Leave it to Monday to wake up to some drama in the community. However, this comes in a bit of a different form, as there’s now some “beef” between developers and Anbernic. Earlier today, Azahar formally stated that it will “NOT be officially supporting this devices or others from this manufacturer.”
This comes after Anbernic released videos showcasing its upcoming RG DDS, where 3DS emulation gameplay is shown using a fork known as AzaharPlus. Not only will Azahar no longer officially support Anbernic handhelds, but the team also suggests “looking for alternatives.”
While that might seem a bit “on the nose” for emulator developers, there’s a bit more to the story as to why Azahar is taking this stance.
A few years ago, when Nintendo began its tirade of taking down Switch emulators, the company behind Yuzu settled its lawsuit with Nintendo, marking the end of the emulator. However, Yuzu was only one of the emulators being developed by Tropic Haze LLC, with the other being Citra. At the time, Citra was largely known as the “go-to” 3DS emulator, so Nintendo dealt a pretty massive blow to the emulation scene for both platforms.
Fast forward about a year, and Azahar emerged, after it was announced that Lime3DS and the PabloMK7 Citra fork would be merging into one. One of the primary focuses of Azahar was to provide an emulator that did not internally circumvent Nintendo’s decryption. This meant that in order to use Azahar, you would no longer be able to use encrypted ROM files, as it was one way to try to deter piracy.
To be fair, the process for decrypting your encrypted ROMs was an easy-enough process to complete, but it was a time-consuming venture. Not to mention that the process of dumping games via GodMode9 from an actual 3DS would take days, depending on the size of your 3DS library.
Not long after Azahar released its first builds, a fork surfaced, dubbed AzaharPlus, described as being “a fork of the Azahar 3DS emulator with extra features.” On its GitHub page, it says the following:
Each version is the same as the corresponding version of Azahar except for this:
- Compatibility with all game files. If a file works with any Citra fork, it works with AzaharPlus.
- Ability to download system files from official servers. No need for an actual 3DS.
AzaharPlus is able to make these claims, as it includes a built-in ROM decrypter, removing the need for you to manually decrypt your ROMs. As such, this led many to flock to the forked emulator as it offered a lower path of resistance for emulation. However, since the fork uses Azahar in the name, this would cause potential confusion to which emulator was the “official” one, and which was the fork.
It wasn’t long before the Azahar developers caught wind of this project, which directly undermined the original goals, while sharing the app logo and name. Attempts were made by PabloMK7 to change both the name and logo, but the AzaharPlus developer refused to do so, leading to a bit of bad blood in the community.
This “beef” has continued in the time since the launch of both emulators, with the fire being reignited on occasion. One such example is when Cocoon announced it would not include support for AzaharPlus, and would only work with Azahar proper. The AzaharPlus developer posted on Reddit to try and rectify their side of the situation, and then the flame kind of died down again.
Fast forward to now, and the flame has been reignited after Anbernic used AzaharPlus in its various promotional materials for handhelds. It’s important to note that while Azahar will still be able to be installed and used on Anbernic handhelds, if you run into any issues you will not receive any support from the Azahar team.
We aren’t really sure how much of an impact this might have on the community when it comes to actually purchasing devices, but it will definitely be an interesting situation to monitor.
