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Homebrew

Like the DS, the 3DS has a pretty active homebrew community. Even still after the release of the Switch. There's a compelling argument to make that with homebrew, the New 3DS is the ultimate portable game platform.

Make sure to check the DS Homebrew article for more.

To hack your 3DS, checkout the guide at https://3ds.guide More homebrew can be found here.

A note: some of the more intensive stuff perform more sluggish on the Old 3DS and 2DS. The New 3DS and New 2DS have better performance of everything.

Games

Title Genre Description
Half Life (Xash3DS) FPS Yes, Half Life on the freakin' 3DS! Some crazy Russians managed to reverse engineer GoldSource and made it open source (Xash 3D). This port is based on that. Runs a bid sluggish on O3DS, but performs better on the N3DS.
Quake 1 FPS Pretty great port. Even includes online multiplayer!
Quake 2 FPS Pretty basic port. Runs in software mode, but performs decently.
Quake 3 Arena FPS Pretty good port. Somewhat sluggish on O3DS.
Doom (PrBoom) FPS Includes Music playback that the DS port lacks.
Wolfenstein 3D FPS Pretty basic port.
Duke Nukem 3D (EDuke3D)] FPS Hail to the King baby! Runs pretty well. Sadly, Ion Fury isn't compatible but could be if someone bothers to update the port.
Lemmings Puzzle It's Lemmings on the 3DS. Yep.

Emulators

Title System(s) Description
Retroarch 2nd-4th Gen systems, PS1, et.al Offical port by the libretro team. The basic cores (2048, NES) run full speed on O3DS, while everything else is near full speed. N3DS has better performance. Even PS1 emulation works extremely well on there. O3DS users might want to check on the other emulators belows for better performance. N3DS users might want to stick with this for all your emulation needs.
mGBA Game Boy family (GB/GBC/GBA) Offical port by the original dev. Runs pretty well. Also great for GB/GBC games as well. Supports the gy
SNES9x Super Nintendo Most games run full speed on O3DS. SA-1 and Super FX chip games have performance issues. But on the N3DS, everything runs full speed. There's also [ BlargSNES] if you have issues with this one.
VirtuaNES NES / Famicom Good emulator, but not super accurate. Retroarch has Nestopia UE core if accuracy matters to you.
PicoDrive Mega Drive / Mega CD / Master System / Game Gear Pretty good Sega 8/16-bit emulator. No 32x support like the Retoarch core elsewhere.

Utilities

Title Type Description
TWiLightMenu++ Menu Replacement An open source replacement for the DSi Menu. Can be used to launch DS and DSi games from your SD card slot. No Flashcart required.
Luma3DS CFW (Custom Firmware) The best CFW for the 3DS. Pretty noob proof.