Backup Lime3DS/Citra data (optional)
Now, if you happen to have already been using Citra or Lime3DS for example, you can go ahead and back up the cheats, load and sdmc folders.
You can find them in your C:/Users/<username>/Roaming/Citra or Lime3DS folder.
The cheats folder has your cheats and 60FPS cheats, load folder has your HD textures and mods, and lastly your sdmc folder has all your saves and any updates and DLC you’ve installed for games.
ROMs
One last thing before we get started and you’ll need to have some 3DS games, obviously, as this is a 3DS emulator and you can’t do much if you don’t have games.
A major difference with Azahar compared to Lime3DS and Citra, is the games need to be in CCI format.
If you already have your games, and they were decrypted already, they’re likely in 3DS format.
Pretty simple – rename 3ds to cci for all your games and you’re set – and I do mean just rename, it’s easy.
If you don’t have any games, or you don’t have decrypted 3DS games – which you’ll know if you try and load it after we’ve set up Azahar and it doesn’t work, then you’ll want decrypted 3DS roms.
Those will also come as a 3DS file format, so you just need to rename them to CCI.
Reminder that you have to unzip your roms, they can’t be zipped.
Updates/DLC
Decrypted updates and DLC are a bit hard to find, but make sure you’re actually getting the decrypted ones.
I’ll show you how to install updates and DLC today as well.
As far as where to store all of this, you can simply just create a folder called ROMs, then a folder called n3ds inside of it, and then put all your games, updates and dlc and everything in there if you wanted to organize everything now.
Setup
Alright, let’s go ahead and actually install Azahar now and you can grab the latest update right from their Github releases.
Download the azahar-VERSION-windows-msys2-installer.exe option.
Run the installer and choose where to install, you can leave it all as default and go through the setup.
Head inside of wherever you installed and open the azahar.exe when ready. The default location is your C:/Program Files.
First order of business is telling Azahar where your games are so double click in the main window and then navigate to that n3ds folder we made to select it and have Azahar find all your games.
Restoring Lime3DS/Citra data (optional)
At this point, for those of you that backed up data earlier from other 3DS emulators, you can now put it back.
Head to the top left in Azahar > File > Open Azahar folder.
You will see we have cheats, load and sdmc. Delete those folders.
Copy your backed up cheats, load and sdmc folders to here.
Close and re-open Azahar and you should have all your data in Azahar now.
Settings
Time for Settings next, head to Emulation at the top and then Configure.
General
First things first, let’s turn off Confirm exit while emulation is running – basically, if we leave this on, everytime you exit a game, it’s going to popup with an are you sure? And stop bothering me I’m sure.
Graphics
Head to Graphics on the left next and depending on how powerful your PC or device is, you can change the upscaling via Internal Resolution now – 5x works well with a 1080p screen for example.
But I can show you how to do this on a per-game basis as well.
Another options here is Disable Right Eye Rendering and that gives you a nice FPS boost in some games, but can cause glitches in others.
It’s a good option to test on a per-game basis and we’ll look at that later.
Go ahead and enable Use Custom Textures and Preload Custom Textures.
Graphics, Layout
Head to Layout and you can leave the default screen layout for now, which we’ll look at the options in a little bit.
Just remember this spot because maybe you want to create your own layout, or set a default layout, you can do so here.
Graphics, Advanced
Head to Advanced and in most cases, I’d use Vulkan instead of OpenGL for Graphics API.
Also make sure the Physical Device is your graphics card, if you have one.
You may have issues with Vulkan instead of OpenGL, so remember you can change this on a per-game basis too.
Go ahead and check Enable Async Shader Compilation to help shaders sync smoother.
Controls
Head to Controls now on the left and you can map your controls for your controller to each button.
Alternatively, it may be easier to do Auto Map at the bottom if it recognizes your controller – just click it, push a button and it should map properly.
If not, map it yourself throughout.
Controls, Hotkeys
In the Hotkeys tab, unfortunately, this is another emulator where all hotkeys are only available on the keyboard and nothing via the controller.
Feel free to make a note of them all if you’d like.
Click OK at the bottom when done.
Per-Game Settings
I promised per-game settings, so go ahead and right click any game and choose Properties.
Any changes you make in this window will only apply to this specific game, so if you head to the Enhancements tab, you can change the resolution, or disable Right Eye Rendering.
You can change layouts for specific games, maybe single screen games, Graphics and so on.
This is also where you’ll find cheats, but we’ll talk about that later.
In-Game
Double click a game to boot it and if you look at the View tab at the top, you can turn on Fullscreen here.
You can also adjust the Screen Layout so let’s take a look at the options now.
Single screen is a large screen without the second screen, Large Screen is a large and second screen, Side by Side is side by side of course, Separate Windows is useful for putting each screen on a different monitor, Hybrid Screen will show both screens and a third copy and then Custom Layout will use your own custom layout that you can create in the Layout section we talked about before.
Now I would turn off Single Screen Mode under View because if you do, any games launched will open their own window and what happens if you don’t turn this off is when you exit a game, it exits Azahar too.
Gets annoying to constantly open Azahar if you just want to swap a game.
Cheats
Let’s talk about cheats now.
There’s a handy Github with cheats for pretty much every game, and if you head there, then click the Cheats folder, you can see a whole list of games.
I’m going to pick Pokemon Ultra Sun which there’s only one option, but you do want to make sure you’re getting the right region for your game.
You’ll see a text file inside, click it and then go to the right and choose Download raw.
Now you just need to move that to the cheats folder.
Open Azahar and top left, go to File > Open Azahar folder.
You’ll see the cheats folder there.
Copy and paste the txt file we downloaded into there.
Now go to Pokemon Ultra Sun > Right click > Properties and scroll over to Cheats.
You should see all of them available and ready to go.
If you don’t, make sure the cheat file’s name matches the Title ID of the game in Properties – if it doesn’t, you downloaded the wrong file.
If you load the game, you can also find the Cheats menu via the Emulation > Configure Current Application window.
So you have multiple ways to get to your cheats.
60FPS Cheats
There’s a nice repository of 60FPS cheats on Gbatemp.
Find the game that you want 60FPS for, and if you click it, you’ll see codes depending on the version of the game you have.
Since we haven’t installed any updates yet, all games are currently version 1.0.
To add the cheats, head to the game you’re getting cheats for, so Pokemon Ultra Sun.
Right click > Properties > Cheats tab and then Add Cheat.
Give it a name, calling it 60FPS and then head back to Gbatemp and copy the actual code part, and then paste that into the Code part of the cheat window.
Click Save. Enable the cheat. Then click OK.
Boot up the game and you can tell instantly it worked.
HD Texture Packs
Next up, we have HD texture packs. Reminder that you need to have enabled Custom Textures in the settings, which if you’ve been following along, we did so earlier.
You’ll also notice it tells you right there where to put your HD texture packs, right in the load/textures folder.
Finding HD texture packs is difficult, but there’s an awesome guy named Henriko Magnifico who does awesome Zelda one’s so let’s use that for the tutorial.
Scroll through his Patreon to get to the Ocarina of Time 3D HD texture pack and then use the Download link in the post – you do need to have a Patreon account, but you don’t need to be subbed to him.
You should though, to support his work.
There’s two options – 4K or 1080p and for most people, 1080p will be fine, but I want the 4K option because why not.
Click download on the one you want.
Go ahead and extract whichever zip file you downloaded.
Head inside of that extracted folder, then into the OOT3D 4K folder, user > load > textures and if you’re using the NTSC version of the game, it would be the folder that ends in 500 that we want.
Ignore what that text file says, it’s unfortunately not correct.
Now head to Azahar and find the game and Right click > Open > Custom texture location.
You’ll see the title id and we’re in the folder.
So head inside of that folder for the HD texture pack we extracted, and copy all the files inside and then paste them into the window where you had Azahar open the texture folder.
Let it finish transferring. You’ll know it worked instantly when you boot the game as you’ll see a side window show up with preloading textures.
But you’ll also know when you boot into the game and see the title screen.
Add Updates/DLC
Now before we talk about mods, I want to show you how to add updates and DLC like promised.
We talked about where to get this earlier, but a reminder that they need to be decrypted or it won’t work.
Once you have your updates and DLC which are in a CIA file format, go to File > Install CIA and select all of them.
You’ll know it works if you check the icon of the game and it says the version number right on it – hard to see, but easiest way to tell.
Mods
Lastly, I promised to show you mods.
Let’s use a popular example – Pokemon Photonic Sun or Prismatic Moon, which are romhacks of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, but the process for installing mods will work for anything that you need to install mods for.
In this scenario, you need to have a Pokemon Ultra Sun or Moon game, and you need to have the 1.2 update installed, according to their installation instructions.
Both of these are things you can do by following the earlier parts of today’s guide – we just installed the update a minute ago.
Then, we’re going to go to their Download link in their pokecommunity post, choose Moon or Sun for whichever game you have, and then download the Standard or Rebalanced zip – depending on which version of the romhack you want.
I’m going to grab Rebalanced.
Extract that zip.
Head inside of that extracted zip folder, then inside the luma folder > titles, and then you’ll see the title ID folder and inside is what we want.
Now head back to Azahar and find the game, Right click > Open > Mods location.
Copy the files from the romhack which are romfs and code ips in this case and paste them into the folder that Azahar opened for us.
Go ahead and start Pokemon and you’ll know it worked because the text will say welcome to Photonic Sun right in the beginning.
But again, the process for mods is all the same as what we just did.
Updating Azahar
Lastly, how do you update Azahar when there’s a new release?
Well, it’s easy, nothing is actually stored in the emulator folder data wise so just rename your old Azahar folder in Program Files or wherever your installed it to Azahar_old.
Then head to the Github or download the new update exe, install it like you did in the beginning of the video, open and run it and everything will work as it did before. You can then delete the Azahar_old folder after.
Syncthing
Azahar can easily be sync’d across all operating systems using Syncthing, including with Citra, Lime3DS and other Azahar installs.