Your Most Nostalgic Nintendo 3DS Games Are Now Dead

 

https://screenrant.com/nintendo-3ds-citra-emulator-controversy-game/

Roughly one year after Nintendo closed the e-store for the 3DS the company has now caused the leading 3DS emulator, Citra, to cease development, creating a vacuum for the console’s game preservation and access. The end of Citra is collateral damage resulting from the latest of Nintendo’s aggressive litigation decisions. This is an inarguably tragic result for game preservation. Fans with the resources to purchase increasingly expensive 3DS hardware and game titles on the secondary market do nothing to financially benefit either Nintendo or the original publishers. Nintendo has harmed access to games it has no financial stake in.

Emulation is critical for game preservation. Even the official sources for prior generation games primarily make use of emulation rather than duplicating the original hardware, as seen with everything from the officially licensed games on the Evercade console series to Nintendo’s own Switch Online service. Fans of older generation games can use the Steam Deck for emulation, a PC, or even dedicated emulation portables. Citra was not flawless, and it still had a way to go before achieving the goal of full compatibility with the entire 3DS library, but thanks to Nintendo, 3DS game preservation has been set back immensely.

The death of Citra resulted from Nintendo’s lawsuit against Tropic Haze, the developers of both the Switch emulator Yuzu and the 3DS emulator Citra. As is typical with lawsuits from a large company with massive financial resources against a smaller group, Tropic Haze lacked the resources to afford to battle the issues out in court and opted for a settlement wherein Nintendo is owed $2.4 million, and the developer crew has also ceased development and distribution of both of its emulator projects. Past legal precedents consistently show that emulation software is legally safe and protected, however.

During the original PlayStation era, Sony sued the makers of the Virtual Game Station for Macintosh computers and Bleem for PC. These events established a pattern where the courts confirmed the legitimacy of emulation software, even for a console that was currently in production, the PS1, but a gargantuan company like Sony could instead outspend the makers of these products. Sony failed in its lawsuit against Connectix, as well its appeal to the Supreme Court, but in 2001, Sony simply purchased VGS from Connectix and discontinued the product shortly thereafter. Bleem similarly won its suits, but the costs grew unmanageable.

Despite Sony losing every suit against Bleem, the massive costs associated with defending these cases led to the company’s closure. These precedents have carried over to the litigious patterns of modern Nintendo. It ultimately does not matter if Tropic Haze could have been declared legally in the right because the developer team lacks Nintendo’s deep war chest to afford to be proven right. Switch Online initially emulated N64 badly, at a time when third-party N64 emulators were far more advanced. The closure of an emulation project like Yuzu likely hurts the future of Switch game preservation.

Yuzu faced some different threats from the PS1-era lawsuits since Nintendo’s focus was on the emulator’s ability to break encryption. Legal precedents support the notion that reverse engineering gaming hardware through emulation is protected, but a workaround to DRM could be viewed as a different issue. The emulator did not include Switch product keys, which would be a legally risky move, but Nintendo’s argument points out what Yuzu’s official guide provided instructions on how to extract those from Switch hardware. This focus on encryption and methods to defeat DRM does distinguish the Tropic Haze lawsuit from earlier suits.

Nintendo also challenged a game owner’s right to copy a game into a different format or play it on anything other than officially licensed hardware. This weaker argument circles back to challenging a consumer’s right to make backup copies of their own purchased media, but it does set the suit against Yuzu apart from the PS1-era lawsuits. Emulators like Bleem and Virtual Game Station worked by playing actual PS1 discs using their emulators. The court noted emulators could actually benefit Sony’s PlayStation software sales. Yuzu differs, as there is no simple method to use a Switch cart on a PC.

There is more room for debate regarding both the ethics and legality of software like Yuzu, which emulates the current-gen Switch console. Such an argument, ideally, could be decided in court, but the reality of the U.S. legal system is that most civil cases are settled out of court based on weighing the costs to defend against the penalties of a settlement. Civil justice typically works out like a poker game, where a wealthy party like Nintendo can simply raise the stakes until all others are forced to fold, even if Nintendo is aggressively bluffing and Tropic Haze could have won.

Citra ceasing development is an even bigger concern, as it hurts 3DS game preservation and accessibility in the here and now. The 3DS was active for more than a decade, and over 1,500 games were released in North America alone. Tropic Haze had a stated goal that Citra would continue updates until the full 3DS library had perfect compatibility with the emulator, but now that dream will not be realized. The settlement could also frighten other emulator development teams against continuing their efforts, further damaging the preservation of Nintendo’s legacy consoles and their gaming libraries.

The anti-preservation stances taken by Nintendo have become emblematic of the entirety of entertainment media. Shows and movies that were exclusive to streaming platforms are being pulled without ever seeing a physical media release, giving consumers no means to access these products legally. Nintendo is taking legal action to make games inaccessible, perhaps with consideration of someday releasing full-priced remakes or its own emulation services, like Switch Online does for older consoles. Switch Online contains only a fraction of the games for each console it supports and leaves entire chapters of Nintendo’s history absent.

Regardless of the rationale for Nintendo’s litigation, the impact on gaming fans is a negative one. CitraVR, a port of Citra for Quest VR devices, allowed fans to experience 3DS titles like never before, giving new life to many prior-gen classics. Now that the primary Citra is ceasing updates, CitraVR will also lose out on much of its potential. Emulation typically offers benefits like Save States (the ability to save anywhere, even in games that did not originally include that feature) and translation patches for games that were never officially localized.

Yuzu allowed Switch game fans to play their Switch games in 4K, a feat the aging Switch hardware cannot match. In many respects, these benefits make gaming via emulation more enjoyable than the original hardware. Whatever a person may feel regarding the ethics of emulation, in the current legal landscape, questions of legality or right and wrong are irrelevant. If one party has far more disposable income for legal fees than the other, they will have their way. Nintendo has notoriously deep pockets. If it turns its ire towards any small development team or fan project, it wins by default.

Playing current-gen games via emulation is harder for a developer like Tropic Haze to justify, perhaps, as Nintendo’s suit referenced anecdotes of players using Yuzu to play Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before its official release date. Killing off Citra, conversely, is harder for Nintendo to justify. Without an e-store to buy 3DS games, fans are forced to buy secondhand copies or resort to emulation. A niche title like Yo-Kai Watch 3 that sold for $39.99 USD on the e-store before its closure now costs upwards of $300 for a copy of the cartridge alone without a box.

When Nintendo frames the argument with a focus on a title that is still actively for sale, being leaked before its release and played via emulation on Yuzu, like Tears of the Kingdom, the lawsuit’s failure may have seemed less assured for Tropic Haze. Nintendo’s stronger arguments certainly center on Yuzu, and the fact that one team made it, as well as the strongest 3DS emulator, could be seen as a happy coincidence for the company. It is unfortunate for fans, as Nintendo ended 3DS e-sales and then shut down Citra, a reasonable alternative to massively inflated secondary market prices.

Due to the fall of Citra, all of the best 3DS games ever, and niche cult classics alike, are now inaccessible to most fans. Those who support Nintendo as a corporate entity may rejoice at the settlement, but some fans of Nintendo games, including the entirety of the 3DS library, now suffer for it, as myopic corporate litigation once again harms the preservation of the video gaming hobby's past and access to a decade's worth of titles.