On 22 December 2023, I jailbroke my Nintendo 3DS. Jailbroke, hacked, cracked, whatever you want to call it; basically, I cut the shackle connecting it to Nintendo. I only ever had 4 games for the 3DS— I know I said I had 2, but in the intervening time, I remembered downloading Super Mario Bros. on Virtual Console and Super Mario Maker. I fucked around with the level editor for a bit, but I only played Maker 1 time. Quite honestly, my font, Mushroom Kingdom NBP, was more fun than that. Anyway, that was on my 2DS in 2014. After that, I never touched my 3DS or 2DS until I was deciding which one to try out the hacks on, one fateful morning in late 2023. I had the Hacks Wiki all loaded up on my phone's internet browser and was deciding which of my handhelds to hack. Ultimately, I decided that I would use the 3DS— the shiny museum-piece of the launch-day Nintendo 3DS— because I actually wanted to hack my 2DS, but I was afraid of bricking it. So, I would try the method out on the 3DS because I didn't care about it as much. And I did. I think I was just hormonal at the time (having been on HRT for *checks notes* 5 months at the time, but as I was ducking in and out of menus and things to make the hack work, and then on the final reboot where my 3DS was finally free of her corporate feudal bondage, I realised that I loved her too much to cast her aside. Her button action is a little stiffer than I like, and she needs frequent wiping down because she's so shiny, but I didn't really care about my 2DS anymore. My 3DS and I were going to be best friends from that day onwards.
And, 2 years on, she still is. Jailbreaking my 3DS made the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS 15 Lists possible, insofar as I no longer was limited by capitalism in the games I could play. They were all available to me; first through my own datahoard, later through the hShop. I was limited only by the storage space on my SD card. Quite honestly, I could probably do with a 64 GB card at this stage, but I still have loads of space available on the 32 GB one. Although, I'm gonna need to transfer all my DS games to the SD card instead of storing them in physical memory, 'cos I am out of space there. But I've been able to pore through lists of games released for the entire DS family of systems and, on a whim, install and play them just to see what's what and who's who. It was in this way that I was able to determine that Build-a-Lot, Our House, and Rayman 3D are complete shite, and that Animal Crossing New Leaf, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga+Bowser's Minions, and Terraria are high on the list of Best Games Ever (not that I'm making one... probably). I've been able to make friends of games that I used to have really rocky relationships with because of that time in my life when they were current being totally bogus (eg. Art Academy, New Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D) and I've discovered new games that capitalism, depression, and gender dysphoria had hidden from me.
I did eventually jailbreak my 2DS as well. First, I gave it to mum, but mum decided it was too heavy in hand for her to hold comfortably, so she gave it back. Then I thought I'd load a lot of games and emulators onto it and sell it on Craigslist, but it turned out most of the game ROMs in my datahoard were corrupt because of various reasons. Now, I've given it to my girlfriend who plays games out of her DS flashcart on it. I seriously need to get Pretendo, Wumiibo, and the GBA emulator set up on her 2DS, because a lot of those games are still corrupt and she deserves to play them.
My experience with the 3DS encouraged me to carry on with jailbreaking other consoles. While I thought at the time that I would rather like to find a Wii U and hack it, I decided to hack my Wii instead. Mostly because, well. I mean. I already own it. If I was to hack a Wii U, I would need to go and spend money somewhere, which is fruitless because all the online sellers still want launch-day prices for even an open-box Wii U. I did jailbreak my Wii, except in the process of installing a HDMI adapter, something caused the system to refuse to boot, so I couldn't use it. Fortunately, Riza brought her Wii with her when we moved in together, which is also jailbroken. Just last week, I converted a lot of RVZ's to ISO so we could play them on her Wii; I even played The Sims: Bustin' Out on stream with her Discord friends. I introduced it as "Homophobic Sims" because it, along with its predecessor and all the handheld Sims games, forbids any romantic interactions between sims of the same gender. Homophobic sure, but not aro- or acephobic, which is good because that's how I always play the game anyway. I made 2 sisters, Kaylee and Kelsey Greenspan, and played with them for a bit until Riza and I both agreed that the chat needed to behold the greatness that is Muscle March.
So, what's next for the 3DS then? As I said, I need to get Riza set up with Pretendo Network, Wumiibo, and better GBA ROMs. Since she's a code girl, she can understand how to boot up into Open AGB Firm better than I could have described it in a README file intended for someone else. Saves me the work, creating Virtual Console injections (even though that way is classier than a textonly firmware emulator). After that, we need to get more people interested in jailbreaking their 3DSes and 3DS-adjacent systems so that we can actually Streetpass with people other than each other.