The two developers behind Azahar have announced that they’re dropping official support for Anbernic retro handhelds, following the company’s decision to promote its upcoming 3DS-esque dual screen RG DDS using AzaharPlus, an unofficial fork of the 3DS emulator.
I spoke at length with Azahar’s two lead developers, OpenSauce and PabloMK7, some time ago for a separate interview, and looking back through their answers, I realized a few were particularly relevant to what’s happening now. I’ve included some of those comments in this article, alongside a look at what prompted the decision, the differences between Azahar and AzaharPlus, and what it might mean for Anbernic owners.
Again, this is a much, much shorter ‘article’ than my usual work, so it is on my NeoCities page/experiment this time, rather than my usual site :)
The users will suffer the most. I hope they can solve their issues.
Maybe Anbernic couldve made a donation first
Hardware is still there and probably worth supporting. Users are not going anywhere, and it wasn’t their fault that Anbernic (or rather, their PR person) decided to promote their new product with something that works easier for the end user.
Also I’m just wondering how it would end if AzaharPlus would be called differently, without “Azahar” in its title. Would they still blame Anbernic? Would they blame that fork authors instead for basically the same thing they did themselves with Citra?
Citra was discontinued though, it made sense to change the name.
AzaharPlus is much more comfortable for a 3ds user. With a modded console you can use FBI to extract your games to cia format and play them as is on AzaharPlus; instead of being forced to decrypt it on an external tool which adds one unnecessary step to Azahar
you can use FBI to extract your games to cia format
wtaf
Haha for context: the 3DS’s native format for apps/games/etc. is called “cia”, for some reason. Probably like “CTR installable application” or some shit, I dunno.
FBI is a pun on that, it’s a homebrew CIA installer tool.
– Frost
What is confusing?
If I had to guess, decryption is intentionally kept separated to limit Nintendo’s lawyers from going nuclear on them, even if it is less user friendly.
