14 ms·

The 3DS, in particular the "New" models, I think are really recommended to pick up cheap. They are well built devices that are supremely hackable with access to

by DCKing 6y ago

The 3DS, in particular the "New" models, I think are really recommended to pick up cheap. They are well built devices that are supremely hackable with access to lots of fun games. The 3DS library is good despite somewhat lacking in diversity. But the 3DS also has native compatibility with the entire excellent DS library, and after hacking it can also run the entire great GBA library without emulation (like Matroshka dolls, the 3DS hardware includes the complete DSi hardware which in turn includes GBA hardware, and it has firmware support to access them both). The old models emulate a lot of 8 and 16 bit consoles well, whereas the New models have nearly complete compatibility for 8 and 16 bit consoles and additionally can emulate some Playstation 1. Moreover, hacking the 3DS has become even more accessible due to recent newly found exploits. Still getting a lot of fun out of mine.

komali2 6y ago
Yes! Don't forget you also get GameBoy Color and GameBoy games. IMO this massive library (N3DS, 3DS, DSi, DS, GBA, GBC, GB, SNES, NES) has at least 10 "must play before death" games in them (for people that care a lot about videogames, anyway). Of course all of this can also be achieved on a PC with a simple 10$ amazon controller and free emulators, if you're comfortable pirating games.
- tasogare 6y ago
  I’ve played a GBA and a DS game on emulator and this is far from the real experience, especially for the DS one. The new 3DS, DS lite and GBA SP are such nice hardware it’s part of the experience.
- echelon 6y ago
  > has at least 10 "must play before death" games Could you make some recommendations? I'd be very interested in your list.
  - lghh 6y ago
    Here's my rough list of games that you can play on a 3DS that are not necessarily 3DS games that I think are "must play" type games. Does not include all games that should be on the list. 1. LoZ: Ocarina of Time 2. Super Mario 64 (ds version) 3. Donkey Kong Country Returns 4. LoZ: A Link To The Past 5. Shin Megami Tensei: IV (maybe not "must", but you should give it a shot) 6. Earthbound 7. Super Mario World
    - glouwbug 6y ago
      Foundational list. Nothing tops Ocarina of Time
      - pcdoodle 6y ago
        2D Link is best Link.
    - northern-lights 6y ago
      And a few Pokemon ones too with Emerald at the top of that list.
      - Sulamitachica 6y ago
        Oooh yes i remember playing emerald and it being my favorite, among sapphire
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      > Donkey Kong Country Returns Pretty please, play the Wii version of this! You can use Dolphin if you want. The 3DS port halved the framerate from 60 fps to 30 fps, and it makes a big difference! At 30 fps, the game is much too difficult—unless you play on the "adjusted" difficulty they added, and I'm pretty sure I know why they adjusted it. Also, while I'm here I'm going to add on Kid Icarus: Uprising. I know the controls were divisive, but if you can adapt, it's a really unique and well-done action adventure. From the creator of Smash Brothers!
  - komali2 6y ago
    Sorry, you're right https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24508604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24508604
  - ndesaulniers 6y ago
    For GBA: 1/2. Metroid Fusion & Zero Mission 3/4. Advanced Wars 1 & 2 5/6. Golden Sun 1 & 2 7. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 8. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror 9. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap 10. Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga There were also 3 great Castlevania's, 3 great Sonic Advanced, 2 or 3 Fire Emblems, I enjoyed the 3 Dragon Ball Z RPGs, I enjoyed the newer Pokemon Emerald and throwback FireRed (QoL improvements). Final Fantasy 6 is available. Really, a flash cart was very much a worthwhile investment (and a larger capacity battery) for my gameboy micro. Would recommend EZ-Flash IV.
- FillardMillmore 6y ago
  I'll be disappointed if Super Metroid doesn't make this list of yours.
  - tolbish 6y ago
    Super Metroid is available on Switch Online. Super Mario RPG would be my pick from here that is almost impossible to find legally.
    - jaypeg25 6y ago
      I wasn't big into RPGs growing up, and I didn't even have a Super Nintendo, but I bought a Mini SNES last year and gave it a shot...I was floored at how enjoyable the game is. I got pretty deep into it but life and work and everything got in the way, and now it's been so long that I want to go back to it but would be completely lost...but I'm looking forward to starting over again when I've got some free time to dig into it again.
    - mattl 6y ago
      Super Mario RPG is on the SNES Classic.
- ewams 6y ago
  Oh come now! You can't say 10 games you must play before you die and leave us hanging!
- komali2 6y ago
  Edit: You're right, that was rude of me lmao. This is an UNORDERED LIST: 1. Super Mario Bros 3 2. The Legend of Zelda (1986) 3. Super Metroid (1994) 4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 5. Super Castlevania 6. Pokemon: Silver/Gold 7. Advance Wars: Dual Strike 8. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (tecccchnically an n64 game though) (Majora's Mask would make this list if the DS version wasn't a butchered shadow of the original) 9. Metroid: Fusion 10. Like... ANY of the billion Final Fantasies available between NES and N3DS edit: 11. Mario 64 baybbeeeeeeeee
  - skyyler 6y ago
    I'm very curious as to why you didn't like MM3D.
    - komali2 6y ago
      They messed with the acceleration algorithm to where it was almost impossible for me to solve the lily pad jump puzzle. They tweaked that fight where you chase the big monster around an endless forest hallway to be ABSURDLY easy. On that note, same for the originally TERRIFYING jungle warrior fight. Oh and the changed swimming mechanic was fucked, although I just read that they fixed it maybe? Here's a video I think captured it well https://youtu.be/653wuaP0wzs https://youtu.be/653wuaP0wzs
  - jldugger 6y ago
    So many questions. Like, do you really need pokemon to live? And why specifically Super Castlevania, which is regarded as kind of a garbage castlevania (the player sprite is bigger so you get less of a heads up on whats ahead, and it's not part of the "metrovania" pantheon). Why Fusion and Super Metroid? Does the original LoZ hold up as well as say Link's Awakening? Why are there only 3 companies represented on this list? Did Capcom run over your pet dog?
    - simlevesque 6y ago
      Metroid Fusion in my opinion was the king of Metroidvanias for a really long time. It achieved perfection.
dTal 6y ago
Beyond playing games, can you use them for anything else? How hard is it to program them?
- wgetch 6y ago
  While the majority of existing homebrew are either games or emulators, the systems are not limited to just playing games and there are a few options for programming them. devkitPro[0] provides a cross-compiling toolchain for 3ds homebrew development, if you are comfortable with C/C++ it is not all that difficult to program on the platform. There are several "portlibs" including SDL (SDL1 not SDL2 unfortunately) provided by devkitPro, which come in handy if you don't want to learn low level 3ds-specific APIs. There are also some homebrew game engines[1] that allow running Lua-based programs, though I haven't tried these myself. [0] https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started [1] https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Applications#Game_Engines https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Applications#Game_Engin...
- aviraldg 6y ago
  A 3D graphing calculator would be quite cool, I think.
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    I have the HP Prime that is basically this. The programming language is pretty terrible but you can get pretty impressive 3D plots (with touchscreen as well!) if you install a plugin
    - aviraldg 6y ago
      It has a 3D display like the 3DS?
      - arthurcolle 6y ago
        No but it shows a 3D plot. Want to see a photo?
jerryoftheyear 6y ago
Seconding this, the platform can be blown wide open and has an amazing library of both homebrew and official games.
city41 6y ago
If picking up a 3DS, I highly recommend a "New" model. They include cameras that track your eyes, making the 3D effect much better. It's true the 3D effect is just a gimmick, but it's a very neat one. Games like Metroid Samus Returns are much better in 3D IMO. The game feels like an actual mini diorama is in front of you.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  Yeah some titles use the 3D much better than others. Some early launch windows titles kind of do it weirdly and poorly. Pilotwings for example feels too strong. Some of the best would be yeah Metroid and Luigi's Mansion 2. The 3D gives a real "diorama" feel.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Pilotwings looks great in 3D if you actually make use of the 3D slider to adjust to your comfort level, instead of just pushing it all the way up. I think later games realized people weren’t actually going to do that, and effectively optimized their visuals for the highest setting.
- hannob 6y ago
  Admittedly I only played one game for a while on a borrowed 3DS (Super Mario 3D Land), but I quickly thought the best thing about the 3D effect is that you can turn it off.
  - zapzupnz 6y ago
    If that was on an old 3DS, that was probably true. On the "New" 3DS, though, with the additional eye tracking to make sure the 3D effect is stable, it's superb.
    - echelon 6y ago
      Does the eye tracking work with older games, or is the 3D baked into the game engines?
NwtnsMthd 6y ago
I've recently been eyeing the 3DS, do you have a specific model that you would recommend over others?
- deergomoo 6y ago
  I’m not OP but my favourite is the regular sized New 3DS. However this model initially only came out in Europe and Japan, and came to the US later, so depending on your location you may find it more difficult to find than the XL model. But it’s the ideal size IMO, and it has swappable faceplates and Super Famicom coloured buttons, if you’re into that kind of thing.
- phaedrus441 6y ago
  Just a heads-up, you can get a great-condition 3DS (or 2DS) cheaply from Nintendo directly: https://store.nintendo.com/nintendo-3ds-2ds/refurbished.html https://store.nintendo.com/nintendo-3ds-2ds/refurbished.html
justinweiss 6y ago
Absolutely agree. I just got into 3DS development last year and it's been such an exciting development experience. The open-source tools are excellent (even supporting remote debugging!), and the system hits that sweet spot between being powerful enough to build interesting things and taking real work to make those things fast. Over the last year or so I've been squeezing individual fps's of performance out of the PSX emulator and it's been some of the most fun hobby programming I've done in a long time. Plus you can write for a platform with a 3D screen! How cool is that?
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  > I just got into 3DS development last year and it's been such an exciting development experience That sounds really cool. Do you have any pointers for getting started?
  - justinweiss 6y ago
    devkitpro (https://devkitpro.org/ https://devkitpro.org/) is the toolchain and base libraries, and sets up a package manager for downloading others. For the basic stuff you can use the usual C libraries. I picked up a lot by reading and tweaking the examples, which are installed along with the toolchain: https://github.com/devkitPro/3ds-examples https://github.com/devkitPro/3ds-examples libctru, installed with devkitpro (https://libctru.devkitpro.org/ https://libctru.devkitpro.org/) is where a lot of the platform-specific APIs live. There are also some higher-level libraries built on top of it A good understanding of ARM will take you a long way. A lot of what documentation there is (especially on 3dbrew.org) assumes you understand the terms and general architecture of an older ARM platform. This book https://www.brucesmith.info/arm-a32-assembly-language/ https://www.brucesmith.info/arm-a32-assembly-language/ was great for building enough understanding that I could understand most of the official reference manuals. From those, I found the ARMv7 reference manual and the ARM11 MPCore Technical Reference Manual to be the most useful, and I refer back to the ARM instruction set reference card a lot. Besides that, it's reading and modifying the source of other projects, and trying things out. If you look at homebrew apps like ctrQuake (https://github.com/masterfeizz/ctrQuake https://github.com/masterfeizz/ctrQuake), you'll notice there's usually not a lot of platform-specific code -- most is just standard C / C++. Hope that helps. Just like anything, it's knowing enough to get started (a toolchain, some C, and some examples) and using your questions and ideas to draw you into the next thing to learn.
Tepix 6y ago
Personally I think the PS Vita is just as good, if not an even better value. You can get lightly used ones for around 80-100€ and they have a very nice OLED and a fast CPU. They can emulate pretty much anything up to PS1/N64.
- Gengar 6y ago
  PS Vita game library is nowhere near as strong though. It is another cool cheap device for homebrew.
  - anotherman554 6y ago
    Vita runs PSP games and PS1 games, so it's a strong library if you don't have a PSP already.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
mintplant 6y ago
It also still supports the entirety of the original DS homebrew scene, including my favorite flashcard: the SuperCard DSTWO [0], which includes an onboard CPU and RAM for running software that's more powerful than the host DS! You could feel the chip bulging out underneath the label, and the cartridges went into the slot with an odd "squish" because of that. A ridiculous yet beautiful piece of engineering. [0] http://eng.supercard.sc/ http://eng.supercard.sc/
fossuser 6y ago
I was confused by this article because the 3DS has been unavailable for months now (except for random editions from Amazon sellers for above MSRP). The main change seems to be them removing the 3DS page from the Nintendo website? My impression was that they stopped making them long ago and were only making new versions of the 2DS (which kind of defeats the entire purpose of the device). They also don't make enough Switch consoles to meet demand, and they don't update basic things with their software (friend codes really?) I'm not sure what the culture is like at Nintendo, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit that would make things a lot better (and make them a lot more money at the same time).
- devindotcom 6y ago
  I don't think the 2DS defeats the purpose of the device. The 3D aspect was by design only used in optional ways by nearly all developers and the 2DS as a great, cheaper, lighter alternative to the original. If anything it makes the handheld more focused and useful by stripping away something that was never really effective to begin with.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    In my case I was trying to get a gift for a friend who plays a lot of monster hunter world and the 3D apparently helps with gameplay since being able to sense the depth makes it easier to fight the monsters. By “defeat the purpose” I just meant that a version of the 3DS without the 3D part isn’t really the same thing. I generally find Nintendo the company frustrating to interact with when trying to buy things from them.
  - takeda 6y ago
    if 2DS was foldable I would buy it instead of 3DS. Didn't really care about the 3D.
    - EddieRingle 6y ago
      The New 2DS is the foldable version.
gowld 6y ago
What's a good website for this scene?
- elsonrodriguez 6y ago
  https://gbatemp.net/categories/nintendo-3ds-discussions.198/ https://gbatemp.net/categories/nintendo-3ds-discussions.198/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/ for discussion. The best resource for jailbreaking your 3DS would be here: https://3ds.hacks.guide https://3ds.hacks.guide
JansjoFromIkea 6y ago
I would say a DSi XL is the best choice for original DS games though, you get a larger screen with the exact same resolution as DS games play in and you get possibly the nicest and most durable of Nintendo's portable designs. The DSi as of last year is pretty hackable in itself too. I got one basically as a bonus in an ebay auction a few months back along with a 3DS I was getting for a friend and I've found myself playing original DS games on it more than I ever did on my own New 3DS XL so I was almost certainly picking up on the iffiness of the upscaling to fill the screen.
- DCKing 6y ago
  The DSi is great too of course, but if the scaling of DS games is a problem for you on a 3DS you can display the games unscaled/letterboxed by launching the game (or TwilightMenu) while holding Select or Start. I too much prefer displaying them without the bar scaling. The same trick works for Virtual Console games including GBA titles.

by DCKing 6y ago

komali2 6y ago

Yes! Don't forget you also get GameBoy Color and GameBoy games. IMO this massive library (N3DS, 3DS, DSi, DS, GBA, GBC, GB, SNES, NES) has at least 10 "must play before death" games in them (for people that care a lot about videogames, anyway). Of course all of this can also be achieved on a PC with a simple 10$ amazon controller and free emulators, if you're comfortable pirating games.

tasogare 6y ago
I’ve played a GBA and a DS game on emulator and this is far from the real experience, especially for the DS one. The new 3DS, DS lite and GBA SP are such nice hardware it’s part of the experience.
echelon 6y ago
> has at least 10 "must play before death" games Could you make some recommendations? I'd be very interested in your list.
- lghh 6y ago
  Here's my rough list of games that you can play on a 3DS that are not necessarily 3DS games that I think are "must play" type games. Does not include all games that should be on the list. 1. LoZ: Ocarina of Time 2. Super Mario 64 (ds version) 3. Donkey Kong Country Returns 4. LoZ: A Link To The Past 5. Shin Megami Tensei: IV (maybe not "must", but you should give it a shot) 6. Earthbound 7. Super Mario World
  - glouwbug 6y ago
    Foundational list. Nothing tops Ocarina of Time
    - pcdoodle 6y ago
      2D Link is best Link.
  - northern-lights 6y ago
    And a few Pokemon ones too with Emerald at the top of that list.
    - Sulamitachica 6y ago
      Oooh yes i remember playing emerald and it being my favorite, among sapphire
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > Donkey Kong Country Returns Pretty please, play the Wii version of this! You can use Dolphin if you want. The 3DS port halved the framerate from 60 fps to 30 fps, and it makes a big difference! At 30 fps, the game is much too difficult—unless you play on the "adjusted" difficulty they added, and I'm pretty sure I know why they adjusted it. Also, while I'm here I'm going to add on Kid Icarus: Uprising. I know the controls were divisive, but if you can adapt, it's a really unique and well-done action adventure. From the creator of Smash Brothers!
- komali2 6y ago
  Sorry, you're right https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24508604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24508604
- ndesaulniers 6y ago
  For GBA: 1/2. Metroid Fusion & Zero Mission 3/4. Advanced Wars 1 & 2 5/6. Golden Sun 1 & 2 7. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 8. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror 9. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap 10. Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga There were also 3 great Castlevania's, 3 great Sonic Advanced, 2 or 3 Fire Emblems, I enjoyed the 3 Dragon Ball Z RPGs, I enjoyed the newer Pokemon Emerald and throwback FireRed (QoL improvements). Final Fantasy 6 is available. Really, a flash cart was very much a worthwhile investment (and a larger capacity battery) for my gameboy micro. Would recommend EZ-Flash IV.
FillardMillmore 6y ago
I'll be disappointed if Super Metroid doesn't make this list of yours.
- tolbish 6y ago
  Super Metroid is available on Switch Online. Super Mario RPG would be my pick from here that is almost impossible to find legally.
  - jaypeg25 6y ago
    I wasn't big into RPGs growing up, and I didn't even have a Super Nintendo, but I bought a Mini SNES last year and gave it a shot...I was floored at how enjoyable the game is. I got pretty deep into it but life and work and everything got in the way, and now it's been so long that I want to go back to it but would be completely lost...but I'm looking forward to starting over again when I've got some free time to dig into it again.
  - mattl 6y ago
    Super Mario RPG is on the SNES Classic.
ewams 6y ago
Oh come now! You can't say 10 games you must play before you die and leave us hanging!
komali2 6y ago
Edit: You're right, that was rude of me lmao. This is an UNORDERED LIST: 1. Super Mario Bros 3 2. The Legend of Zelda (1986) 3. Super Metroid (1994) 4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 5. Super Castlevania 6. Pokemon: Silver/Gold 7. Advance Wars: Dual Strike 8. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (tecccchnically an n64 game though) (Majora's Mask would make this list if the DS version wasn't a butchered shadow of the original) 9. Metroid: Fusion 10. Like... ANY of the billion Final Fantasies available between NES and N3DS edit: 11. Mario 64 baybbeeeeeeeee
- skyyler 6y ago
  I'm very curious as to why you didn't like MM3D.
  - komali2 6y ago
    They messed with the acceleration algorithm to where it was almost impossible for me to solve the lily pad jump puzzle. They tweaked that fight where you chase the big monster around an endless forest hallway to be ABSURDLY easy. On that note, same for the originally TERRIFYING jungle warrior fight. Oh and the changed swimming mechanic was fucked, although I just read that they fixed it maybe? Here's a video I think captured it well https://youtu.be/653wuaP0wzs https://youtu.be/653wuaP0wzs
- jldugger 6y ago
  So many questions. Like, do you really need pokemon to live? And why specifically Super Castlevania, which is regarded as kind of a garbage castlevania (the player sprite is bigger so you get less of a heads up on whats ahead, and it's not part of the "metrovania" pantheon). Why Fusion and Super Metroid? Does the original LoZ hold up as well as say Link's Awakening? Why are there only 3 companies represented on this list? Did Capcom run over your pet dog?
  - simlevesque 6y ago
    Metroid Fusion in my opinion was the king of Metroidvanias for a really long time. It achieved perfection.

dTal 6y ago

Beyond playing games, can you use them for anything else? How hard is it to program them?

wgetch 6y ago
While the majority of existing homebrew are either games or emulators, the systems are not limited to just playing games and there are a few options for programming them. devkitPro[0] provides a cross-compiling toolchain for 3ds homebrew development, if you are comfortable with C/C++ it is not all that difficult to program on the platform. There are several "portlibs" including SDL (SDL1 not SDL2 unfortunately) provided by devkitPro, which come in handy if you don't want to learn low level 3ds-specific APIs. There are also some homebrew game engines[1] that allow running Lua-based programs, though I haven't tried these myself. [0] https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started [1] https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Applications#Game_Engines https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Applications#Game_Engin...
aviraldg 6y ago
A 3D graphing calculator would be quite cool, I think.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  I have the HP Prime that is basically this. The programming language is pretty terrible but you can get pretty impressive 3D plots (with touchscreen as well!) if you install a plugin
  - aviraldg 6y ago
    It has a 3D display like the 3DS?
    - arthurcolle 6y ago
      No but it shows a 3D plot. Want to see a photo?

jerryoftheyear 6y ago

Seconding this, the platform can be blown wide open and has an amazing library of both homebrew and official games.

city41 6y ago

If picking up a 3DS, I highly recommend a "New" model. They include cameras that track your eyes, making the 3D effect much better. It's true the 3D effect is just a gimmick, but it's a very neat one. Games like Metroid Samus Returns are much better in 3D IMO. The game feels like an actual mini diorama is in front of you.

Tiktaalik 6y ago
Yeah some titles use the 3D much better than others. Some early launch windows titles kind of do it weirdly and poorly. Pilotwings for example feels too strong. Some of the best would be yeah Metroid and Luigi's Mansion 2. The 3D gives a real "diorama" feel.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Pilotwings looks great in 3D if you actually make use of the 3D slider to adjust to your comfort level, instead of just pushing it all the way up. I think later games realized people weren’t actually going to do that, and effectively optimized their visuals for the highest setting.
hannob 6y ago
Admittedly I only played one game for a while on a borrowed 3DS (Super Mario 3D Land), but I quickly thought the best thing about the 3D effect is that you can turn it off.
- zapzupnz 6y ago
  If that was on an old 3DS, that was probably true. On the "New" 3DS, though, with the additional eye tracking to make sure the 3D effect is stable, it's superb.
  - echelon 6y ago
    Does the eye tracking work with older games, or is the 3D baked into the game engines?

NwtnsMthd 6y ago

I've recently been eyeing the 3DS, do you have a specific model that you would recommend over others?

deergomoo 6y ago
I’m not OP but my favourite is the regular sized New 3DS. However this model initially only came out in Europe and Japan, and came to the US later, so depending on your location you may find it more difficult to find than the XL model. But it’s the ideal size IMO, and it has swappable faceplates and Super Famicom coloured buttons, if you’re into that kind of thing.
phaedrus441 6y ago
Just a heads-up, you can get a great-condition 3DS (or 2DS) cheaply from Nintendo directly: https://store.nintendo.com/nintendo-3ds-2ds/refurbished.html https://store.nintendo.com/nintendo-3ds-2ds/refurbished.html

justinweiss 6y ago

Absolutely agree. I just got into 3DS development last year and it's been such an exciting development experience. The open-source tools are excellent (even supporting remote debugging!), and the system hits that sweet spot between being powerful enough to build interesting things and taking real work to make those things fast. Over the last year or so I've been squeezing individual fps's of performance out of the PSX emulator and it's been some of the most fun hobby programming I've done in a long time. Plus you can write for a platform with a 3D screen! How cool is that?

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
> I just got into 3DS development last year and it's been such an exciting development experience That sounds really cool. Do you have any pointers for getting started?
- justinweiss 6y ago
  devkitpro (https://devkitpro.org/ https://devkitpro.org/) is the toolchain and base libraries, and sets up a package manager for downloading others. For the basic stuff you can use the usual C libraries. I picked up a lot by reading and tweaking the examples, which are installed along with the toolchain: https://github.com/devkitPro/3ds-examples https://github.com/devkitPro/3ds-examples libctru, installed with devkitpro (https://libctru.devkitpro.org/ https://libctru.devkitpro.org/) is where a lot of the platform-specific APIs live. There are also some higher-level libraries built on top of it A good understanding of ARM will take you a long way. A lot of what documentation there is (especially on 3dbrew.org) assumes you understand the terms and general architecture of an older ARM platform. This book https://www.brucesmith.info/arm-a32-assembly-language/ https://www.brucesmith.info/arm-a32-assembly-language/ was great for building enough understanding that I could understand most of the official reference manuals. From those, I found the ARMv7 reference manual and the ARM11 MPCore Technical Reference Manual to be the most useful, and I refer back to the ARM instruction set reference card a lot. Besides that, it's reading and modifying the source of other projects, and trying things out. If you look at homebrew apps like ctrQuake (https://github.com/masterfeizz/ctrQuake https://github.com/masterfeizz/ctrQuake), you'll notice there's usually not a lot of platform-specific code -- most is just standard C / C++. Hope that helps. Just like anything, it's knowing enough to get started (a toolchain, some C, and some examples) and using your questions and ideas to draw you into the next thing to learn.

Tepix 6y ago

Personally I think the PS Vita is just as good, if not an even better value. You can get lightly used ones for around 80-100€ and they have a very nice OLED and a fast CPU. They can emulate pretty much anything up to PS1/N64.

Gengar 6y ago
PS Vita game library is nowhere near as strong though. It is another cool cheap device for homebrew.
- anotherman554 6y ago
  Vita runs PSP games and PS1 games, so it's a strong library if you don't have a PSP already.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mintplant 6y ago

It also still supports the entirety of the original DS homebrew scene, including my favorite flashcard: the SuperCard DSTWO [0], which includes an onboard CPU and RAM for running software that's more powerful than the host DS! You could feel the chip bulging out underneath the label, and the cartridges went into the slot with an odd "squish" because of that. A ridiculous yet beautiful piece of engineering. [0] http://eng.supercard.sc/ http://eng.supercard.sc/

fossuser 6y ago

I was confused by this article because the 3DS has been unavailable for months now (except for random editions from Amazon sellers for above MSRP). The main change seems to be them removing the 3DS page from the Nintendo website? My impression was that they stopped making them long ago and were only making new versions of the 2DS (which kind of defeats the entire purpose of the device). They also don't make enough Switch consoles to meet demand, and they don't update basic things with their software (friend codes really?) I'm not sure what the culture is like at Nintendo, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit that would make things a lot better (and make them a lot more money at the same time).

devindotcom 6y ago
I don't think the 2DS defeats the purpose of the device. The 3D aspect was by design only used in optional ways by nearly all developers and the 2DS as a great, cheaper, lighter alternative to the original. If anything it makes the handheld more focused and useful by stripping away something that was never really effective to begin with.
- fossuser 6y ago
  In my case I was trying to get a gift for a friend who plays a lot of monster hunter world and the 3D apparently helps with gameplay since being able to sense the depth makes it easier to fight the monsters. By “defeat the purpose” I just meant that a version of the 3DS without the 3D part isn’t really the same thing. I generally find Nintendo the company frustrating to interact with when trying to buy things from them.
- takeda 6y ago
  if 2DS was foldable I would buy it instead of 3DS. Didn't really care about the 3D.
  - EddieRingle 6y ago
    The New 2DS is the foldable version.

gowld 6y ago

What's a good website for this scene?

elsonrodriguez 6y ago
https://gbatemp.net/categories/nintendo-3ds-discussions.198/ https://gbatemp.net/categories/nintendo-3ds-discussions.198/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/ for discussion. The best resource for jailbreaking your 3DS would be here: https://3ds.hacks.guide https://3ds.hacks.guide

JansjoFromIkea 6y ago

I would say a DSi XL is the best choice for original DS games though, you get a larger screen with the exact same resolution as DS games play in and you get possibly the nicest and most durable of Nintendo's portable designs. The DSi as of last year is pretty hackable in itself too. I got one basically as a bonus in an ebay auction a few months back along with a 3DS I was getting for a friend and I've found myself playing original DS games on it more than I ever did on my own New 3DS XL so I was almost certainly picking up on the iffiness of the upscaling to fill the screen.

DCKing 6y ago
The DSi is great too of course, but if the scaling of DS games is a problem for you on a 3DS you can display the games unscaled/letterboxed by launching the game (or TwilightMenu) while holding Select or Start. I too much prefer displaying them without the bar scaling. The same trick works for Virtual Console games including GBA titles.