Release notes:

Ever thought about using your Nintendo DS app with a physics lib? The last few days I’ve tried to get ODE (www.ode.org, the only open source physics lib I know of) working, and here’s the result. Move around with the arrows, L, R and use ‘A’ to add a new box and ‘B’ to make them all spin. As you can see, after about 10 boxes in motions, the DS really starts struggeling. After a while it completely dies. Well, it’s fun to try anyway. Now, the demo isn’t very complexed, we’re not talking trimesh-to-trimesh collisions here. Still only with some boxes and some border planes, it gives up. First I thought that ODE probably isn’t optimized for handheld devices or low-memory computers. Secondly, I used a wrapper lib called OPAL (opal.sf.net) to make things easier for me. This adds another layer which surely slows down the simulation somewhat. Also with everything in C++ would add a layer of complexity compared to if it was in just C. But, I think the main reason is just that the NDS simply isn’t powerful enough for these types of calculations. Instead, for physics, it would be better to write a specialized engine instead of using a general one like this.

http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=8302