Iris

The Iris was a Nintendo handheld that never left prototype stages before evolving into the Nintendo DS/Nitro in early 2004.

Iris was the codename of the next-generation device intended to succeed the Game Boy Advance. As the fifth generation of the Game Boy (after the SP), the developers chose May as its symbol, a month represented by the iris flower in the Hanafuda playing cards.

After Nintendo president Iwata told the team that he was instructed by his predecessor Yamauchi to give the console two screens, Iris became NITRO, the codename for the Nintendo DS.

The irisSDK was leaked in 2020 as part of the Zammis Clark Breach. Three releases of irisSDK are known to exist:

• December 3, 2003
• December 12, 2003
• January 20, 2004

According to files found in the SDK, Iris games would have been developed using:

• Breadboard
• TEG board
• IS-IRIS-EMULATOR
• ARIS (later known as ensata)

As one DS developer recalled,

I remember working on the early version of that TEG board (the green motherboard with one screen attached), on a Majesco launch title for the DS called Moonlight Fables that ended up getting cancelled. We had to give the board back when they sent us proper devkits. I wish I had hung on to it. It's graphics capabilities and everything else were pretty close to the actual DS, and it took minimal porting to get what we had developed on this board working on the final DS dev kit. I vaguely remember a way of doing early dual screen rendering on it too, but you had to choose which screen to display on the single monitor. Long time ago!

Features

The Iris would have been Nintendo's first handheld to offer 3D more comparable to what had been seen on their home consoles, through the use of dedicated 3D hardware. Alongside the technical upgrade, the Iris featured two CPUs (ARM9 and ARM7).

Iris was originally intended to have a single, non-touch display, with the same number of buttons as the Game Boy Advance.

With the transition to NITRO, the following additions were made:

• X and Y buttons
• Touch panel
• Microphone
• Second display
• Flash for firmware and user settings
• Wireless?

Transition to NITRO

In the Release Notes for the January 20, 2004 release of irisSDK, the section titled 今後の予定 (future plans) mentions IRIS から NITRO システムへの SDK移植 (porting the SDK from IRIS to the NITRO system). This indicates that by that time, the transition to NITRO was already underway.

There would be one last version of irisSDK, January 20, 2004 irisSDK snapshot patch1 (released on February 4, 2004), before the release of NITRO-SDK Ver 1.0 PR1 on February 27, 2004.

irisSDK was renamed to NITRO-SDK with NITRO features gradually incorporated over time.

Though, the NITRO bootrom source code leak from the Zammis Clark Breach showed that the internal name of the bootroms was IrisMon. All file names and header files were still based on Iris, with almost no mention of NITRO. The NITRO bootroms were finalized on March 4, 2004 and would go on to ship on retail DS and DS Lite systems.

TEG Board

Setup manual for IRIS-TEG board, dated November 21, 2003

Around late 2003, Nintendo distributed the IRIS-TEG board to a small group of third-party developers, to support development on Iris. The board contains all the components of the Iris laid out on a large motherboard.

Interestingly, the board has footprints for a Video (top right) and Wireless (left) connector, suggesting they were features that were being considered at the time.

The first version of the TEG board only had a normal screen. However, when NITRO was under way, existing TEG boards were presumably upgraded with NITRO features to support NITRO game development.

A board sold in 2021, pictured below, contains an additional IRIS-TEG-TPIF(-02) sub-board (Touch Panel InterFace?). The date stamped on the TPIF sub-board showed that it was manufactured in February 2004. The TPIF sub-board provided the following:

• Touch screen functionality
• Microphone
• AGB link port - for a GBA Wireless Adapter?
• Flash chip

NITRO-SDK 1.0 was primarily used with the TEG board. Nintendo presumably continued shipping out upgraded TEG boards for NITRO development until the final NITRO dev kit was ready. The final dev kit, a DS controller attached to a blue box containing all the NITRO hardware and debugging functionality, was only available for developers from around July onwards. NITRO-SDK 2.0 PR1 was released on July 20, 2004, supporting the TS platform (the final hardware) and IS-NITRO-DEBUGGER (see below).

First IRIS-TEG board version

• Later IRIS-TEG board
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

IS-IRIS-EMULATOR

IRIS-TEG board with IS-AGB-EMULATOR

An IS-AGB-EMULATOR (IS-CGB-EMULATOR with AGB functionality) would be connected to the TEG board through a cartridge probe in order to provide cartridge emulation and debugging functionality.

The corresponding software on the PC was known as the IS-IRIS-EMULATOR.

インストール
コンピュータにIS-IRIS-EMULATORをインストールします。次の手順に従ってインストールを行ってください。
[...]
5. IS-IRIS-EMULATOR フォルダを開き、IS-IRIS-EMULATOR-XXX.EXE （XXX の部分はバージョンを示す）をダブルクリックしてインストールプログラムを実行します。

With the renaming of Iris to NITRO, the IS-IRIS-EMULATOR software was renamed to IS-NITRO-EMULATOR.

This is Version 4/23/2004 of the IS-NITRO-EMULATOR software by Intelligent Systems. This software is required in order to use an IS-AGB-EMULATOR connected to a TEG board. Download, execute, and print debug using the TEG board are possible in this environment.

When the final NITRO dev kit was made available, the box was known as the IS-NITRO-EMULATOR, and its software was named as the IS-NITRO-DEBUGGER.

It is unknown whether an Iris shell controller existed, as no images of it have surfaced.

ARIS and ensata

ensata Program Icon

ARIS was the official software emulator for Iris, known as the "IRIS Simulator ARIS" in the Quick Start Guide of the December 3, 2003 release of irisSDK. The Quick Start Guide in the next release of irisSDK (December 12, 2003) stated "IRIS Simulator ensata", indicating that ARIS was renamed to ensata. The name "ensata" may be derived from Iris ensata, a flower native to Japan.

By March 2004, ensata targeted NITRO and was henceforth known as the "ensata NITRO Software Emulator".

The ensata CVS repo leak from the Zammis Clark Breach showed that it was forked from the GBA emulator used for Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire.

Games

A tech demo created by Climax, based on Rare's Diddy Kong Racing, notably does not run properly in modern emulators, but works on ensata and the IRIS-TEG board.

Super Mario 64 DS has a number of files ending in icl.bin, icg.bin and isc.bin alongside the more typical ncl.bin, ncg.bin and nsc.bin files. These were presumably made with the IS-IRIS-CHARACTER and NITRO-CHARACTER software respectively, suggesting that the game started development on Iris.