Andy Walker / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The developers behind the upcoming Azahar 3DS emulator have laid out their argument for legality in a blog post.
- This includes several changes to the Citra formula to stay on Nintendo’s good side.
- The blog post also calls for users to act responsibly to keep game preservation efforts alive.
The upcoming Azahar 3DS emulator might not have a working app yet, but the developers have already laid the legal groundwork for their efforts in a new blog post. Written by PabloMK7 (creator of one of the most popular Citra forks), it outlines several changes going forward to stay on the right side of the law.
The biggest change is that the new 3DS emulator will not support encrypted ROMs. The blog post points out that circumventing Nintendo’s technological protection measures was one of the main things Nintendo used against Yuzu developer TropicHaze earlier this year. Other Nintendo 3DS emulators can play both encrypted and decrypted ROMs, mostly as a matter of convenience.
The one exception to this rule is encrypted ROMs downloaded from the official Nintendo eShop, which Azahar will be able to do directly. Titles you’ve legally purchased can be downloaded directly from Nintendo’s servers, despite support for the 3DS ending earlier this year. How Nintendo will react to this feature is yet to be seen.
The Azahar 3DS emulator wants to break with Citra’s history of piracy.
Strangely, the new emulator also breaks with precedent by including cryptographic keys. Normally, these keys need to be ripped from a console you own, but PabloMK7 argues that these are essentially just long, random numbers that are not eligible for copyright protection. Many other popular emulators also provide keys, including DeSmuME, MelonDS, PPSSPP, Cemu, and more.
The developers are also taking steps to distance the project from Citra’s checkered past in piracy. The first is dropping support for the .3ds file extension in favor of the .cci extension. What this means for end users is still unclear, but it might just be a matter of renaming existing ROMs with the new extension.
Additionally, Azahar will not provide any guidance for ripping your game files. It will, however, help you download original copies of purchased games from the Nintendo eShop. The team is also contacting game developers directly to get permission to emulate their games, and they’ve already received written authorization from “at least one.”
Some of these changes are sure to put off users looking for a simple 3DS emulator to play pirated copies of games, but at the end of the day, that might be what it takes to ensure retro gaming efforts stay alive. The blog post concludes by imploring users to avoid “unjustified mass piracy,” which hurts both game developers and game preservation efforts.
