The newest challenger in 3DS emulation, Azahar, has finally reached its first stable build this week.

Since Yuzu's takedown by Nintendo last year, the eventual downfall of it also took the Citra emulator as collateral damage, given how the same developers of Yuzu were the ones behind the Citra emulator, leaving many users without the most popular, compatible and advanced 3DS emulator to date. Due to that, many people sought to continue the work where the original Citra left off, and one of those people, @PabloMK7 , took it upon himself to continue updating the emulator in a personal fork of his.

After both PabloMK7 (developer of one of the few updated Citra forks) and the developers of the Lime3DS emulator announced they would be working together on a brand new emulator, their first stable build v2120 of this new emulator, titled Azahar is now available to the public.

Azahar is an open-source 3DS emulator based on Citra

This project was born as a merge between PabloMK7's Citra fork and Lime3DS.
Our mission is to create the definitive platform for future development of Citra, a discontinued 3DS emulator.
We hope you will join us on this journey.

While Azahar has seen release candidates over the past few weeks, it wasn't until last week that the emulator had finally released a stable build, and with this, the merge of both Lime3DS and Pablo's Citra fork is now a reality, and both Pablo's fork as well as Lime3DS will be discontinued in favour of moving forward with Azahar as their main 3DS emulator.

Since the original stable release of v2120, Azahar has been updated to fix some issues with that version, and it's now sitting currently at v2120.1 as the most recent available version.
It's important to note, as well, that Azahar has moved away from the usual .3ds format for 3DS titles, and in exchange the emulator will now only support fully decrypted .cci files, in order to avoid the legal struggles that came after Yuzu and their takedown. More information about this can be found in this blog post by the Azahar developers.

Azahar Official Website
Azahar Blog Post
Azahar GitHub repository

 

[gamefan128]

i have this, it’s epic

 

[PabloMK7]

Hey! Thanks for the article! I actually wanted to write something for GBATemp, but it's been very busy with the release trying to get everything as smoothly working as possible, so I didn't have the chance.

I take the oportunity to remind everyone that Azahar no longer takes encrypted titles (you will need to provide them decrypted already) nor files with the .3ds extension (you will need to rename them to .cci). You can better understand why we have done this in our blog.

 

[gamefan128]

Hey! Thanks for the article! I actually wanted to write something for GBATemp, but it's been very busy with the release trying to get everything as smoothly working as possible, so I didn't have the chance.

I take the oportunity to remind everyone that Azahar no longer takes encrypted titles (you will need to provide decrypted ones) nor files with the .3ds extension (you will need to rename them to .cci). You can better understand why we have done this in our blog.

Nice article!

Post automatically merged: Mar 27, 2025

Also, how do i convert .3ds files to .cci?

 

[ihaveahax]

Also, how do i convert .3ds files to .cci?

If it's a decrypted file, you rename the file. That's it, it's a confusing choice.

 

[gamefan128]

If it's a decrypted file, you rename the file. That's it, it's a confusing choice.

thanks

 

[ShadowOne333]

Hey! Thanks for the article! I actually wanted to write something for GBATemp, but it's been very busy with the release trying to get everything as smoothly working as possible, so I didn't have the chance.

I take the oportunity to remind everyone that Azahar no longer takes encrypted titles (you will need to provide them decrypted already) nor files with the .3ds extension (you will need to rename them to .cci). You can better understand why we have done this in our blog.

Oh I forgot you were a user in here, otherwise I'd have tagged you in the main article.
I'll add that, and I will also add a link to the Azahar blog, which I think is very important when it comes to the legality of it all and the recent change to decrypted ROMs.
Thank you for your input!

 

[Captain-Z]

Hey! Thanks for the article! I actually wanted to write something for GBATemp, but it's been very busy with the release trying to get everything as smoothly working as possible, so I didn't have the chance.

I take the oportunity to remind everyone that Azahar no longer takes encrypted titles (you will need to provide them decrypted already) nor files with the .3ds extension (you will need to rename them to .cci). You can better understand why we have done this in our blog.

So how exactly do you pronounce Azahar? Is the za a "ZA" sound or a "THA" sound?

 

[Fugelmir]

I see a very slight performance increase on steamdeck compared to lime3ds and citra. Wouldn't recommend switching over just yet.

 

[PabloMK7]

So how exactly do you pronounce Azahar? Is the za a "ZA" sound or a "THA" sound?

Go here and click the speaker button x)
https://translate.google.com/?sl=es&tl=en&text=azahar&op=translate

 

[Nynrah]

Just wondering, but it's pretty clear how the emulator handles .cci and .3ds files, but what about .cia files?

 

[PabloMK7]

Just wondering, but it's pretty clear how the emulator handles .cci and .3ds files, but what about .cia files?

Files that were supported by Citra before:
- .cxi files decrypted or encrypted, with the user having to provide keys for encrypted support.
- .cia files decrypted or encrypted, with the user having to provide keys for encrypted support.
- .3ds files decrypted or encrypted, with the user having to provide keys for encrypted support.
- No eShop access.

Files that are supported by Azahar:
- .cxi files, decrypted only.
- .cia files, decrypted only.
- .cci files, decrypted only (this is the **SAME** file type as .3ds, the file extension had roots in piracy tools and we want to avoid it.) If you have decrypted .3ds private copies already just rename them.
- Ability to access eShop.

Anything that is not listed here will not be changing in any way.

 

[Nynrah]

Files that were supported by Citra before:
- .cxi files decrypted or encrypted, with the user having to provide keys for encrypted support.
- .cia files decrypted or encrypted, with the user having to provide keys for encrypted support.
- .3ds files decrypted or encrypted, with the user having to provide keys for encrypted support.
- No eShop access.

Files that are supported by Azahar:
- .cxi files, decrypted only.
- .cia files, decrypted only.
- .cci files, decrypted only (this is the **SAME** file type as .3ds, the file extension had roots in piracy tools and we want to avoid it.) If you have decrypted .3ds private copies already just rename them.
- Ability to access eShop.

Anything that is not listed here will not be changing in any way.

Thanks for clarifying. It's a relief to know that I can keep my library as is and only need to decrypt a file in the worst case scenario.

 

[CobaltMN]

Glad to see that you are taking precautions against Nintendo getting aggressive. With all the switch emulators running into major issues with encryption, the inconvenience of a new file type is well worth not getting nuked.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Nice to see a 3DS emulator, but still cool to use the hardware console itself.

3DS kind of died for me when hackers ruined MK7 Online although the catalog of the 3DS is superb.

 

[PabloMK7]

Nice to see a 3DS emulator, but still cool to use the hardware console itself.

3DS kind of died for me when hackers ruined MK7 Online although the catalog of the 3DS is superb.

That's one of the reasons Artic Base is a thing, you can use it to play your games on emulator then resume on 3ds whenever you want.

 

[Lostbhoy]

That's one of the reasons Artic Base is a thing, you can use it to play your games on emulator then resume on 3ds whenever you want.

Sorry to butt in.... Does this run your cpgt7 launcher as I had problems with it on citra?

 

[ihaveahax]

- .cci files, decrypted only (this is the **SAME** file type as .3ds, the file extension had roots in piracy tools and we want to avoid it.) If you have decrypted .3ds private copies already just rename them.

What makes "cci" any better? It's arguably worse because we should *not* know of it. There's no place it can have originated from other than the Nintendo SDK.

(In case anyone brings this up: no, "cia" is not the same. We know that extension is used outside the SDK. Look inside DLP child and update partitions, and you'll find cia files.)

 

[SecureBoot]

Super cool! I've been messing around with it a little and it seems to work great! I am a little bummed that it uses a proprietary homebrew to dump the system files. I have a total gm9 backup of my broken 3ds, but I can't use it to get the files to play online. Really cool nonetheless and I'm glad to see the 3DS emulation scene still developing! Kudos to PabloMK7 and team

 

[PabloMK7]

What makes "cci" any better? It's arguably worse because we should *not* know of it. There's no place it can have originated from other than the Nintendo SDK.

(In case anyone brings this up: no, "cia" is not the same. We know that extension is used outside the SDK. Look inside DLP child and update partitions, and you'll find cia files.)

We could have chosen .ncsd as well, .cci was known already and didn't originate from piracy releases or gateway.