3DS Emulator Nintendo known for it's legacy in gaming world came up with 3DS games in console gaming world in 26 February, 2011. Nintendo 3DS is a gaming console produced by Nintendo developers. It is capable to display stereoscopic 3D effects without any need of 3D glasses. All the Nintendo 3DS consoles are backward compatible with their predecessors. Here we are going to show you the best emulators, which you can use to play Nintendo 3DS games in your Android devices and in PC.
Why we need Emulator?
3DS Emulator Emulator is a software that helps in running the games made for different consoles in different systems. You can run android applications or games in Windows or in Mac OS, or you can run Nintendo games in Android or in PC. With 3DS emulator, you can get the same feel of playing Nintendo 3DS, when you just play game in your mobile or PC.
A brief history on Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo, a company who developed Nintendo 3DS is running since 1889. Starting with a simple playing trump cards, then a toy company, the company moved to the concept of electronic games in early 70's. In 1989, Nintendo launched Game Boy which was a console. Initiated with tetris, then Super Mario, Nintendo launched NES which used to be the most popular gaming console in whole world. The video games you used to play at your home are nothing, but NES or SNES games.
The one who satisfied, never get success. Like that, Nintendo never gave up and keep developing new consoles such as Nintendo 64, GBA, GBC, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS and many more. For the consoles, a huge library of video games were also made.
Even after Nintendo 3DS, they launched Nintendo switch which is a hybrid gaming console with detachable controllers. But it can be called as a extent of earlier versions of Nintendo, more specifically for Nintendo 3DS.
There are more than 1300 games in Nintendo 3Ds till now. You can list out the games here. Thus, it is the most popular and demanding gaming console, because of its stereoscopic 3D effects, which works even without 3D glasses.
List of Best Nintendo 3DS emulators for PC
Below is the list of emulators which you can download in your Windows, Linux and Mac operating system, and play Nintendo 3DS games in it.
Citra 3DS emulator
Citra is today's most popular emulator works in Windows, Linux as well as in Mac operating systems. It was developed in 2014, approx. 3 years after Nintendo 3DS came in front of users. Citra developers release latest versions of it, and remove bugs and fixes it, so that users can play well. You can read their blog or join their community on Discord. Huge games such as Pokemon X/Y can be played easily with this emulator.
Citra with it's stability is known as the best emulator for Nintendo 3DS. You often read on the Internet that it is the only emulator that works for 3DS games. It is not true, but yes, it is the only emulator which has the best stability out of all the other 3DS emulators. So, if you want to try any emulator, you must start with Citra. Who knows, you end your research here only?
TronDS
TronDS is a 3DS emulator, like others. But it is unstable, as it's development has been stopped since 2015. It is less popular, so not many people know about it. It is a light weight emulator, which you can download very easily for their official website. But we cannot assure you that it will work. It is available only for Windows. You can play simple 3DS games on it, as it supports limited features of Nintendo 3DS.
DeSmuME
DeSmuME is serving their own 3DS emulators since 2006 and still the updates are coming. They provides 3DS emulator for Windows 32Bit, Windows 64Bit and Mac OSx operating systems. The stable release of each version with proper documentation is provided in their official site. A tarball file is also provided for other operating systems.
To improve the quality of emulators, they developed Night build version of their emulator, which is unstable and might contain bugs. But still, the features it gives are more than you expect.
You can also find their community portal and forums there.
RetroArch
RetroArch has a rich library of emulators. You can play wide range of classic games of computer and consoles such as Nintendo, GBA and other. It has advance features like shaders, netplay, rewinding, next-frame response times and many more. You can read updated content news on their official blog. With RetroArch, you can play games on cross platforms. The list of available platforms where you can play games is - Windows OS from Win 98 to Win 10, Linux, Raspberry PI, Xbox, Android, IOS, PS2, PSP, PS3, PS4, Switch, Wii U, Gamecube and in web browsers also. Proper tutorials to install and play games are also available in their website.
NO$GBA
NO$GBA pronounced as 'No cash GBA' provides emulator of GBA and Nintendo 3DS games for Windows operating system. You can also play multiplayer games with this emulator at ease. The setup documentation and required files are provided well in their website. You can also play latest Pokemon games with their emulator. The emulator for GBA is best in this website, but for 3DS, it also suggests DeSmuME. So, it's better to go with Citra or DeSmuME. If the link provided won't help you, please go here.
iDeaS
iDeaS is an Nintendo DS emulator. It's compatibility rate is growing with each release while it already runs a few commercial games. It is also a light weight emulator, just like TronDS. It is also non popular emulator. You can play simple games with low graphics with iDeas.
List of Best Nintendo 3DS emulators for Android
These days, most of the people want to play games in their mobile phones, as it is portable. For this, the user expectations is high to play high resolution games in their tiny cellphones. Well, it is possible nowadays. Not only, Java games, now you can play Play station games as well as Nintendo 3DS games on your Android device. From the list above, RetroArch is one emulator which you can use to play Nintendo 3DS games in your android cellphone.
Below is the list of other emulators for Android phones -
DraStic DS emulator
DraStic DS emulator is the fastest and most popular emulator for Android. It has features to enhance 3D graphics, add-on controllers, progress saving, cheat codes database and fast forward feature.
It is legal application available in play store. It is paid, but a worthy application. You will get the same experience, you feel if you were playing Nintendo 3DS. Just the difference is, that here the screen is quite small.
ns4droid
ns4droid is one of the oldest emulator, which allows you to play Nintendo games on your android phones for free. It supports the basic features of emulators such as saving the stats and it also supports OUYA game console. It is a complete open source project. Hence, it is available in play store. With latest Nintendo games, it's performance may degrade, but it's developers are continuously upgrading and improving the performance. It has a frame skip feature, which improves the gaming performance drastically.
MegaN64
MegaN64 is another Nintendo emulator, through which you can play Nintendo games. It supports most of the Nintendo 64 games. Some popular games such as Super Smash Bros, Pokemon Stadium, Mario Kart 64, Zelda: Ocarina of time, Resident Evil 2 can be played without any interruption here. It automatically setup with the installation. It is free of cost. You can customise the control settings, visual settings according to your gameplay. You can also play multiplayer games upto four players with this emulator.
NDS Boy!
NDS Boy is another Nintendo DS emulator for Android devices. You can play hand-held games of Nintendo here. Almost all the DS games are supported with it.
There are some games which are pretty demanding, and if you have a device with less than 2 GB of RAM, then it's possible that it might go really slow. In this cases, you could try to deactivate the sound, which normally helps the games' performance. Not only for this emulator, it helps for all the emulators.
It does not comes with built-in ROM. You can download and play .nds files with this emulator. With tons of configuration settings, you would love to play with this. It is also free of cost.
Ultimate x3DSx emulator
Access Here: Ultimate 3DS
Yet another not so popular emulator, where you can play hundreds of Nintendo games. It is also free of cost, but we cannot guarantee you that it will work properly. It can be used to play gameboy 3DS games. It supports external device linking via USB or Bluetooth. It is also MOGA Enhanced and also runs on the Nvidia Shield.
Alright, so the list is over. Now you can download emulator of your choice, and play games in your Android or PC device. If you don't have Nintendo ROMs, you won't be able to play. If you don't know, where to download ROMs to play games, don't worry, we have the solution. You can download ROMs from the below websites, which are the most popular websites for ROMs till now.
Websites to Download Nintendo Games/ROMs
Emuparadise
Access Here: Emuparadise
Emuparadise is one of the oldest website, serving users to download ROMs for more than 50 platforms. It is called as the biggest Retro gaming website on earth. You could find emulators for different operating systems to play games of different platform. Not only ROMs, but they also had a huge collection of ISOs files there. Huge games such as PS2, PC and PSP games could be found there. But it seems like Emuparadise has removed almost all of it's ROMS from it's server. Still, you can download ORMs from the alternatives provided in the link above.
LoveROMs
LoveROMs is a popular website for downloading as well as playing Retro video games online. It provide game console for users to play game and act as an emulator for several types of games such as GBA games, PSP games, PSX games, Nintendo games, Sega games and more. Unfortunately, LoveROMs is not available anymore. But you can find the alternatives from the link mentioned above.
Due to some technical issue or blocking of websites by ISP, you may not be able to access some websites or links provided above. But don't worry, for that we have a solution.
How to access blocked websites?
You can use VPN (Virtual Proxy Network) it help you to access blocked website there is so many apps and extensions for free VPN
Alternate of VPNRecently we have build a tool which can unblock all the blocked sites because blocked website will be work through website server proxy and our website server is based in United States however, Here is the tool - Website Unblocker just paste the URL of blocked website click on "GO" so it can be unblocked.
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