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 :)
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
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.
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?