Citra (emulator)


Citra is the first emulator of the handheld game console Nintendo 3DS, developed by Citra Team. It is developed in the C++ programming language. Citra can run almost all homebrew games and many commercial games. Citra requires OpenGL version 3.3 or later to run. Citra's name is derived from CTR, which is the model name of the original 3DS. Citra does not work very well with older PCs and needs to be run on an x64 CPU.
Citra is free and open-source and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Most of the development happens on GitHub, and more than 170 developers have already contributed to Citra's project on GitHub.
Citra was initially created in April 2014.
The first commercial Nintendo 3DS game to be run by Citra was '. Citra can also run some other games, such as ' and Sonic Generations.
Citra can boot Pokémon games since December 30, 2015. Since February 22, 2016, the official website of Citra has changed significantly. Citra can emulate sound since May 21, 2016, and has had a JIT compiler since September 15, 2016. As of the latest version, Pokémon Sun and Moon are fully playable, a milestone in emulator development.
In November 2017, Citra announced networking support for the emulator. The networking support emulates the 3DS’s local Wi-Fi, which originally made it possible to play locally; however, the Citra team took it a step further and made it possible to play with other users anywhere.
In April 2020, the Citra Team announced compatibility with New Nintendo 3DS games and support for save states, and in May 2020, they announced a version of Citra for Android.
The same team is also creating the first Nintendo Switch emulator, named yuzu.