Earlier this year when it was announced that the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One would be released region-free, several Nintendo fans took to the internet to try and encourage Nintendo to release the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS as well. Nintendo stands firmly against the idea, but despite this a few enterprising hackers seem to have found a way to bypass region locking on the Nintendo 3DS in a way that doesn’t encourage piracy.
According to the hackers, this method allows you to play imported games from any region and does not support ROMs. As with most of these hacks, firmware older than version 4.5 is needed, so newly updated systems won’t be able to take advantage of this. The hack works by running a special patched launcher file that modifies the system in order to load cartridges form other regions.
It’s an interesting step in breaking region-locking without the downside of piracy.
[via Tiny Cartridge]
