This promising Nintendo 3DS emulator just got a hefty update

There are a few nifty Nintendo 3DS emulators on the market, and Tanuki3DS is another promising app for desktop users. The app has steadily made improvements since its initial release, and we’ve now got a big update.

The developer behind Tanuki3DS has released version 0.5 of the emulator, bringing quite a few additions and fixes. Perhaps the most notable addition is camera and microphone emulation. That’s great news for games like Spirit Camera, Face Raiders, and Nintendogs Plus Cats, which all use the camera and/or microphone in some capacity.

The update also offers GPU emulation improvements, targeting lighting, normal mapping, shadow mapping, and fog. That’s great news and should fix graphical bugs in some titles.

Other notable items on the version 0.5 changelog include keyboard remapping, a new game list UI, and motion control fixes. The version 0.5 release comes after a few more noteworthy updates earlier this year. These older updates brought features like FMV playback support, motion control support, a graphical settings menu (instead of editing a config file), support for the 3DS software keyboard, and full-screen mode.

Tanuki3DS isn’t based on a pre-existing 3DS emulator like Citra, making this project all the more impressive. The emulator isn’t available on Android, but you can give it a try on Windows, Linux, or MacOS.