Azahar 2126.0 RC2 adds Android multiplayer rooms and chat support

Azahar 2126.0 RC2 arrived as the kind of Android update that users feel the first time they open it. The release turned the mobile build into something much closer to the desktop version by adding multiplayer room support, including public room browsing, private room creation, private room joining, and built-in chat.

That Android multiplayer work was credited to Kleidis, rtiangha, Gamer64ytb, weihuoya, and PabloMK7 in GitHub issue #830, and it answers a long-running request for room support on phones and tablets. For 3DS emulation players who use Android as their everyday handheld, the practical change is simple: Azahar is no longer limited to booting games and settings menus on a touch screen. It can now handle the social side of multiplayer play too, even if public rooms still depend on a third-party web API and the emulator does not fully recreate local wireless play with a physical 3DS.

RC2 also mattered because it replaced a troubled first candidate. Azahar reuploaded 2126.0-rc1 as 2126.0-rc2 after a critical stability issue hit the Android build, and the project says release candidates are usually tested for about seven days before stable promotion unless a major problem forces a reset. That makes RC2 less of a flashy milestone and more of a recovery pass, aimed at getting testers back onto a build they can actually trust.

The Android fixes did not stop at networking. On some devices that use ANGLE, Azahar now forces the Vulkan backend when the OpenGL path is known to cause serious problems, a change that should help with the kind of device-specific rendering headaches Android users run into long before they max out performance. The changelog also says GPU interrupt queue and GPU timing emulation were improved, with an experimental Simulate 3DS GPU timings toggle left off by default. Those timing changes fix issues in Luigi’s Mansion 2: Dark Moon and a save-loading problem in Super Mario 3D Land, two titles that expose emulator accuracy problems fast.

The release also fixed swapped screenshot color channels on some platforms and system configurations, while the developers said they had revamped GDB debugging functionality with new features. That all fits the larger picture of Azahar’s Android push: fewer odd bugs, fewer device-specific surprises, and less friction between a game starting and a game actually playing correctly.

Azahar itself was formed from PabloMK7’s Citra fork and Lime3DS after Citra was taken down on March 4, 2024, and the project’s FAQ still says iOS support is not planned for the foreseeable future. For Android users, though, RC2 is the update that makes Azahar easier to recommend right now because it fixes the rough edges that matter most and finally brings multiplayer rooms to the phone build.