Okay, so I’ve been messing around with my old 3DS lately, and I got this wild idea to see what emulators I could get running on it. I mean, the 3DS is pretty cool, but wouldn’t it be even cooler if I could play, like, Game Boy Advance games on it? Turns out, you totally can! It was a bit of a journey, so I figured I’d share what I did.
Getting Started: Custom Firmware is Key
First things first, I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t just slap emulators onto a regular, out-of-the-box 3DS. Nope, you gotta go the custom firmware (CFW) route. I’d heard of this before, but it always seemed kinda scary. Turns out, it’s not that bad, especially with all the guides out there. I basically just followed some step-by-step instructions.
I chose Luma3DS,I had to do some pretty careful stuff with my SD card, like backing everything up (super important, don’t skip this!), and then installing some files. It involved a lot of turning the 3DS on and off, holding down buttons, and praying I didn’t brick the thing. Seriously, my hands were sweating.
Finding the Right Emulators
Once I had CFW up and running, I could actually start thinking about emulators. I found out there are a few different ways to go about this. I tried a couple, so here’s the breakdown:
- RetroArch: This is like, the big one. It’s not just one emulator, but a whole bunch of them (called “cores”) all wrapped up in one package. I downloaded the 3DS version, which comes as a .cia file.
- Standalone Emulators: I also stumbled across some individual emulators, also in .cia format. I found one specifically for Game Boy Advance, called mGBA or something like that.
Installing and Running the Emulators
Installing the .cia files was surprisingly easy. I just copied them to my SD card, popped it back in the 3DS, and used something called FBI (yeah, that’s really the name) to install them. FBI is like a file manager that comes with the custom firmware. It’s pretty straightforward to use; you just navigate to the .cia file and tell it to install.
Once installed, the emulators showed up on my 3DS home screen like any other game. I tapped on them to launch, and…boom! I was staring at the RetroArch menu, or the mGBA start screen.
Getting Games (ROMs)
Of course, emulators are useless without games. These are called ROMs, and you basically have to find them. I’m not gonna tell you where to get them, but let’s just say Google is your friend. Once I had some ROMs, I just copied them to a folder on my SD card. I made a folder called “ROMs” and then subfolders for each system (like “GBA”, “SNES”, etc.) to keep things organized.
Playing the Games!
Finally, the moment of truth! I opened up RetroArch, navigated to the “Load Content” option, and found my ROMs folder. I picked a game, selected the right core (it usually figures this out automatically), and…it worked! I was playing a Game Boy Advance game on my 3DS! It was a little laggy at times, especially with some of the more demanding games, but it was totally playable.
I did the same thing with the standalone mGBA emulator, and it worked even better! It seemed like it was optimized specifically for GBA games, so the performance was smoother.
Tweaking and Troubleshooting
I spent a good chunk of time messing with settings. RetroArch has a ton of options, and it took a while to figure out what everything did. I played around with the video settings to try and get the best performance, and I even messed with the controls to make them feel more comfortable.
I also ran into some problems. Some games wouldn’t load, some had weird glitches, and sometimes RetroArch would just crash. I had to do some Googling and forum-reading to figure out the solutions. It was a bit of a learning curve, but I eventually got most things working.
The Final Result
So, after all that, was it worth it? Totally! I’ve now got a 3DS that can play games from a bunch of different systems. It’s like having a portable retro gaming machine! It’s not perfect, and it definitely took some effort to set up, but it’s pretty darn cool. If you’re comfortable with a little bit of technical tinkering, I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot!