3DS Hacked To Disable Region Lock, Also Disables Piracy On Flashcard

In a shocking development, hackers have revealed that they have successfully broken into the region locking on the 3DS.

This hack requires use a DS Flashcard, such as the notorious Gateway flashcard for 3DS and that you have a 3DS unit updated to version 4.1 to 4.5. However, and this is the interesting part, the people behind the said hack have set it so that you will not be able to play any roms or pirated carts with it, only official cartridges.

It’s also an elegantly simple solution. If you have the Gateway firmware, you simply patch this newly released hex into it, put it into your flashcard, put the flashcard into your 3DS and load the modified launcher. When you do, you’ll find that your 3DS is now region free, and you can play games from anywhere in the world on it.

I made note of how the hack has been enabled in such a way that it will not let you play roms. This is a clear change in how hackers are approaching mods and hacks on the 3DS. Many Nintendo fans have expressed their desire NOT to be able to pirate games on the new system, preferring to compensate the developers. On the flip side, the fan campaign to make Nintendo consoles region free has never really lost support.

Nintendo may find a way to fix this with the next patch, but I can see some core gamers already going out of their way to get multiple 3DSes and make one offline just to play games from different regions. Of course,  Nintendo could also reverse policy and make the 3DS region free, but would they do so? Post eShop, would they still be able to do so? We’ll make sure to report future developments.

Image is of Japan only 3DS game Tomodachi Collection.