Topic: Before I buy Animal Crossing: New Leaf, I need a favor

I've been thinking about buying Animal Crossing: New Leaf, however I need someone who has the game to do a favor for me before I buy it.

Let me explain why I'm asking first. My 3DS's control pad down button is jammed and will continue to press itself and I can not stop it. So any game that requires the down button on the control pad as a main form of control usually limits my gameplay. Such as Kingdom Hearts 3D, my action command menu scrolled downwards on its own and would not let me use an attack in that list due to the constant scrolling. I had to beat the game with the keyblade's basic attacks, reality shifts, flowmotions, and rely on dream eaters abilities to heal me. Another example is Heroes of Ruin. I could not attack at all. So I gave it to my brother for Christmas due to the inability to get past the first 2 minutes of gameplay.

so here's the favor. I need someone with AC:NL to go into the game, preferably start a new character to see if problems arise from the beginning of the game, and hold the down button while trying to play the game. Tell me if it limits movement, NPC interactions, basic actions such as using tools, picking flowers, etc. please test thoroughly for me and tell me if it limits anything and what is limited and what isn't. Make sure to hold the D-Pad down button at all times while testing it.

thanks to anyone who takes time out of their day to help me!

I think it would, because pressing down puts away your tools. Sorry about that! If you send an email to Nintendo though, they might repair it. If not, you can start a free Club Nintendo account, and you get a- I believe- a 60 day warranty for registering your 3DS.

I've already registered it and the warranty expired last year. It as jammed the day before the release of Kingdom Hearts 3D. Thank you for the advice on the controls however

To bad, but I'm glad I could help. I know it would take some time, but if you were to completely disassemble the 3DS, and put back together, you might be able to find where its messing up and fix it. That's what I did when my PSONE broke.

It's the connector in the down button. I've already taken the control pad off to look at what was causing it. The metal round connector that makes the button tell when it's being pressed but pushing itself down onto the button and popping back up when it's not being pressed was not popping up. I inspected the other connectors to see what their reaction to the button pressing process were and found that out. Not only that, but the crevice between the buttons (the buttons look like star-head screws) looks like its melted the button between the crevice, causing the metal that has melted between it to make the button detect a constant keypress. I took one connector off another button to see if it would help. It didn't do anything, but the original button that the connector was on worked fine after putting the connector on it. I'm assuming that leaving my 3DS on for 2 weeks straight and leaving it on the charger overnight had a negative effect on the controls, possibly due to overheating.

My 3DS is rarely fully turned off and is usually connected to preserve the battery so I doubt that had any effect on the controls.

I don't know if you're much into "modding", but if you have a spare DS you don't need, or you can buy a cheap DS lite, you could replace the direction pad using parts from the DS, and soldering the parts into place.

I actually didn't mod it at all. I just pried the control pad off, knowing I probably wouldn't be able to put it back on, just to see what was wrong with the button. I checked for dirt, there was a ton in the 3DS, cleaned it thoroughly and carefully and it still continued to act up. It may be an issue with the dirt because I remember when it first started acting up, I blew into the SD card slot (I know, not the smartest thing to do) and it would work fine for a day or two. Then, the day before the release of Kingdom Hearts 3D,blowing into the slot wouldn't work at all.

Edit: However, will soldering the D-Pad from an older model DS work on the 3DS? We haw a bunch of old broken DS Lites that my cousins broke, the only things wrong with then are the broken card readers (they stuck things other than games into a couple and broke it), the touch screens busted, etc. I'm pretty sure the control pads work on the Lites, but wouldn't that cause an incompatibility with the 3DS? If anything else, is there a website online that sells spare parts for the 3DS? I know DealExtreme only sells parts for the original DS's up to the DSi's because we ordered spare parts for the broken DS Lites from them.

I'm going to have to have an admin close this topic (unless I can do it myself since I created it) because I found out I CAN play AC:NL. My cousin got it for his 11th birthday a couple days ago and let me play it on my 3DS to see if it works. It works fine. There's no interference with the down button at all.