R4 card works on Nintendo 3DS V11.11.0-43E. You can use R4 3ds to play free DS games on all firmware consoles. As to how to do that? The user guide is here.
R4 3ds Tutorial on 3DS v11.11.0-43E
Step A: Prepare your SD Card
R4 3ds card needs a memory microsd card to save and load files on Nintendo 3DS system consoles. So you should prepare a sd card for using it. It can be a brand new micro sd or you can just format an old sd card.
Which microsd card are recommended for R4 3DS? The Sandisk brand and the 8GB/16GB/32GB size are good options. Remember, before downloading anything to the sd card, format it with Fat32 or exFat.
Step B: Download R4 3DS Firmware
All R4 3DS have firmwares or kernels, it isn’t in the flashcard, so you should download it from each R4 official website. Here is a list of R4 3DS firmwares for hacking 3DS V11.11.0-43E.
- Wood V1.64 from r4ids.cn for R4i gold 3ds plus.
- V1.85b from R4i-sdhc.com for R4i 3ds sdhc rts.
- V4.0b from R4isdhc.com for R4 3ds gold pro 2019.
- V4.0b from R4isdhc.com for R4 3ds dual core 2019.
- V4.0b from R4isdhc.com for R4 3ds rts lite.
- V1.74b from R4i-gold.eu for R4 3ds gold eu.
After download the R4 3ds firmware to your PC, you will get a zipped file, decompress it and copy all the contents to your SD Card root directory.
Step C: Download R4 3DS Emulators
R4 3DS plays DS games, but if you also want to play other games such as GBC, GB, SNES, NES and so on, you need to download R4 3DS emualtors to the sd card as well.
Where to find the R4 3DS emulators, go here https://anxchip.com/content/8-r43ds.
Step D: Download R4 3DS Roms
R4 3DS roms is the DS roms not 3DS roms, you must have many .nds games in your sd card. So your R4 3DS can load them on your consoles. Just google ds rom download sites, you can find a lot of websites online.
Step E: Boot R4 Menu on Nintendo 3DS
Once you have R4 firmware and roms on the sd card, you can insert the sd card to your R4 3DS, then put the R4 card to your 3DS firmware handheld. Then the console will recognize the R4 flashcard, you will see R4 menu loaded on your device. It means everything is ready, you can play free games and homebrews.
How to use R4 3DS to play Nintendo 3ds games?
On the 3DS FW 11.11.0-43, some R4 3ds can be used to play 3ds games as well. But, this is a method to use R4 card to install custom firmware on Nintendo 3DS, so you can download .cia 3ds games from online sites, then drag the .cia files to the 3DS sd card, then you can enjoy Nintendo 3ds games. It Never means R4 card supports 3DS Games.
Which R4 3DS can be used to install 3DS CFW? The R4i 3ds gold plus, R4i 3ds b9s, R4 3ds gold pro and other R4 I mentioned on the above are all compatible with NTRboothax, so they can support booting CFW on Nintendo 3DS/3DS XL consoles.
Among them, the Best R4 3ds for cracking 3DS 11.11.0-43E is R4i 3ds gold plus, you can buy from many online R4 stores, such as the Italian seller Modswitchit.com and the USA retailer Anxchip.com.
