Still have one of these old things? Nintendo might not make them anymore, but they're still useful.
With rapidly innovating game markets, there's no room anymore for a console that just exists to be used indefinitely. No "blue ocean" business model, just an endless supply of new consoles to replace the old. And with the Switch 2 finally coming out, I went back to the only Nintendo console I still own. A Nintendo 3ds, obtained day 1 at Target in 2011.
Turns out I still had some pretty good games for it. Star Fox, Ocarina of Time, Fire Emblem. But there were also a lot I remember wanting to play, but never got around to. Games like Majora's Mask and Shovel Knight. I also had misplaced my old copy of Mariokart 7. Looking online, some of these games can be worth hundreds of dollars to buy, did I miss my shot at ever experiencing these games for myself?
No. Thanks to archival websites like Vimm's Lair and Emuparadise we still have access to these games in the form of ROMs - digital copies of video game cartridges. These ROMs can be run on emulators such as Citra and Dolphin. But that's only possible to do on a supported computer; how do we download these files onto our 3ds and play them on the original hardware?
Introducing... 3ds jailbreaking! https://3ds.hacks.guide/
Jailbreaking your 3ds allows you to install custom firmware on the device and gives you full control of all the device internals. There are easy guides you can follow online, and helpful folks in the forums as well. In addition to allowing you to install 3ds ROMs off the internet, you can also...
And so much more!
In addition to the main draw of playing all your favorite discontinued 3ds games, there are two other major reasons I personally wanted to mod my 3ds. The first was console emulation. The truth is, the 3ds can emulate way more than just 3ds games.
You're probably already familiar with the fact that you can play classic DS games on your 3ds as well, simply by plugging in the game cartridge. Naturally, there's an emulator for these games too. And that's not all! Community developers have integrated emulators from many more classic consoles, including the NES, SNES, Gameboy and Gameboy Advance. You can play games never even ported to the 3ds in the first place! I personally recommend TWiLight Menu++ for a nice suite of emulators.
The second reason I had for jailbreaking my 3ds was less out of curiosity and more out of necessity. On April 8th, 2024, Nintendo took down all online services supporting the 3ds. That includes, perhaps most relevantly, online multiplayer and the eshop. It was a long run, but ultimately the moustached man decided we weren't profitable anymore and cut us off. 3ds players have become completely isolated.
As if. As long as self-hosting is legal, fans will run their own servers, that much has been made clear. There's a Nintendo network alternative currently running called the Pretendo network. If you're lucky, their servers wont have been taken down by Nintendo by the time of reading, and if so, I sincerely hope there is some other alternative out there. These servers bring online multiplayer back for all supported games, so all you need to take care of is finding active players.
Ultimately, I just wanted to plug all these dedicated creators making content for a console released over a decade ago, y'all are really amazing. As for you, dear reader, what are you waiting for? Dust off that old console of yours and give it some love.