Azahar will no longer offer Anbernic-specific support after the manufacturer promoted AzaharPlus. Earlier interviews with OpenSauce and PabloMK7 offer context.

The two developers behind Azahar have announced that they’re dropping official support for Anbernic retro handhelds, following the company’s decision to promote its upcoming 3DS-esque dual screen RG DDS using AzaharPlus, an unofficial fork of the 3DS emulator.

I spoke at length with Azahar’s two lead developers, OpenSauce and PabloMK7, some time ago for a separate interview, and looking back through their answers, I realized a few were particularly relevant to what’s happening now. I’ve included some of those comments in this article, alongside a look at what prompted the decision, the differences between Azahar and AzaharPlus, and what it might mean for Anbernic owners.

Again, this is a much, much shorter ‘article’ than my usual work, so it is on my NeoCities page/experiment this time, rather than my usual site :)

  • warmasterEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    The users will suffer the most. I hope they can solve their issues.

  • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    41·
    2 days ago

    AzaharPlus is much more comfortable for a 3ds user. With a modded console you can use FBI to extract your games to cia format and play them as is on AzaharPlus; instead of being forced to decrypt it on an external tool which adds one unnecessary step to Azahar

    • FunwayguyEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      If I had to guess, decryption is intentionally kept separated to limit Nintendo’s lawyers from going nuclear on them, even if it is less user friendly.

  • rdriEnglish
    32·
    2 days ago

    Hardware is still there and probably worth supporting. Users are not going anywhere, and it wasn’t their fault that Anbernic (or rather, their PR person) decided to promote their new product with something that works easier for the end user.

    Also I’m just wondering how it would end if AzaharPlus would be called differently, without “Azahar” in its title. Would they still blame Anbernic? Would they blame that fork authors instead for basically the same thing they did themselves with Citra?

  • mlgEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    All these fancy new DS hardware models and I’ve gotten lazy about my wireless multiplayer project I’m supposed to go research and work on lol.

    I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally want to buy this console for family and friends so we can play multiplayer just like the DS/3DS era but MelonDS (and Azahaar AFAIK) only implemented the protocol over the regular network stack which makes it almost impossible to play over WiFi and just barely doable over Ethernet because the DS needs <20 microseconds of “packet” latency.

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.mlEnglish
      31·
      2 days ago

      I don’t think it’s hypocritical to ask for money to develop an emulator. There is nothing wrong with this to me. Regardless who said it or says it, that’s not the point. But distributing hardware with an Open source project that can emulate, and put Roms and sell this for money is nor just morally wrong, but also illegal. Usually emulator developers want to distance themselves from this, because its illegal and also their project and work would be associated with the illegal activity. There is nothing hypocritical about that.

      And that’s a general stance I have, not just about Anbernic or Azahar+ or anyone else, its a general statement by me.

      • 0x0@infosec.pubEnglish
        22·
        2 days ago

        They did nothing to the userbase, anbernic did by promoting unoriginal content

        Why should they support a project for free when that project doesnt support them?

        100% anbernic being twats here