3Beans

3Beans emulates the 3DS at a low level, which means that it runs the entire OS as if it were on real hardware. It can boot the home menu and launch some games, but it's still young and has plenty of issues. It has both software and hardware GPU rendering, but CPUs are still fully interpreted. My goal for this project is to achieve viable speeds with full low-level emulation, and maybe explore some high-level elements down the road.

To function, 3Beans requires files dumped from an old or new 3DS system. Old 3DS is preferable for the best performance and stability, but either console with homebrew access will work. At minimum, you'll need boot9.bin, boot11.bin, and nand.bin, all of which can be obtained using GodMode9. You might also want to create sd.img, which can be any FAT-formatted image file to serve as an SD card. These files can be configured in the path settings.

Once the necessary files are present, 3Beans should function like the system they were dumped from. Controls can be viewed and changed in the Settings menu. You can boot without a cartridge through the System menu, or select one through the File menu. If you want to skip the home menu and load directly into a game, you can use the Cart Auto-Boot setting. Note that 3Beans requires encrypted cartridge dumps, unlike high-level emulators which typically expect decrypted ones. GodMode9 can dump both encrypted and decrypted ROMs, so make sure you get the right one.