Breakdown
- A new developer is taking over work on the Citra 3DS emulator
- The emulator was removed following Nintendo’s lawsuit against Yuzu
- The emulator will be renamed to Lemonade
A new developer has revealed plans to continue development of the Citra 3DS emulator. Killed alongside the closure of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, the beloved emulator has been removed from GitHub.
Other emulators have also been affected by the closure of Yuzu. For example, the decade-old DS emulator Drastic has been made free prior to its removal. Even Pizza Emulator, a years-old Game Boy emulator, is being killed by its developers.
However, Citra is set to live on, albeit with a new developer behind the scenes. Gamer64, the mind behind Citra-Enhanced, will be continuing the emulator’s development as well as rebranding the software as Lemonade.
“I wanna inform everyone that Citra Enhanced is going to be **continued and rebranded** due to the end of citra development,” the developer said on Discord (via Reddit). “I'll rebrand the project with a new name (Lemonade) due to the reasons that we all know.”
Gamer64 did tell fans that there’s some bad news related to their continued development of the emulator. In recent months, Citra development switched to the cross-platform programming language Kotlin. While most of the emulator is still coded in C++, the developer needs to learn the new coding language
“Citra switched to Kotlin language, and I have zero experience on it still,” the developer told fans. “I may be a bit worse now or slower until I get adapted to it.
The developer told fans that the first release of Lemonade will take a while, but it should come in the near future. While many developers are jumping ship from the emulation community over fear of litigation from Nintendo, others are taking up the mantle to further the technology’s development.
Emulation fans have responded very positively to the news of the continued development of the Citra 3DS emulator, even if it has to be rebranded.
“Godbless you. This is why I love this community,” said one fan. “Thank you! I hope your work goes well, sounds like a lot of work. You're amazing!” said another.
While the death of Yuzu has been a huge blow for the emulation community, there will always be others to pick up the torch.