Nintendo 3DS emulators

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Revision as of 09:54, 14 December 2019 by 87.154.210.184 (talk)
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Nintendo 3DS
3ds.png
Developer Nintendo
Type Handheld game console
Generation Eighth generation
Release date 2011
Predecessor Nintendo DS
Emulated ~

The Nintendo 3DS is an eighth-generation handheld game console by Nintendo, released on March 27, 2011 for $249. It had a Dual-Core ARM11 MPCore at 268 MHz and a single-core ARM9. It had 128MB of RAM and 6MB of VRAM. It has a DMP PICA200 GPU. The most notable feature of this console is the use of autostereoscopic (i.e. without glasses) 3D, which can be configured using a slider.

Emulators

Name Operating System(s) Latest Version Open-Source Active Libretro Core Recommended
Citra Windows, Linux, macOS Nightly
Corgi3DS Windows, Linux, macOS Git
3dmoo Windows, Linux Git
TronDS Windows, Linux 1.0.0.5
LemonLime Windows, Linux, macOS Git
Mobile
Citra (Unofficial) Android v0.5.1-alpha (WIP)
Mikage Android v0.3

Comparisons

Citra
An open-source Nintendo 3DS emulator made by experienced emulator developers. The devs insist that it's still experimental, but as of mid-2019 around half of all games are fully playable with minor or no issues.
3dmoo
Another open-source Nintendo 3DS emulator, made by experienced developers in the DS hacking scene. It was released shortly after Citra and received similar progress for a few months, but was eventually aborted by its authors after a while.
TronDS
A closed-source Nintendo 3DS emulator, presumably made by the iDeaS author. Little is known about it other than that it can run simple homebrew. It cannot be used for playing games.
Corgi3DS
An unique 3DS emulator designed for macOS systems. Its GitHub activity started on May 5, 2019. Main programmer is a self-proclaimed dog lover and has previously created CorgiDS and DobieStation, though the former seemed to be abandoned. Corgi3DS is mainly indigenous but the preliminary Wi-Fi code was ported from melonDS' code.
Mikage
A commercial, Android-exclusive 3DS emulator optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices. Made by a former author of Citra and other emulators. Currently in development funded via Patreon.

Emulation issues

Citra currently can't emulate any of the 3DS's online features aside from LAN multiplayer. It also doesn't have working New 3DS or stereoscopic 3D support, although both features are being worked on.

Game Images

3DS vs. CIA

There are two big types of 3DS game images currently:

NCSD-type
Includes .CCI (CTR Cart Image), aka .3DS - data on physical carts, can be executed right off the bat, not used much since no one bothered to develop a CFW solution to load them yet (besides converting them to CIA) and only overpriced flashcarts (Gateway/Sky3DS) can load them.
NCCH-type
Includes .CIA (CTR Importable Archive) and .CXI - installers that unpack game data to the SD card or the 3DS NAND memory. Some homebrew apps (FBI, DevMenu) can install CIA files on 3DS systems with CFW installed. Digital games are often distributed as CIAs.
  • Note that CTR (Citrus) is the internal code names for the 3DS.

Due to one format being so far restricted to overpriced flashcarts and the very slow Citra development (meaning playing on a real 3DS is still the preferred way to go), the CIA format is preferred in many sharing websites, downloader tools and even tools to dump your own games.

However, converting a CIA image to 3DS format (and vice-versa) is still possible with no loss of content. Read the Encryption section below for a guide.

Some outdated dumping utilities intended for use with Citra (like braindump) produce damaged decrypted 3DS images that can't be easily converted back. No known solution exists so far to fix those dumps.

Encryption

Most dumps online are also encrypted. This encryption poses no problem for playing game images on a real 3DS since it can deal with that encryption with internal keys included in the bootrom, but becomes a problem when trying to emulate them on PC. Citra cannot play encrypted games, only decrypted games will work. A solution to load encrypted images is for the moment on the back burner and there's not much developer interest for it. If you want to play games on Citra, you'll have to convert your game images to that format.

Formerly, decrypting those ROMs used to require real 3DS hardware (bafflingly enough, Citra devs still ask users to do this even nowadays). It required files generated by a real 3DS called xorpads unique to that game version, using the encryption engine within the 3DS. After this part, these xorpads (which are big) can be used with PC tools (or other 3DS-based homebrew) to produce the decrypted game image. After that, some 3DS homebrew (Decrypt9, GodMode9) included tools to directly convert encrypted images to decrypted images with a single button press, but those still require a real 3DS.

The game changer was the sighax exploit, allowing to dump the 3DS bootrom which includes these encryption keys. This file can be downloaded from the Emulator Files page. You can then use a program like fuse-3ds to decrypt games using this file. Simply place boot9.bin in the same folder, run the program, mount the encrypted .cia or .3ds, and find the decrypted.cxi file inside (usually in the first folder). Citra should be able to load this file without issues.