[NDS] The World Ends With You: sprites missing. Help me, folks.

'Sup, folks.

Used to play twewy back in the day, using no$, and I remember it was a lot of hassle and tweaking to get it to play correctly. Since finishing the game, I have purchased a laptop and have played various emulated games on it. But lately, I've been thinking that I'd like to revisit twewy, maybe spend a few quiet evenings with twewy and discuss the finer points of the social climate over a few bowls of ramen and gaze into its eyes and...

Ahem. I digress.

I'm gettin' the nasty black sprites business.

So, here's my specs:
I'm working on an Alienware m15x, modified windows 7, Intel i7, Q740 @1.73, ATI Mobilitiy Radeon HD 5730,
yadda yadda, it's a powerful laptop, not the issue, but that's what it is.

I use no$gba 2.6a
(but I also have 2.6, which worked on my old XP desktop, but crashes on this laptop)
with NO$Zoomer 2.0.3.2
(but I also have NGZoom, which also worked on my old XP desktop, but has no effect when opened on this laptop)
with bios and firmware,
and I have two different twewy roms. I don't remember where I got them, but one is labeled "2230 - World Ends With You, The (EU)" (so it's local) and the other is just "World Ends With You, The".

Current settings?
Emulation speed, LCD refresh: realtime, auto
entrypoint: GBA BIOS
24bit true color, opengl, sync, bilinear filter
VGA poppy bright
auto, auto, darkness, stereo, highest sound, the rest default, and none of the EX menu are selected. Update interval is at 30fps, with auto skip on.

It runs fine, 100% speed, hovering around 20-25fps,
except it's all in silhouette. Black sprites everywhere.

I've tried most combinations of both roms in no$gba 2.6, 2.6a, NGZoom and NO$Zoomer with various settings. 2.6 and NGZoom just crash in any combo.

Am I doomed to never see it in its full glory again?
Or can somebody tell me what I'm missing?

 

Try DeSmuME.
That usually fixes every problem.

If not... get a new rom (unpatched, clean etc.)

 

Yeah, okay, DeSmuME works.
I guess I'm not thrilled about having another emulator, but I am pretty thrilled that twewy's working.
Thanks~