Easily Install CitraVR To Play VR 3DS Games on Meta Quest
If you’ve ever wanted to play VR 3DS games on your Meta Quest 3 or 2 then you might have heard of the app CitraVR. It’s a version of the popular emulation application Citra built specifically to run on Oculus Quest devices.
Once you have CitraVR installed on your Quest then you can play Nintendo 3DS games on your Quest headset without having to keep it connected to a PC. All for free!
Citra VR even has special settings that make 3DS games even more immersive in VR by wrapping the view of the game around your Virtual Reality 3D perspective. Essentially putting you inside of your favorite 3DS games using the magic of Virtual Reality.
So in this article, we’ll get into how to set up and install CitraVR so that you can play 3DS games on your Oculus Quest 2 or 3 device. Here’s how.
How To Install CitraVR On Your Meta Quest Device - Prerequisites
Before we get into the installation process here are a few things that you will need before you get started. There’s no point wasting your time attempting to install CitraVR before you meet these prerequisites:
A PC.
A cable that can connect your PC to your Quest, aka a “Link cable”: If you don’t have one there are official Oculus LInk Cables. Though if you don’t want to spend as much money there are third party cables available from amazon.
Emulation game files for the games you want to play in VR on your PC. CitraVR will only work with these filetypes: .rom, .cci, .3ds (.cia files did not work with this method). Some games may not work well and unfortunately, there is no reliable compatability list to check before you try.
Enough storage space on your Oculus Quest device to fit all of the game files you will be moving to it.
SideQuest, the popular sideloading application for the Quest. Installing it is very straightforward, but will not be covered in this article. Luckily there is a complete guide already.
If you have all of these things then you have everything that you need to install CitraVR on your Oculus Quest 3 or 2. Here’s how to download and install CitraVR.
How To Install Citra VR On Your Oculus Quest Device - Add Your 3DS Game Files
You’ve got all of the prerequisites and are ready to install CitraVR, so let’s get started.
First, you’ll need to connect your headset to your PC with your link cable. Once one end of the cable is connected to your computer then put the other into the charging port on the side of your headset.
Make sure you have your headset on, or put it on quickly, after you connect the cable. There may be some popups asking you to allow USB debugging, but most importantly a little prompt that asks you whether you want to allow access to files on the newly connected device.
This prompt will appear just above your home menu bar, so make sure that you are looking at your home menu and click it in time.
Unfortunately the popup text did not show up in recording, but it will appear here.
If you miss this popup then you’ll have to disconnect the cable from your headset and reconnect it again so that it will appear once more.
When you click it successfully a new file explorer window will appear on your PC. It contains all of the files in your Quest. Open in up and you’ll see every folder inside of your Meta Quest.
Create a new folder on your PC. Name it whatever you like. In the example, it’s named “ROMs.” Move all of your 3DS game files into the ROMs folder.
Add a folder to here, like the “ROMs” folder you see here.
This is the folder where Citra VR will both be set up and access your game files. Once all of your 3DS games are moved over to your Quest disconnect the cable. You won’t need it or your PC for the rest of this guide.
How To Install CitraVR On Your Oculus Quest Device - Installing Citra VR
Put your Oculus Quest on and go to the “Unknown Sources” section of your app library.
To do this open your app library like you normally would to play a game on your Quest and then click on the “Applications” button in the top left to open your applications page. Once this menu is open click the dropdown button in the top right that is set to “All” by default. A dropdown menu will appear, click on it and then click on “Unknown Sources”.
SideQuest will download and install CitraVR for you, easy peasy.
From thee “Unknown Sources” menu launch SideQuest. As mentioned in the prerequisites you’ll need SideQuest installed to follow this guide.
Once SideQuest loads go to the search bar and search for “citra” or “citravr” and the CitraVR application will pop right up. Click on it to open the CitraVR SideQuest page and press the download button.
Just as with downloading any other SideQuest app you’ll soon see a popup in the bottom right of the SideQuest window stating that CitraVR has been installed successfully. Exit SideQuest once Citra VR is installed.
How To Install CitraVR On Your Meta Quest Device - Setting Up CitraVR
Go back to the “Unknown Sources” page in your app library and launch new the CitraVR app.
Click the dropdown in the top right to go to the Unknown Sources menu.
When you first launch CitraVR you’ll get a menu asking you to set up the application. When you see this hit the big green “Get Started” button.
Then it will prompt you to grant Citra VR permission to use your microphone and camera. Give CitraVR every permission that it asks for and once each step is completed hit the “Next” button in the bottom right corner of the app.
After granting permissions, you’ll get a new prompt asking you to select your User folder. Luckily you already have a folder ready to go, the one you created in the first step of this guide.
Just hit the big green “Select” button and in the following menu select the folder you created earlier. After selecting the folder hit the blue “Use This Folder” button at the bottom of the page, hit “Allow” when asked to confirm, and hit “OK” on the final popup.
Use the folder you created earlier as the User and Game folders.
Next, you will be prompted to select your Games folder, which is done in exactly the same way as selecting your User folder. We’ll also be using the exact same folder, so just repeat what you just did for the User folder.
Once that’s done you have successfully installed, configured, and run CitraVR! Congratulations.
Using Citra VR
Once you’re presented with the Citra VR main menu you’ll get a few popups telling you that games may experience stutters and that all games may not work well. Keep this in mind. Not all VR 3DS games will work as well as you might hope, but many do.
CitraVR will run with some stutters at first, but they get better.
Once you’re done with these popups you’ll be presented with your games folder, which should have all of the games that you previously moved over to your CitraVR folder.
If some or all of your 3DS games do NOT appear:
Check the file types of the game files. These are the compatible filetypes: .rom, .cci, .3ds (.cia files did not work with this method)
Go to the Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the top left and check that your Game folder directory is set correctly to the folder containing your game files
Restart CitraVR
Restart your Quest headset
Keep in mind that not all 3DS games will work well, or at all, with Citra VR. This is third party software and so they can’t guarantee full compatibility with all 3DS Nintendo games.
Once you launch a 3DS game in VR successfully it will appear in front of you as two large mixed reality screens, one for the top screen and one for the bottom. You can interact with the bottom 3DS screen by clicking it with one of your controller pointers, and the top screen by using your touch controller’s buttons and joysticks.
In the settings menu, you’ll also find an “Immersive Mode” which will wrap the upper screen around your view when you play a game. It might not look fantastic on all 3DS games but it is definitely worth a try to get the most out of Virtual Reality 3DS gaming. There are also a ton of options to increase the graphical fidelity of your Virtual Reality 3DS games, but these may cause performance issues.
Well, hopefully, this guide helped you to get started in the wonderful world of 3DS VR games with the CitraVR emulator. Enjoy!
