The reGTA Collection Nintendo 3DS port is real, it works, and it covers three games: GTA III, Vice City, and Liberty City Stories, all running on Nintendo’s clamshell handheld courtesy of fan developer @EpicReds0817. The ports are built on the reverse-engineered codebases known as re3, reVC, and reLCS, and they have been restructured specifically for the New 3DS family’s controls, screen layout, and processing headroom.
What the reGTA Collection Nintendo 3DS Port Actually Delivers
Each game has been given its own lower-screen interface on the 3DS’s second display. GTA III uses a dark-blue interface with faster loading, smoother streaming, removed motion blur, and fixes for vehicle materials and several crashes. The final mission plays ‘Push It to the Limit’. Vice City gets a pink lower-screen interface, faster loading, restored particles and vehicle highlights, and fixes for character and vehicle polygons, water seams, and flight-related crashes, with ‘Self Control’ closing out the story. Liberty City Stories rounds things off with a red lower-screen interface, lightweight vehicle reflections, and the completion of the previously unfinished reStories/reLCS campaign implementation for the New Nintendo 3DS. Fixes there cover missions, saves, world changes, cutscenes, and vehicle bugs, and the final mission plays ‘Chase’.
Touch controls and a cheat-code keyboard are included across all three titles. EpicReds0817 notes that side missions and other optional activities have not yet been verified, but the main story can be played through in its entirety in each game.
One fix buried in the REGTA-3DSPort-Complete repository on GitHub is worth calling out: a correction for PS2 fog disappearing after building fades or shader changes, an issue described as most noticeable at certain camera angles in Liberty City Stories. Anyone who has played reLCS on PC will recognise how jarring that fog pop can be in the denser city areas, so having it addressed in the 3DS build is a genuine improvement.
Hardware Requirements and How to Build the Ports
Not every 3DS will run this. The reGTA Collection Nintendo 3DS port requires a New Nintendo 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS XL, or New Nintendo 2DS XL, or any system capable of running 3DSX builds. The original Nintendo 3DS and the original 2DS lack the extra processing power and memory that the New 3DS family provides, and they will not run the ports.
Building the ports requires the devkitARM toolchain, which is not bundled in the release. You supply your own legally acquired ROM for each game. Runtime overrides and HOME Menu artwork are included. The executables are not.
For GTA III specifically, the re3-3DS repository on GitHub ships four separate 3DSX files: re3.3dsx, re3-stereo.3dsx, re3-txd.3dsx, and re3-stereo-txd.3dsx. The stereo and TXD variants give builders options depending on their preferred audio output and texture-dictionary handling, which is the kind of thoughtful build structure that makes a community port genuinely usable rather than just technically impressive.
Why This Matters for the New 3DS as a Platform
The New 3DS family was discontinued years ago, yet here it is running three open-source reconstructions of PS2-era Rockstar titles, complete with colour-coded second-screen maps, touch-enabled cheat menus, and properly sequenced mission saves. The Z80-era instinct to squeeze performance from constrained hardware never really went away, it just relocated to ARM cores and devkitARM makefiles.
The reGTA Collection Nintendo 3DS build is available to compile now. Head to the REGTA-3DSPort-Complete repository on GitHub, read the build instructions carefully, and have your ROMs ready. The main campaigns of all three games are completable from start to finish.
