The best Nintendo 3DS emulator on Android just got even better
Andy Walker / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Azahar version 2122 Alpha 1 brings huge performance and compatibility gains to 3DS emulation.
- Significant improvements have been made to Luigi’s Mansion 2, Star Fox 64 3D, and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
- The update is in alpha, so it may have minor bugs.
Just last week the leading Nintendo 3DS emulator Azahar pushed an update to fix a security vulnerability, but over the weekend another update dropped with huge performance and compatibility gains.
Azahar version 2122 Alpha 1 brings a long list of optimizations, but the end result is that all games should play more smoothly. One specific implementation of SIMD operations has reduced GPU processing time, but it also removes compatibility for older x86_64 CPUs. Android is unaffected by this, and unless you’re still using a CPU from 2011 or earlier, you should be fine.
The update brings performance and compatibility gains on all platforms.
A few other changes are listed as improving performance for a few specific games, most notably Luigi’s Mansion 2, Star Fox 64 3D, and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. It also fixes an error that caused The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth to crash when starting a run.
On Android, you can now display additional statistics in the overlay via the Layout settings menu, although only FPS is enabled by default. You can also adjust the aspect ratio in the single-screen setting, and the initial setup process has been streamlined with fewer pages.
You can download the update via the official GitHub, but it’s worth noting that this is an Alpha release. That means it could have some bugs that need fixing before final implementation. As a result, it has not yet been pushed to the main Google Play Store listing, which replaced the Lime3DS listing earlier this year. However, it has been pushed to the public beta channel for the same Google Play listing if you’ve signed up. Either way, it should clear the testing phase in about a week if all goes well.
