At over two years old, the 3DS has to date avoided the issue of flashcards that was prominent for the DS family of consoles. R4 cards enabled DS owners to download ROMS of games and boot them up from an external device, and now a company has released a video showing a flashcard loading three 3DS titles via a custom game card with micro-SD cards plugged in.
After some thoroughly unconvincing claims from various groups to have 'hacked' the 3DS in the past, this appears to be the first definitive demonstration, with the company in question claiming that the product is in the final stages of design. By going public, however, it opens up the likelihood of Nintendo taking whatever action it can to prevent the device spreading like the R4 cards. For its part, Nintendo has made clear that it will utilise system updates and the far more advanced online infrastructure of the 3DS — in comparison to the DS family of systems — to prevent the use of flashcards and brick offending systems.
Naturally ROMS are a tough topic, as advocates will defend their use as a means of backing up legally owned content, while it's widely acknowledged that many flashcard owners with a DS actually used the devices to download dozens or even hundreds of games they had not bought and, therefore, did not legally own.
The video is included below, but it's not our intention to directly link to the company's website in this article — though naturally the video in question advertises the web address. Should this device perform as it seems to in this video, then it's clearly an important issue for Nintendo and the 3DS. We encourage discussion around the topic and content of this article, but please observe our Community Rules, and refrain from straying from this specific topic or posting any links "to any download sites, torrents or other resources that allow users to gain access to illegal content or related activities". Thank you.
[source nintendo-insider.com, via neogaf.com]
Comments 160
Sad. Hopefully Nintendo can perma-brick any 3DS in which this flash card is inserted.
Ugh, here we go again.
Uh-oh...
Oh great... Just what we needed...
Geeze.
That awkward moment when someone pirates ACIV
PREPARE THE FIRMWARE UPDATES!!!!!
I don't think it'll be as bad as R4, as Nintendo can essentially prevent anyone using these things from going online (at all) with their 3DS, for fear of automatic updates bricking their systems. That's as I understand it, anyway.
This flash card is so bad that is not even wort the problem. You need to have 1 sd card for each game and thats is not worty.
Even though I am a pirate, I do not approve of gaming piracy. I prefer the treasure and rum kind
But this is really bad, I hope Nintendo keeps up with firmware updates to block these things, and works on a lawsuit to ban them. These items which allow illegal downloads of current-gen consoles are the single most damaging things to the gaming industry and community, especially to indie devs.
I don't intend to pirate anything, but I will statch one of these up asap. If others use it for piracy, screw them. I love playing with homebrew.
I can't tell you how much fun I had back in the day, when I was still a pre-teen, getting homebrew software on my Nintendo DS. It wasn't even the homebrew itself that made it so much fun, although being able to listen to music and watch movies on my DS was undoubtedly cool. It was the experience.
I still remember the night I got DSVNC working, remotely operating and using my computer from my small Nintendo DS Phat. It was laggy and not overly useful. But to me, it was an amazing accomplishment.
I remember the first time I ran DSLinux. I remember finding a crappy Smash Brothers DS homebrew game and showing it off to all of my friends. So many memories.
I love homebrew.
Send this video to Nintendo, PRONTO. We can't allow this to happen, this is really bad...
Oh, they did NOT just pirate Super Mario 3D Land...
Oh yes, get this to Nintendo straightaway.
I find it incredibly lame how people spend their time creating something like this to play games readily available at retail. Developers, designers, game artists, and so on spend months, years even, creating their games and people purchasing those games is how they make a living. How about these morons spend that time doing something good?
Shiver me timbers...
The DS may have sold a similar amount of systems as, say, the PS2 but the DS software sales were way below the PS2's because of the R4 card. Hopefully this wont be as big a problem with the 3DS's more advanced online blocking the cards with automatic updates.
I prefer to buy my 3DS games as the money isn't an issue and I enjoy having the real thing in a collection.
Things like this ruin it for anybody honest, developers and gamers alike.
If you want to report the video to Nintendo, copy the url address and send it via email through [email protected]
I take back my earlier comment. From what I can tell from the video, this flashcart isn't actually going to allow for homebrew, just pirated games. Notice how there isn't any game select menu. Chances are, the menu doesn't exist because they weren't able to create one.
Products that do nothing but enable piracy, without any legitimate use-case whatsoever, have no excuse to exist.
sigh, i hate stuff like this
if you have no money to afford games, go earn some money
stealing games is pathetic
nintendo is such a great company.. developing all these awesome games for us and...just coming up with so many fantastic ideas
if you want more of that.. support them and pay them for their work
And so the battle of flashcards continues..........
Whilst I have always been interested in homebrew possibilities, sadly this demonstrated flashcart shows it is only capable of piracy, not homebrew.
I am not interested in piracy, the only thing it could have possibly offered me is the ability to bring multiple games on one system, but the 3DS already does that with eShop software, and this flashcart is not capable of that much either.
Don't really see the point of this. Is the company going to offer to keep updating the cards each time Nintendo releases a new software version that is incompatible with their existing model? All Nintendo has to do is release a new update that detects the card, and then make future games require that version before they can be played, and these will suddenly be useless.
Get out.
@gsnap: I'm sorry?
I bet the red nailed lady (?) got mad at the last game.
@WaxxyOne
I was thinking that too, but it might not be that simple. The card appears to use an actual 3DS cart, which may circumvent any security hardwired into an original copy. On top of that, if all they are doing is replacing the code on the 3DS cart with that of a different game, then the 3DS might not be able to detect anything. That said, I'm sure a crew at Nintendo will be buying this right away and figuring out ways to bring it down hard. People need to show more restraint, this isn't cool at all.
This is why the age of cartridges are over, and the age of digital games are fast approaching. People who like to sell used games will not get to sell their games anymore.
Seriously though, some people just love to make games free for all so game companies can suffer. Let's stop that from happening and buy the original games.
i dont like stuff like that... playing with rom and flashcard makes the game feel cheap. and all your achievements in that game arent genuine. but that's my opinion.
Nice that there's no menu to choose ROMs.
Nicer that you need a different memory card for like every freaking game (or swap ROMS on a PC).
Nicer still that two of the three games tested posted error messages on startup.
Hopefully it's not going to be as extreme as the PSP piracy. . .
I hope Nintendo fixes this problem quickly and effectively.
Good news: in order to function, the inserted card needs to be identical in size to the rom on it or else it wont work. Meaning if it's a 2gb card and the game is less than that, it wont work. On top of that, the rom can't be altered in anyway either, and because of this it's also impossible to load multiple roms on it to select from. So yes it's far from usable.
But I mean this stuff is unfortunately inevitable, and at 2 years into it's lifespan with it still being not really a viable substitute to just buying the product this is a good sign we wont see any rampant piracy for some time.
I hate pirates and piracy.
Watching that video turned me on though. I liked the pirate lady's hands.
We don't need to know how you would plan to pirate games with such a device, thank you — TBD
That is crap. Pirating games is illegal, and can get your system taken away.
@ThomasBW84 The way this card works though, is it disguises itself as the game on the microSD card. Nintendo would essentially think you were playing an official copy of a game upon checking your activity log.
Stealing is wrong. I highly doubt you're using that pirated software to find clues about your missing father--and I CERTAINLY know you're not returning those games to the museums you got them from.
This is all the more reason I feel Nintendo should open the gate on the e shop and virtual console. I, myself, have considered such a device before, but not to play the new games, but games for previous systems. The 3DS is more than capable of handling the memory capacity of, say, N64 games. Which means that it is significantly more than capable of playing earlier than that. I remember growing up on Nintendo and their wonderful games ( at this point, all of which Nintendo owns the licensing to) and investing what would be considered a small fortune on those same games. My thinking is that Nintendo should just open up the e shop to include either a special request docket or just include all of the classics. Battle of Olympus, for one, is one that I have already bought 4 times. If it was released on 3DS, I'd buy it again.
Opening the gates would allow Nintendo to earn more money off of those great games and the pirates would be hindered in that it's still a rather complex system to get the roms to work on the 3ds. If all the games were available on the e shop, the user interface would be remarkably simpler. Most of those games would be easily ported to the 3ds. .... Just saying.
Aren't there flashcards for 3DS like "R4 3DS"? I know they only play NDS games but still.
As for the fact that people do this stuff, it's terrible. People should not steal their games and hurt the companies and people who made the games; it only makes sense to want your $40 in return for all the hard work and effort put into making the games. Game development is their LIFE, and their JOB. It's really sad that people steal games that took lots of time, effort, and many times love in the making. It's bad.
It seemed like everyone of those games was being booted up for the first time. Assuming the pirate lady had run through this process at least once prior to filming, there should have been some existing save data already present on the cards. These games would be unusable in any serious fashion if you can't save. Let's just hope that is the case. This really sucks...
This is really bad news! The 3DS is finally picking up and now getting some support from developers, but if this becomes as bad as the R4 Cards on the DS, say good bye to a large amount of third party support for the system.
Sigh.. can someone make something like the Games 'n' Music where it only does homebrew?
@mr570 I noticed that too when I saw the vid on ds-scene. Very far from market status still.
On a side note... a girl on the internet (in the vid)? What is this sorcery?!
Very interesting, but they can count me out, I want all my games original and at retail, not digital!
Some people just don't know how to save their pennies for the games they want, I suppose...
I don't understand this argument that it's okay to pirate games because they're expensive. So what? Lots of things are expensive. What is this ridiculous notion that games are a commodity, some kind of human right? I can't afford a Ferrari, doesn't mean I can just go and steal one.
Like most things in life, if you can't afford it, don't have it.
That's really disturbing
So, one card per game and no apparent save function. I hope Nintendo swoops in and blocks this before they actually make a flashcard that people can actually use.
I have a huge issue with piracy. All it does is tell the developer, "gee, I don't feel like paying for your games so you have no reason to make them".
@Zaphod_Beeblebrox Not legal.
Anyways, this was done before. Time will tell the truth though (or actually, let's just check GBATemp...)
And typically, all fake ones have been piracy only, no homebrew.
I don't support piracy, but I hope to god that all of you payed for every single album you've ever listened to.
@CasuallyDressed Piracy is wrong, but it isn't comparable to stealing a Ferrari. In one case, a physical product is being taken. The other case is not.
@Shane904 That would be great if the Games N Music didn't suck complete balls. Same with Action Replay or any other Datel product.
@ThomasBW84 They can't just brick your system through an update no matter what they say. There are several legal problems with that (considering you purchased the 3DS and all). What they can do IIRC basically amounts to kicking you off of online games and a dead warranty.
I think it would be cool if Nintendo sold these with software to make your own games on so that you could let your friend borrow the games you make or put the on the web for download. They main problem with that is the ability to torrent games but if you could make a software block it would be awesome!
@rayword45 Yeah it did. It really did. But it was what first got me interested in homebrew. Actually it was their Max Media Player... same thing for the most part. But yes it sucked. Just using it as an example.
@rayword45
They can and will brick the offending system; I see no other recourse against the proliferation of these devices. Less severe tactics will only prove inconvenient.
It says so just before you assay to their terms and proceed to update.
@jamiljamtheman Yes a lot of the flashcarts work on the 3DS, they just only play the nds format.
@Pierceton The best we have at that is the Petit Computer. I would buy a homebrew dev kit if Nintendo made one for sure.
People fail to realize that Colors! 3D was originally a homebrew app for the DS. Gunman Clive's creator made a homebrew game for the Wii as well.
Colors! 3D was originally an homebrew application designed with the NDS in mind, yes. However, the designer also legally sold it to be used and distributed by Nintendo.
oh well they were going to find a new way eventually nintendo cant count on those people too much for thier money. tis the day they almost caught captain jack sparrow
@NES_Hoarder made me LOL
Man why always the over reaction by people. First, yes piracy is bad...ok. The thing is though of all the many, many, many people over the years I have known that have owned gb, gbc, gba, and ds very few ever had flash carts. Many of Nintendo's traditional hanheld customers....kids and parents don't even have a clue this stuff exists. I just think too many people have been brain washed into believing piaracy is killing the gaming industry. Top titles sell in the millions (hell Animal Crossings already sold nearly 4mil in Japan alone) and missing out on a fee thousand sales because of piracy isn't going to kill well made and well selling games. The good news is from the demonstration this device appears to be an optical drive emulatortype or catridge slot based hack. That means the 3DS system has not been hacked. They may not have even hacked the rom encryption itself. Likely just raw dumping a rom and puting an image on sd. The bad news is this may be hard for Nintendo to detect as anything but a normal cart. The good news is it will be cumbersome, I mean microSD are dirt cheap but certainly it is not an elegant or user friendly solution like previous flash carts. My guess is game saves are stored on the SD with the rom image. Its not the end of the world. This isn't like the dreamcast crack which required no modification or like a system softmod that plagued Wii or PSP. Some HK retailers will sell some but this isn't going to kill 3DS or even efftect Indies because you likely aren't going to be able to run eShop stuff from it....ly ou could never run DSI ware from DS flash cart so likely same problem here. 6 months after this is out I want you all to report back and tell me how many people you know that bought this....my guess not many!
Hacking consoloes is for miserable people who can't pay for an original game. I hope Nintendo take serious measures about this.
@OptometristLime If they could legally, they would. If they do it, chances are there will be repercussions, mainly a lot of lawsuits.
@net34a Piracy, not hacking consoles.
Comparing pirates to those who find exploits (who are typically for homebrew only) is like blaming the man who first cultivated marijuana for every hardcore drug addict.
@OptometristLime Dude Nintendo has never bricked systems and no on else has either....the closest anyone has come to that was M$ banning consoles when flagged for running burned games. Problem is this cart is likely emulating a real cart and using non-decrypted raw rom dumps meaning it will be very difficult for Nintendo to detect. In the past all Nintendo did with firmware updated and or anti-piracy schemes was block the flash cart from working or block the game from launching. I am surprised it took this long and Nintendo deserves some credit for better security because there were GBA and DS flash carts available before those handhelds even released in the west. DSI ware was never hacked and I doubt 3DS system will be fully hacked any time soon.
ironic how everyone's complaining about piracy hurting developers and I bet 95% of people here don't purchase music from iTunes and other musical retailers.
@rayword45 love that comparison.
I always find witches to be a more fitting name for them instead of pirates. They can enchant you with their spells (roms) and apparently they get burn (flamed) to the bone.
Back to reality, it looks like the flash cart is more trouble then it's worth. Perfect since the second reason certain people buy this is for convenience. It wouldn't be wide spread as the ds versions (I say with confidence).
@MarcelPerez24 If you were to come to my house, you will find not one single illegally burnt cd or downloaded song, or movie, or game. I did this when I was younger, early in the days of Hi-speed internet, but realised I was just a thief, no different than those walking out a retail store and not paying. Everything I DL'd I took out to my friends house who has a range, and destroyed them w/ my .45. All my co-workers who illegally DL stuff, I make sure to remind them they are common thieves. Some people won't like what I'm saying, but it is a true statement. 95% seems rather high since only about 1 in 5 of even my coworkers pirate stuff. Not a single one of my close friends do either. I always notice that most people who do things illegally seem to want to say "everyone does it" to justify what they do and not have to consider the fact that what they did is wrong.
to be honest I"m not sure is a bad thing, every console with wide scale piracy problems have sell well PS1, PS2, PSP and DS, and except maybe for the PSP third party developers continue bringing more and more games to the console as sells increased despite the piracy, they did not jump ship to consoles without piracy so developing for the best selling consoles seems to be the more lucrative option even if those also have the highest piracy rate...
At least this will cost more than pirating on the DS.
Nintendo should ship all new consoles with the new firmware already installed with no way to do downgrade. Hackers will update soft for flashcards as well, sure, but it would delay it, and maybe discourage some folks to even bother with flashcards.
Nice job spreading awareness of this stuff. Really helping out Nintendo by letting everyone know 3DS piracy is likely possible and very easy.
@rayword45 They really can brick your system, many companies have done such a thing before. You agree not to use unofficial devices upon starting the 3DS, with it "breaking" software-wise a noted possible side-effect.
Oh GREAT!!! just what we need I really hope Nintendo puts a stop to this.
As this is purely piracy, shame on you as a legitimate website for even bringing attention to this. Shame. Bad website, bad!
@Bulby I agree, I hate videogame piracy; however Nintendo also needs to find a way to let people that owned the game in a previous system to be available also for the new system, for example I have Goldensun for GBA, I want to have it digitally and available to me whenever I want it, but I can't, same thing with Metroid Fusion, I can't play it anymore and is one of my favorite games, that and just because of that I have considered the R4
Anyone wanting to report this to Nintendo should go here:
https://ap.nintendo.com/report/
It'll ask questions about the product and let Nintendo know it exists. Nintendo may very well already be aware and have an update ready when it ships in two weeks where if the latest update isn't installed, you can't play games on the 3ds. Some interesting things in that video is that a) there was no gamplay in the video, b) resident evil's save data was corrupt (is it really worth the risk?) and c) only one game per card- surely the point of having an r4 card, among other obvious reasons, was so that all the games could be on one card? Piracy means gaming quality suffers so don't stand for it. 3ds is on a roll, don't let this ruin it.
I hope this company gets closed soon, before any harm is done. We don't want another DS-like situation.
F*****g hackers, why don't they enjoy smashing their fingers with hammers?
WE NEED AN UPDATE: NOWWWWWW
GET TO THE CHOPPA !!!!!
Nintendo would squash the 'backup' argument if they would just create proper eShop profiles that are linked to your library. As it stands I would love to be able to back up games and lose the ongoing fear of a broken or stolen 3DS.
"I use it only for backup"....said no one ever.
The whole updateable firmware thing pretty much solved the piracy issue. This new device can be easily countered by making system updates that block it.
Oh, and all the people denouncing video game piracy, and they have a pretty good point, obviously never pirated music or movies. Yeah, right. I just simply do not believe you.
Thumbs up if the only consoles you bought flash carts for were 20+ years old and 8- or 16-bit!
I think a card like this could be great,but not to torrent full games.If nintendo maybe worked with these people so that we could maybe torrent a beta,alpha or even demo copy of any or most 3ds games I think it could realy work in nintys favour.Imagine being able to play a cut or work in progress animal crossing a few month before the games release! Ok im dreaming I know but a man can dream!
Can anybody read the SM3DL messages? Because I can't and my retail copy/digital copys don't have those messages I think.
If it did just homebrew that would be great I can remember someone doing a homebrew of Rick Dangerous an old Atari ST game for the DS which I saw once a it looked great and more games like this would be great or even better would be Nintendo looking into Atari ST,Amiga or old PC games of release themself but stop piracy why do people have to do this.
They have to ruin it for everybody .. :s
Pirates and hackers: thinking they are cool but actually aren't since whenever they started.
you know piracy is one practise that should not be defended by any means because there is no reason what so ever to download roms of games unless of course your a cheap *******, if you love to play games you will buy your games to support the industry you love
also was it a good idea to post this on here because now you have told everyone that did want to pirate games that they now can
such a shame Nintendo can't permanently bricks every 3DS that these things are used on
@Rensch nope i never have because i never saw a reason too if i wan't a film i will buy that film, if i wan't a song i will buy that song
that's just the way i was brought up and i firmly believe that if you want something that someone else has made be it a game, a movie, a song , a book whatever then you should pay for it and if you can't afford it then save up for it
You mean brick any offending 3ds like they did with the wii? Although i do like flashcarts i dont like the idea of developers going bankrupt because of them so hope nintendo stops them for now.
I hope Nintendo stop this happening on the 3DS. And for homebrew I guess, but to be honest I never found much quality in that. I am happy with swapping carts on 3DS and using eshop. If I lose my 3DS, thats my fault. If it develops a fault as someone also mentioned, then surely its just a case of getting Nintendo to fix it - eshop stuff is all on SD card. Dsiware transferred to system memory might be a different thing, not sure what happens there. Overall I am against Homebrew, as most people would just download free 3DS roms.
I don't like piracy and I don't pirate. But when I hear people advocating for bans on this kind of hardware, I just must do a big facepalm. To ban a piece of hardware like that is a violation of the exact same principles that piracy is. If you do advocate for a ban on some hardware, expect much more piracy, censorship, corruption etc. in the future, as you are corroding from peoples minds the very principles that make people respect each others property and freedom.
@theblackdragon Lots of moddin' you've had to do I see. xD
I personally think this is dumb. Woopee.
NintendoLife should be ashamed for advertising this.
Hope this gets blocked immediately by Nintendo.
Also, I still can't understand why most people would never steal a car, or a wallet, or whatever, but doesn't feel the same way about pirating games.
It's clearly the same, both from a legal and a moral point of view.
EDIT: also, having downloadable retail games on the eShop is already a way of doing what people claimed flashcarts were usd for.
I wouldn't have posted the video.
In any other forum i wasn't allowed to talk about this because it's publicizing the product and that's illegal too.
Do what you want NL but don't be mad if the thing it's successul and Nintendo gets angry.
This looks way too inconvenient.
I almost want to congratulate them on building one. IMO the flashcart isn't really a problem, but the fact you can get roms is.
@Mortenb
well said. Probably a compromise is best -Nintendo can do their best to make these carts more difficult to use, and also, the way they seem from watching the video - that the point of them is less valid than they used to be with DS.
Piracy was so widespread on the DS because it was so simple. THIS... isn't going to take off. Still, Nintendo should use system updates to put these pitiful attempts at piracy out of their misery.
so much hate in the comments
i hope for the day when the things considered bad will be impratical and beneficial to noone, rather than those the law forbids. if it's beneficial to someone, the only thing to do is to benefit them in ways that don't hurt others. not easy, but BURN WITCH BURN isn't exactly a mentality i like. burning witches too feel better with oneself. what about the witch? you sure it's a being of evil and not an human like you?
that said, ok, piracy is bad, we get it, but it's interesting to see how tight the 3ds's defenses are. the requirements to make this work seem pretty impratical.
@rayword45 Lol, Both Sony and Nintendo are known for bricking hardware there are several reported cases of Wii's be bricked when updated after homebrew channel is installed as well as many many cases of PSP's being bricked if updated.
By using stuff like this you are breaking you're user agreement with Nintendo the law would support Nintendo in any action it chose to take.
Already sent an email to [email protected] with a link to the site that these pirates are using. Bricking their 3DS would be amazing...and if it's possible, then yes, Nintendo should put their foot down and stomp them. Short of that, firmware updates to block the flashcart should be possible.
@QuickSilver88 Actually not true there are several case where Nintendo bricked Wii Consoles of anyone dumb enough to update there console after they installed the homebrew this included (sometimes) forced updates on discs...
Sony is perhaps best known for it though a quick search you'll find tonnes of people talking about bricked PSP's this stuff happens you're breaking your user agreement with Nintendo because of that they can take any measure they see fit to stop you and the law will support them.
Great! Now Nintendo are going to release a new system update every month for "stability improvements". Just what we all wanted.
@Marshi Why would they do that? When they have a really nice eShop set up where if they intend to give you demo's they can through the eShop Animal Crossing doesn't work for Demo's where would you stop people when they are playing the demo? After they pay of their first loan?
Where I stand on the whole flashcard debate: I've nothing against homebrew. If people want to hack the 3DS and develop their own applications, that's their call and their own risk. If people want to distribute devices for doing so, that again is their own call and risk.
However, it should be the responsibility of the device manufacturer (that's the 'flashcart' device, not the 3DS) to ensure that their device cannot be used to support piracy. It's no good just not putting its piracy capabilities on the blurb and adding a legal disclaimer, if you want to develop a homebrew device then you should also make it as hard as possible for said device to be used to support piracy.
It is also the responsibility of the device user to not use the device for piracy purposes. Any legal proceedings against a user should be:
a) Does the device allow easy circumvention of piracy laws? (Responsibility of manufacturer and user)
b) If the device is shown to have suitable preventative measures, has the user intentionally broken past these barriers to play pirated games? (Responsibility of user)
This device however needs to be shot down or walled out via update. It's all piracy.
@Raylax Unfortunately, the small companies that distribute such cards will sell most to people who want to pirate free games. They won't want to stop people playing pirated games on their flash cards because they won't be able to sell as many flashcards by doing so.
Nintendo CAN brick systems for using unofficial products, by using the system, you agree to Nintendo's T&Cs, which states using unofficial hardware can cause side effects, including bricking offending systems. People do not understand that Nintendo can fight back, and pirates aren't cool.
From my experience, if you have to question whether something is legal or make a list of reasons to justify it, then it's best to forget it.
manic221 wrote:
*you're
I'm happy about this. Games are becoming more and more expensive. There's 10 3DS games coming out this year that I want. But I barely have enough money to get half of them.
@Bryon15 Games are expensive, true. But by using a flashcart to play games you're not helping to give the developer the incentive to make more games for a Nintendo console or to make more games at all. Furthermore, you'll likely sacrifice usage of the eShop and other free Nintendo online services to play a free game. That also means no DLC or updates to the games you download.
There's also the risk factor of bricking your expensive console.
@MarioIdent I don't know if Nintendo could block a system for using a flashcart. It's not like a custom firmware version that is recognised by the console. It's just a cartridge like the games you slot in.
I think the most they can do is stop the cart from working with a firmware update, but the cartridge manufacturer can work around that with a bit of time. This may mean a lot more system updates for our 3DS.
But hey, I may well be wrong. It's been known to happen. ;D
It took them 2 years to crack it ? now thats interesting... you dont know what kind of "trick" Nintendo may pull in the future...
Brick my console now that i can afford games doesnt seems like the best idea
This looks like it will only hold 1 game at a time, so I doubt many people will use it. I might buy a flashcard, if a decent amount of 3DS homebrew is released. There was some pretty great 3DS homebrew. I'd rather like the hackers to work on a device to get around the 3DS' region protection. I'd totally buy that.
Unfortunately it seems that the only one game per SD card 'issue' is not even the case anymore; they just released the video before having finalized the hardware.
This comes from NeoGAF:
As for people not buying originals:
Hey guys, we don't want to know how big a pirate you/your siblings/your co-workers/etc. and so forth are, nor are we asking for a fight in our comments thread over who here is or isn't a 'big fat pirate'. Please be cool and discuss this article like rational human beings or don't bother commenting at all. Thank you! :3
And this is where automatic system updates play its role. Just connecting to a wireless hotspot either by browsing or going to eshop activates it. I still have hope Nintendo can overcome this. Send in Akainu of the marines to stop this Pirate son of a gun.
I hope Nintendo gets wind of this and handles it promptly.
Here's hoping Nintendo's promise to brick offending systems holds true.
@TheRealThanos Interesting. The plus side to this, is that if they've been able to write a game manager, then they (or anyone else) will be able to create homebrew as well!
@TrueWiiMaster There never was such a promise.
The real attraction of a flashcart for me on the DS was being able to have a ton of games on one cartridge everywhere I go. With this though I think the convenience of downloadable games is worth actually paying for everything.
It seems like they cant close the 3DS with the cart in... hmm
@felix330
I guess I should have said "threat".
Great now i can play hacks and translated imports!
@ErnisDy You cannot play games outside your region with this cart. In an interview, the creators basically said its running the game right off the SD card - no middleman in between like DS flashcarts. It runs the signed code, which means that it is region locked.
I support hacking to extend device functionality and to learn something new. I do not support hacking to sidestep exchange of money for content. Back in the day I'd take apart VCR's and computers and computer parts and clocks and other electronics to figure out how they work. I am now a degreed electrical engineer and love my job designing electronics equipment.
When debating whether or not to buy a 3DS or an iPod Touch, unfortunately the iPod Touch won out because it was able to do more than just games. The 3DS too as I understand it can do some (limited) online things, but not as well as an "iTouch." Granted the gameplay on an iTouch is nothing to write home about compared to a 3DS (my opinion), it still won out because unfortunately my business needs outweigh my gaming needs right now.
All that to say, if this effort leads people to figure out how to extend 3DS functionality, that'd be great. DOSBox on 3DS? Sweet.
I'm waiting for the device that better balances the daily needs of a working family person; business applications, gaming applications (and Nintendo ones at that), and super long battery life, without any monthly fee!
..dane
Ugh, now the pirates will have a field day with this. And then they'll bring up their argument that pirating helps console sales as always. No matter the circumstance, they're a hateful bunch.
I want the 3DS to be hacked, but only to make them region free, so I can still buy games and the makers still get my money. But it can't ever happen.
@Zaphod_Beeblebrox Why? People have a legal right to back up their games and saves. I understand the piracy concern, but that's like telling Microsoft to brick any PC that has an emulator running on it.
@Bryon15 Games are so much less expensive than when I was young. First, inflation means the same amount of money is much easier to come by these days, and second, the prices are actually lower in nominal terms too. Everything to do with electronics is so much cheaper these days. It's everything else that is much more expensive. Now, get off my lawn.
I don't have the energy to fight these battles anymore.
Alright a lot of you people are just annoying. Believe it or not there are people too poor to pay for every single game that they want, rarely do they do nothing but pirate games. If you want to talk about helping developers then never buy a used game ever again or else you are a hypocrite.
@One-Winged-Pit Buying used does not equate to pirating. The concept of pirating is to create an additional copy that was not originally created by the manufacturer-- akin to printing more money-- so that there are more copies of the thing in the world than before. Just as printing excess money causes the value of the currency to decline, pirating extra copies of a game causes the value of the game to decline. THAT hurts developers. Buying a game used, however, assuming the seller does not maintain a copy themselves, simply transfers ownership of a produced item in exchange for currency, but the sale itself does not diminish the value of the thing. Buying used is a fantastic way to save money. If you have enough money to buy a 3DS, you most certainly have the wherewithall to save-up for the next game. Instant gratification ("I don't want to wait until I can afford it- oh look, a torrent!") is not an excuse to pirate.
@audiodane Complete strawman argument. The vast majority of the time nobody is selling what they pirated so it is not like printing more money at all unless that money is just sitting in a room not being spent in which it does not cause any inflation, unless you want to say money is magic and can automatically detect more being made. The transferring of ownership of games still does not mean the developers are making a penny off of it, did you even wonder why the Xbox One is going to have a fee for used games? Because they cannot make money off of a used game!
Most people who purchase these types of things do so with the intent of downloading and playing copies of games they do not own. There is no way around that fact. Besides, this device can't even run homebrew so that argument goes right out the window.
I am planning on purchasing a 3DS XL along with NMB2, DKC and the new Link to the Past and I rather have the original boxes, artwork and instruction manuals (or what is left of what used to be called instruction manuals) then a bunch of MicroSD cards.
As for Nintendo stopping the sale of flashcards they haven't been able to do so with the Nintendo DS/DSi or stop the sale or spread of information on how to pirate Wii games. I highly doubt they can stop 3DS flashcards either.
@One-Winged-Pit Either I didn't make myself clear or you didn't understand my comment- I agree pirates generally don't sell what they make, yet they are enjoying a copy of something they wanted (or else they wouldn't have pirated it) but did not pay for. That causes the demand for the game to drop, causing the price for the game to drop (simple supply and demand). I agree that developers do not make money off used sales- I never said otherwise. But buying used and pirating are not equivalent. — Okay, maybe they are equivalent in the sense that neither cause money to flow to the developer; if that is what you meant, then I both misunderstood you, and I agree.
I'm pretty sure it's illegal for Nintendo to brick 3DS's in the US, as I think it would fall unders the same category as jailbreaking an I device, which has been made legal.
@Shane904 It would be awesome...
I NEED ONE OF THOSE!
(The Micro SD cards, my tablet's internal memory is already full)
I'm just gonna sit back, play my games, and watch the world burn.
Cool. Perhaps a better homebrew media player could be developed, because the one the 3DS includes isnt that good :/
(oh and this opens possibility to edit NSMB2 levels :3)
But yeah, its bad, because people can now pirate games :/
Damn, a flashcart is like a worst-case scenario... I hope Nintendo will stay up to date witch security updates.
I don't understand why pirates even pirate things, you don't get the satisfaction of knowing you paid your hard-earned money on that particular game and that gives you the drive to play it, and you also are paying the developer for releasing said amazing game. If I want to get a classic game I would pick it up on the Virtual Console over an emulator any day.
Regardless of what they put in their EULA, the legal risks of bricking a console through an update is pretty risky.
The Wii only got bricked if you did something downright idiotic like delete necessary IOS's or something, never through updates.
And Sony did brick through updates. You know what happened? Class action lawsuits.
Actually, Jailbreaking a Smart Phone is once again Illegal under the DMCA (recent ruling, Google it).
End of cartridges...
@thepitt I don't see crap
@rayword45 Actually, the wii update 4.2 could brick your wii even if you didn't had modded anything in it, because it changed the boot2 process file to eliminate a homebrew stuff.
But the changes were slim.
I hope this does not start again, and am convinced it won't either.
For more than 5 years I have said that used games sales hurt Nintendo and the others far more than Piracy ever could, but until recently no one wanted to see that The very people advertising for those console makers and game developers are the very people profiting from those used game sales (...more than piracy loss) in other words, none of them wants to bite the hand that's feeding them. Biting that hand may be 'penny wise' (profitable) for the immediate future, but 'pound foolish' for the long run/distant future.
@Wowfunhappy "back in the day" huh? DS Linux was just recently released....
@SyFyTy Huh? No, it hasn't, it's been around for ages.
@NES_Hoarder That moment when you know someone
@SyFyTy You do not seem to be for piracy but you are not being a hypocrite and pretending like used games are any better so you're good in my book!
so you hate hackers so much ?
Well don’t forget to throwaway your 3DS its arm processors was made during the 80 by a bunch of homebrew hackers in Cambridge united kingdom building their own homebrew computer. Oh and don't forget to throwaway your medication and never visit the doctor again medical science is full of pioneers that fall into what you call a hacker.
And stop using the internet www is hack after all, built over a wider network pioneered by hackers and hacking culture and what’s more this website too uses a http server written by the hackers.
they get everywere these pesky hackers.
why not look up the true meaning of the word hacker, and see its noble origins rather than poisoned missinformation spread by media outfits
@Sionyn: For all the good some hackers do, others choose to use their knowledge for illegal pursuits. The bad apples have spoiled the title 'hacker', I'm afraid. You can't blame people for getting upset sometimes :/
sent the link of the video and website to Nintendo official legal team. Lets see what we can do about this problem.
Just bought a 3DS xl aaaaand here comes the flashcard :/
Don't let me down big N, the first original game I ever bought is in this system.
You know I am in a "In between state"
I am against piracy because i admire Nintendo and i wouldn't want to steal from it, but then again, there are people who don't have a lot of money and lately Nintendo has been selling very expensive(at least here in Mexico, in Canada and USA it costs about 380 dollars but here in mexico it costs about 7500pesos, that's like 600dollars!).
I am a Nintendo fan but because of it's price, I can't buy the new stuff like the
wii u or it's games, same thing with the 3DS and well for me it's either piracy or nothing.
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