Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - Button Controls
Zelda no Densetsu: Mugen no Sunadokei · ゼルダの伝説 夢幻の砂時計
Lets you play Phantom Hourglass with the D-pad and buttons, not just on the field but across its menus, sea chart, shops and minigames, with the stylus kept for the few things that need drawing.
What it does
Phantom Hourglass was designed around the stylus. swyfter's patch, which grew out of griegamaster's 2014 D-pad patch and was then rewritten and extended, moves almost everything onto the buttons. On the field the D-pad runs (or walks slowly with Y), B swings the sword, A talks, picks up and rolls, R opens the item bar and Select the menu bar. At sea the D-pad starts and stops the ship, A jumps and B fires the cannon.
Unlike field-only D-pad patches, it also covers the item and menu bars, the collection, sea chart, dungeon maps, shops, shipyard, fishing, the salvage arm, dialogue choices and the save menu. The stylus still works everywhere, and you need it for a few mechanics such as drawing routes and paths.
swyfter played the game from start to finish with it in RetroArch's melonDS DS core, fixing each problem found along the way; the latest change lets you win the final sword clash by holding A. The project says the patch code, tools and documentation were written by an AI (Claude), with swyfter choosing features and testing.
Playing it
The patch is made for the full American release; apply it to a clean copy of your own game following the instructions in the repository. Credit to swyfter, building on griegamaster's original D-pad patch.