First of all, this isn't a tutorial. 3ds.hacks.guide does a better job of that than I ever could; I'm just here to extol the virtues of owning a hacked 3DS and impart some knowledge based on my own experiences.
Most importantly, you are not going to get 47 viruses downloading any of the tools. You're not going to get 1 virus. The corporate feudal state has dumped millions into convincing you that everything free is a scam, but they're lying to you. Also, you are not going to convert your Nintendo 3DS (2DS, New 3DS, New 2DS XL, whatever) into an expensive brick. Nintendo already tried to brick people's hacked 3DSes after they terminated extended support back in March; and, yeah, a few systems bricked. But, it didn't take the community long to figure out what Nintendo had done to cause the problem, and pretty soon, the affected systems were unbricked and back to business as usual. Contrary to the corporate propaganda, simply following the instructions provided on the Hacks Guide will not result in a brick. They straight-up say right there on the tutorial that you can't brick your system this way even if you tried.
The next bit is, SD card. You'll need at least a 2 GB SD card before you can hack your 3DS, because of the sizable number of files that the tools need to do their job. I'm guessing that won't be a problem—it's been my experience that people buy SD cards at the same time they buy their Nintendo 3DS, though I imagine that number has gone down lately, what with the closure of the eShop and all. Whatever. SD cards are cheap and all models of 3DS and 2DS can take cards with up to 128 GB of storage. Anything beyond that tends to cause cluster issues that will make the system behave strangely. I used a 16 GB microSD I'd forgotten about in the bottom of my box of flashdrives and it works just fine.
It took me about 2 hours to complete the crack, but that's because of my particular use-case. I hadn't touched my 3DS since I got my 2DS back in 2013, so I had to charge the device from a completely dead battery. Had that not been necessary, it probably would have only taken about 15 minutes to complete the process.
Part of the cracking procedure involved performing a system update. That was a little surprising to read, but I decided they wouldn't be asking me to do this if they thought it would be harmful. And it wasn't. The 3DS did not explode. In my case, though, I really didn't care all that much if the system bricked because, like I said, I hadn't touched it since 2013. Not only did I have a 2DS and a different tutorial waiting in the wings, I had Citra and a datahoard full of 3DS ROMs which I could fall back upon if the worst happened. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. But, nothing bad happened.
Further to nothing bad happening, there were steps in the tutorial where they indicated it might take 7 or 8 goes to make something work, but it all happened for me on the first go.
The only point of confusion was the file format of the 3DS ROMs in my datahoard. You're supposed to use *.cia files, but all I had were *.3ds files. Fortunately, a short DDG search revealed that GodMode9 has the ability to convert *.3ds into *.cia, as well as verify the file's integrity.
Now, my 3DS is hacked, my games are jacked, and I'm able to play GBA in bed again like it's 2003. I think the reason why I was so resistant to the 3DS was it looked and felt expensive. Not just the shiny aspect to the casing, but the prices of the software. I wasn't making a lot of money at the time, and I thought, damn, this is what I was spending mum's money on back on the N64? Unfortunately, the 2DS, while looking less expensive, still felt expensive; I felt like I'd wasted my money chasing a high that adults aren't capable of getting. I spent a lot of Q2 2023 wishing I hadn't sold my Game Boy Advance SP to Jonas when I got my DS in 2004. I really wanted to add videogames to my roster of unsmart tech in a way that didn't involve hauling my laptop and F310 about with me everywhere.
I'm not sure what exactly made me decide to finally follow through on hacking my 3DS. Probably something having to do with another ham-fisted attempt by the US Congress to take over the internet, I don't know. But whatever the impetus was, I managed to make the pristine, shiny 3DS feel accessible to me at long last. It used to be that I had to choose between entertainment and some other, ostensibly more important, need; and the $30, $40, $50 Nintendo 3DS games always took a backseat. Now, I have the entire roster of games I'd always wanted to play and a system that has been broken free of its corporate conditioning.
Definitely one of the best experiences of my life. 10/10, would recommend.
--22 December 2023--