Switch & Emulation News: GameCard Installer NX 2.0 released with faster install speed & more while Citra gets savestate, New 3DS & texture upscaling support!
Today, it’s Nintendo’s time to shine as both the Switch and 3DS scenes received some pretty nice stuff. In this article, we’re going to look at GameCard Installer NX 2.0 and support for save states, New 3DS emulation and texture upscaling in Citra!
Switch Release: GameCard Installer NX 2.0 with faster install times and more
Digital games aren’t for everyone especially those with a hacked Switch as getting your console and Nintendo account banned are both realities you’ll probably face if you aren’t extremely careful.
With GameCard Installer NX, you can get the benefits of digital games with physical games albeit with some limitations like no online gaming
As a result, many with hacked consoles opt for physical games but these require you to carry about the game carts themselves but TotalJustice’s GameCard Installer NX removes that requirement and makes physical games as convenient as digital games since it lets you install physical games to the NAND or an SD Card!
Now, GameCard Installer NX 2.0 has been released which is a sizeable update to this immediately popular homebrew utility released in January. Among the things this update brings along, we find:
- Game card installation speeds are now faster as textures are entirely cached
- This provided speeds of up to 40MiB/s when installing a game to the Switch’s NAND
- A Settings & Game Information Menu to see more info about the game card you’re installing
- It is now possible to disable sounds and background music playback in the utility itself
- An issue was fixed in which only the base game was installed, sigpatches aren’t needed for the app anymore and some other stuff which can be found in the change log linked below
You may grab GameCard Installer NX and read its full change log from its GitHub Release Page.
3DS Emulation: Citra gains save state, New 3DS and resolution upscaling support
The Citra Team have implemented many useful features found in many respectable emulators!
Earlier this week, the Citra Team posted on Twitter that their 3DS emulator, which is effectively the de facto emulator for the console, received a nice deal of features that many have wanted for quite a while. In a series of tweets posted over a 2 day period, the Citra Team announced the addition of some features already available in many popular emulators for other consoles which include:
- An EXPERIMENTAL Save States feature
- Through this, you can finally save wherever you want and go back there when you want so if you mess up in Pokèmon, you’ll still be fine 😉
- Support for some New 3DS games
- The ability to upscale textures from the 3DS’ abysmal 800×240 & 320×240 resolutions
- This makes games look better on larger resolutions screens through texture filtering although the effect may not please all users
For the latest updates, follow Citra’s Twitter Page – You may download the latest Citra builds from here. Donations may be done through Patreon to support future development of the emulator.
Conclusion
Other than what’s mentioned in this article, the emulation scene also received some noteworthy such as the public release of Cemu 1.18.0 (change log), Dolphin’s February & March Progress Report & Cxbx’s March Progress Report. On the Vita front, Rinnegatamante has released vitaRTCW 0.3 with major performance improvements, a mem leak fix and much more!
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Isn’t a tool of this sort used to be called the ROM dumper back in the olden days? There seem to be a disconnect in the current generation of console hackers and the old ones or people just think its not trendy any more?
Kind of, because this is not a ROM dumper per se. There are ROM dumpers and this is not it. This is just an util to take a cartridge and fully install it (e.g not requiring the cartridge to be there anymore) on NAND. And you could potentially take this install and make a ROM out of it but most people wouldn’t even know where to start, so that would be a stretch to even say it allows you to do that.
Not really, they aren’t ROMs anymore. Haven’t been on most consoles for a couple generations.
is “texture filtering ” thing were real? i tought it was an april fools joke.
C’mon… even preview for this feature, screenshots just seem like a smudge on screen 🙁
i don’t want to believe someone used energy on this. No one wants that. old games are great as they are. resolution upgrade / save states / integer scale ect. those are great features. but changing how game look is something else imho.
Emulating 3DS to play minecraft must be the dumbest thing one could posibly do.
Kinda wishing I hadn’t sold my hacked switch now. The community for it is doing some amazing things.