Citra: The best Nintendo 3DS emulator for PC

The world of emulation never stops moving. While a few days ago we gave you a review of the impressive Cemu emulator for Wii U, today it’s the turn of Citra, a fully functional emulator of Nintendo 3DS for Windows and Mac that can run games at 100% and scale the 3D graphics to display much higher resolutions that the console originals.

This open source project released its first public version in 2015 as an experimental software that didn’t even have a frontend and had to be operated from the command line. Now, just two years later, Citra can run tons of titles from the catalogue at 60 FPS and 400×200 resolutions of the original screen. This giant jump makes certain games, in cases where the original textures and models are sufficiently outlined, look totally different. Playing The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds or Super Mario 3D Land in fullscreen with an Xbox 360 gamepad is at minimum a revelatory experience.

In terms of the theme of the two screens, the emulator can run several different viewing modes adapted to each game. We can view either one or both screens at the same time and alternate between both with a key, though the best system involves using the upper screen in fullscreen and leaving the lower one in its small original resolution in a corner in case you need it. The touch control is worked out through the mouse making the clicks directly onscreen.

When it comes to loading ROMs, they need to be decrypted, meaning it doesn’t accept dumps straight from backups in 3DS or 3DZ format. Tools for this purpose can easily be found on the Internet. At the level of requirement, the only truly essential ones are using a 64-bit operating system (in the case of Windows, from 7 upwards) and a graphics card with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher.

Citra on Uptodown | Download