, you may want to read up on the No$gba debug version that Martin's working on. That particular build - and No$gBA's full changelog - can be read up on at the dev's main site.