Because of the homebrewing scene the 3DS has had, you can install a variety of emulators. Currently, the New 3DS is capable of running much faster than the older models, making it a much more ideal platform for emulation, but despite this there are still some emulators that have issues regardless. For more information on how to homebrew your 3DS, visit 3ds.hacks.guide.

How To Use 3ds to CIA converter 1) Put your 3DS video games into ‘roms’ folder and press ‘Produce ncchinfo.bin data’ switch to develop ‘ncchinfo.bin’ from 3DS ROMs. 2) Make Use Of GodMode9 in addition to developed ‘ncchinfo.bin’ to produce ExHeader XORpads, put it in origin of SD card, launch GodMode9 as well as comply with. Skip Into 0:51Go Here to checkout some Legit cia's if you are having issuesLike:How To Extract & Rebuild 3DS Games, Also Le. 3DS Hacks - Convert 3DS ROMs to.cia Nintendo 3DS games can often be found in the.3ds format, which is intended for emulators like Citra. Nintendo 3DS consoles cannot load.3ds ROM files, however they can be converted to.cia format which can be installed on hacked 3DS consoles with FBI.

1Multi-System
2Consoles
3Handhelds
4Computers
5Others

Multi-System[edit]

RetroArch[edit]

There are preliminary 3DS ports of the following cores: stable 3DS ports

2048
FinalBurn Alpha CPS1
FinalBurn Alpha CPS2
FinalBurn Alpha CPS3 (most games are too slow to run even on New 3DS, though JoJo runs almost full speed)
FinalBurn Alpha Neo Geo (A few games are unable to be loaded due to memory constraints)
FCEUmm
Mednafen NGP
Mednafen PCE Fast
Mednafen VB
Mednafen WonderSwan
mGBA (acceptable with Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, but some games are slow to use, even on New 3DS, at present)
NXEngine
PCSX-ReARMed (see below)
Snes9x 2002 (formerly PocketSNES) (less compatible than CATSFC, but can actually run many special chip games at full speed)
Snes9x 2005 (formerly CATSFC)
Snes9x 2005 Plus (formerly CATSFC Plus) (has more accurate audio, slower)
Snes9x 2010 (formerly Snes9x-Next) (too slow to use even on New 3DS at present)

Using current exploits, the New 3DS is capable of running most of these cores at or nearly at full speed on most games. The only cores the older 3DS can reliably run at full speed are 2048, Gambatte, QuickNES, NXEngine, and some older Sega games using PicoDrive.Opposed to normal use of RetroArch, these are all self-contained emulators, albeit sharing the same automatic configuration.Screenshot-taking is broken. Upon exiting RetroArch 3DS, press the Start button.

Unofficial Builds[edit]

There are unofficial ports which add new cores with emulators that do not have a retroarch by default

Atari800
GW
VirtualJaguar

Consoles[edit]

NES[edit]

3DNESno longer in development

SNES[edit]

Snes9x for 3DS - runs a good majority of games well, even on old 3DS/2DS's. It's recommended to use a New 3DS if you want to run games that uses the SuperFX or SA-1 chip properly.
blargSNES - It works well, but lacks compatibility for games with certain chips (i.e. the SuperFX chip).

Nintendo 64[edit]

DaedalusX64 - N64 has always been known to be a hard system to emulate, which is why many were skeptical about how feasible it would be to have an emulator for the system on the 3DS. While still in its beta stage, it has shown a lot of improvements thanks to using a dynamic recompiler, with some games running at a playable state. It also supports using stereoscopic 3D (at the cost of slower performance), which isn't a feature a lot of emulators have.

Playstation[edit]

PCSX-ReARMed (RetroArch) - Thanks to the work of many developers, it is now possible to have full speed 60 FPS emulation for a majority of games and support for .CHD compression formats. Generally, 2D games will perform better than 3D, however you can get some better performance by tweaking the settings if necessary. The nightly builds have seen major improvements since the initial release and can even play some of the more demanding games at full speed (See here for some tips), so it's better to use that until the next stable release. NOTE: This emulator is mainly targeted for the New 3DS so don't expect the o3DS to run well if at all.

Atari 2600[edit]

Genesis/32X/Sega CD[edit]

PicoDrive for 3DS - 32X and Sega CD are playable on the original 3DS, but works better on New 3DS. Sega CD requires BIOS in order to play, they must be named:

'bios_CD_U.bin', 'bios_CD_J.bin', and 'bios_CD_E.bin' based on the respective regions. BIOS need to be in the /3ds/picodrive_3ds/bios folder.

PC Engine[edit]

Vectrex[edit]

Vex3DS - Based on vecx

Handhelds[edit]

Game Boy[edit]

GameYob: forked from a popular emulator used on the DS. Emulates the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. The original DS version is actually more polished than the 3DS port, so some of the more hardware pushing games won't work as well as the DS port.

Virtual Boy[edit]

r3Ddragon - It's kind of surprising that Nintendo never released a Virtual Console for the Virtual Boy on the 3DS, especially given how small the library of games were for the system and how both utilizes 3D effects ~~and causes eyestrain~~. What makes this emulator stand out is the fact that it's able to display the graphics in 3D the way it was intended, something that is almost impossible to do on other platforms, unfortunately compatibility is still low and requires a New 3DS to run. Development has since halted.

Pokémon mini[edit]

Game Boy Advance[edit]

The 3DS does include native firmware for a GBA mode which was mainly used to run ambassador releases instead of having to develop an emulator for them. Because it's technically running a 'virtual' GBA, it can't provide features that are normally available on other emulators, such as savestates, screen filtering, or sleep mode, however it does have high compatibility with the exception of cartridges with special hardware. If you're using an old 3DS/2DS, this is the best option to play GBA games. There are two ways to take advantage of this firmware:

New Super Ultimate Injector - There are other programs that can do injections, but this one is nice as it can do other Virtual Console injections and some forwarders for emulators. The only problem is each ROM must be injected and installed individually, including the save files, which makes the number of titles that can be installed restricted to the max the 3DS title limit (300 titles, not including pre-installed system titles).
open_agb_firm(Name not finalized) - A custom FIRM payload that takes advantage of the built-in GBA firmware, it's still in early development but has an alpha build available. The major advantage of this compared to VC injection is it can load the ROM through the SD card instead of having to convert and install them, but needs to be launched on boot instead of being able to use the 3DS HOME Menu (there's ways to make a forwarder for in on the HOME menu, but requires additional setup to get it to work). One major issue is there's a chance that it may not detect the correct save format or will corrupt the existing save file so make sure to backup your saves beforehand (they are currently trying fix it by having a better database for save detecti

3ds To Cia Converter 2019