Ever since Nintendo announced that they’re ending eShop support for the 3DS in early 2022, some avid Nintendo fans have started thinking about all those games locked in digital-only formats. This is where Citra comes in, an emulator for the Nintendo 3DS. Starting in 2013, this project has been spearheaded by a team of over 150 developers who have all made strides in getting the vast library of the 3DS up and running on modern PCs.
Citra is able to be run on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. Specifically, the emulator is constantly tested on 64-bit builds of Windows 7 and higher. For those using macOS, their official site states that macOS 10.13 High Sierra is the minimum OS requirement to get Citra working. There are no plans to support 32-bit systems, however they are aiming for future support for smartphones.
This emulator supports a wide range of games, all listed within their own Game Compatibility List. Such examples of games include ones from the Pokemon series, The Mario Franchise, and many other gems from the various IPs of Nintendo. There are also certain modifications that players can use in order to alter their experience, such as speed mods and quality-of-life patches for your favorite games.
Within the Community Forums, players can share their experience or personal emulator setups to help others with their experiences. It’s also a place to discuss the various glitches and errors that may be present in some of the games, as well as potential patches to fix them. Make sure that before you go posting about a glitch that you’ve experience, search up whether or not someone else has experienced it too. This helps to keep everything nice and organised and allows everyone to search for helpful tips as easily as possible.
Should you ever experience some form of glitch or error with the emulator, the developers have created an FAQ section for the most commonly asked questions. Other than that, it also goes through the various troubleshooting methods that you can do in order to fix the problem yourself. Links for the necessary drivers and software needed to run this emulator smoothly can be seen at the front of their site, as well as more information on how to set them up for max performance.
The Developers of Citra can be contacted through their various social media accounts, as well as in their community forums and discord server. Those wanting to give some monetary help to the project can also look into donating to their Patreon. Citra is a huge help in archiving the digital-only games of the Nintendo 3DS, as well as an easy way to play the vast library of games on the 3DS in the most optimised way available. We hope to see this project continue forward within the coming years, and to see whether or not they can get all games in the 3DS’ library up and running. Watch the following video to learn more about the Citra Emulator.
