There have been no public updates on Citra 3DS emulator development since 2020, but the software is not dead; in fact, the developers just released a massive progress report following the shutdown of the official 3DS eShop.
Perhaps the most notable addition is support for split windows, allowing you to move the displays of the two 3DS screens wherever you want on your desktop. This, for example, will let you split the two screens across two separate desktop monitors, for the weirdest kind of authenticity. There is now an automatic driver binding feature, so you won’t have to manually configure most major driver types. There is also simplified support for motion controls.
All of these changes have already been implemented over the past few years, but if you weren’t updating the client regularly and paying close attention to the menus, you would probably have missed a lot of them. Many other changes are much more technical; you can read about them in the full progress report (opens in a new tab), but there is one recently announced technical change worth mentioning.
Vulkan support for Citra is in development. If you’re not very familiar with PC gaming technology, Vulkan is an alternative toolset that allows games to instruct your graphics card. Citra currently uses OpenGL for this process, which generally works well, but in many cases Vulkan is better at handling 3D graphics. In other words, Vulkan might make Citra work better, depending on the quirks of your hardware.
Whether the timing of this announcement with the official closure of the 3DS eShop was intentional or not, it should be noted that Nintendo has just cut off the only legal route to access hundreds of digital 3DS games. Meanwhile, historians are working to preserve these games and change the law so they can open lending libraries of free, legal digital games. The continued development of emulators like Citra will be essential to ensure that accurate versions of these games are available to a wide audience in the future.
He best 3ds games They are ready to stand the test of time.