Ladies and gentlemen, a new exploit allows 3DS to finally play games from different regions!
Remember ninjhax, the 3DS homebrew launcher that required a copy of the Ubisoft game Cubic Ninja in order to run? Its coder, smea, said that this hack could one day lead to region-free gaming. Unfortunately, Cubic Ninja became very difficult to find, not to mention expensive, once word broke out that it could be used to hack the hardware. Don't worry if you never scored a copy, though — Nintendo quickly released a firmware update that killed one of the exploits that allowed homebrew to launch, and smea suggested that it would be too much of a hassle to discover a new exploit for higher firmware versions.
But smea never forgot his promise to break region locking! Earlier today, he presented regionthree, which allows all non-New 3DS models to play games from anywhere, and it does so without the need to buy some out-of-print game or a flash card. Speaking of flash cards, this method uses the same exploit that the Gateway flash card uses to make 3DS region-free, only regionthree does so without allowing for piracy — way to stick it to Gateway!
To get regionthree working, you have to download a "Launcher.dat" file from smea's site, drop the file onto your 3DS card, insert an imported game, open the Download Play app, return home without closing Download Play, open the web browser, and visit the "http://go.scmods.com/" site. After a few seconds, your game will load. In smea's case, his Japanese copy of Smash 3DS actually displays English text, meaning that certain games contain both English and Japanese data.
Again, regionthree only works on old 3DS, 3DS XL, and 2DS models, not on New 3DS. On the plus side, it can run on the current firmware. As an added bonus, it also bypasses forced game card updates, so you can choose to skip firmware updates should Nintendo try patch out the exploit.
