While most Pretendo users play Minecraft Wii U Edition due to its support for 8 players online (it’s a great version for many other reasons as well besides this, don’t get me wrong), I’ve always found the 3DS version a lot cooler personally. It has its own unique feel and vibe from any other version of the game due to the sacrifices made to get it to even run on the 3DS at all, and as such it has a distinct charm to it I really enjoy.
One of those sacrifices made, unfortunately, was the game having any sort of online multiplayer functionality. It didn’t even launch with multiplayer at all, and it took until the final update for it to even get a multiplayer mode, limited to only 2 players locally. Despite the limitations, multiplayer on Minecraft 3DS from what I’ve seen looks really fun. It’s something I’d like to try sometime, but as I don’t live near anyone who has their own 3DS and a copy of Minecraft, I’m out of luck. At least, I would be, if I were playing on real hardware.
3DS emulators have come a long way since they first released. Citra, while now discontinued, paved the way for 3DS emulation for many years, and Azahar, a continuation project picking up where Citra left off, has itself pushed 3DS emulation further than ever before. One of the cool features it has these days is the ability to play local multiplayer 3DS games over the internet.
Azahar has an online lobby system where you can host and join games within the emulator. When you join someone else’s lobby, Azahar tunnels the 3DS’s local multiplayer functionality through the internet, allowing you to play games with no online support and only local multiplayer features online for the first time. While Pretendo is fantastic for the games it supports, Azahar’s multiplayer feature greatly extends the number of 3DS games you can play online.
I haven’t seen anyone try it yet, but if you have a device capable of running Azahar and would like to try playing Minecraft 3DS online together sometime, let me know. Hosting a lobby on there looks pretty straightforward outside of the need to port forward (something I can do, so I can be the host if it makes things easier), so it should be pretty easy.
It’s one of my favorite features of it for sure, it’s pretty similar to Dolphin’s netplay feature with the way they’ve set it up. A lot of folks have been playing games like Monster Hunter, Super Smash Bros. and the Pokémon games on there through the local multiplayer modes those have. Despite the fact Pretendo lets you play those online like Nintendo Network used to, I think a lot of people using Azahar aren’t aware Pretendo exists and just use the multiplayer lobby system it has for playing games online instead, since it’s built directly into the emulator. I haven’t tried it myself, but from what I’ve seen of it, it looks really smooth. This video shows it off pretty well for Pokémon specifically at the 20 minute mark. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_yp_hVU-EE&t=20m )
They use it to connect their desktop and laptop, both running Azahar, together to do a battle and a trade for the Virtual Console version of Pokémon Crystal. The lobby they connect to in the video is one of the public lobbies hosted specifically for the Virtual Console Pokémon games, but you can also do something like this over a local connection as well since the lobby system is optional. You can alternatively play games together with a friend by just giving them your IP address and port number, which they can use to connect to you directly, so the multiplayer feature isn’t dependent on the public lobby system for it to work. Dolphin’s netplay feature works the same way.
Recently the Android version of Azahar was updated to include support for this feature as well, so it’s not exclusive to PCs anymore which is really cool. You can now take advantage of this feature on mobile devices to do multiplayer locally with a friend who has Azahar on their phone or tablet, just like you would with a real 3DS, but you can also connect to each other remotely since Azahar doesn’t have a limit to the range you have to be within to connect to someone else, unlike the 3DS. I think being able to enjoy these local features online is going to breathe a lot of new life into 3DS games as time goes on and help preserve these experiences that would otherwise be relegated to obscurity given the need for multiple consoles, copies of games and friends nearby to be able to experience them normally.
It was a feature in Citra as well for a very long time, believe you had to have an account to use it though. I could be wrong but I believe either Ryujinx or Yuzu also had it?
