3DS Emulator Azahar Hits Release Milestone
- Azahar 2123 adds dual screen support, Android screencast capabilities, and a new Z3DS compression format that significantly reduces game file sizes.
- Updates include controller support, screen corrections, and Android playtime tracking, with contributions from 22 developers.
- Unlike past emulators, Azahar avoids piracy-linked formats and only supports encrypted files from official Nintendo sources.
Azahar recently released its full 2123 version, bringing with it a ton of features geared towards Nintendo 3DS emulation, including dual screen support and ROM compression.
In a recent blog post, Azahar main dev PabloMK7 highlighted one of the main new features in version 2123: “On the 3DS, the average game is around 2GB in size, which can really start to add up, especially for devices with limited storage such as phones.”
“After discussing with other 3DS homebrew developers, the Azahar team has come up with a compression specification for the 3DS: the Z3DS format, which we have fully documented on our GitHub! This new format allows compressing all known 3DS backup formats using the seekable ZStandard algorithm.”
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Dual Screen Gaming Emulation
As an example of how the above feature can be effective, PabloMK7 highlighted how New Super Mario Bros. 2 can go from a 350MB file size down to 242MB, and Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon can go from 1,780MB down to 976MB. The compression feature is especially handy for gamers running Azahar on smartphones, but it doesn’t stop there.
The 3DS had, of course, two screens. Other than the 3D aspect, the dual screen set-up isn’t always handled well by emulators. Therefore, Azahar has added screencast capabilities for Android devices, so players can have the main game screen on their phone and the extra info screen shown on their TV, or vice versa, for example.
The rest of the version updates largely revolve around various fixes, such as Arctic Controller support on Mac, and horizontal centering screen correction on Desktop. However, it has now implemented play time tracking, also on Android. Other than PabloMK7, 21 other devs have contributed to the 2123 release.
Legal Gray Area
Azahar is an open source emulator based on Citra, a previous 3DS emulator linked with Yuzu – these were shut down in March 2024, following a lawsuit by Nintendo. However, Azahar does things a little differently; encrypted game files are only supported if they come from official Nintendo sources, for example, and it doesn’t handle the .3ds file format as this has its roots in piracy.
Azahar also doesn’t promote places to download ROMs, nor allow the promotion of forks (new versions based on a previous build) that reinstate the ability to use illegal ROMs. It’s available now from the Azahar GitHub, and supports Android, Windows, and Mac.
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