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The 3DS is the Nintendo handheld that followed the DS. It has a very robust homebrew scene due to having a passionate community and not so good security. Homebrew allowed for a ton of new features including surprisingly strong emulation, customizing system menus, running your own code, patching of other games at runtime for modding/translating, etc. Obviously it also opened the door to piracy which makes it something Nintendo is eager to shut down. 3DS hit EoL a while ago (users can no longer make legitimate purchases through Nintendo), yet despite months having gone by since then Nintendo has decided to go back and patch up one of the more convenient methods for enabling homebrew which is something that is considered a dick move since they weren't making money off of it anymore anyways and even if they were it is YOUR SYSTEM and you should be able to do what you want with it. Fortunately there are unpatchable zero-day exploits for the system but they are not as easy as the one that Nintendo patched.

Homebrew on Nintendo consoles has always had a really interesting scene but it really took off with the Wii and everything after it. Hackers would keep finding ways to get into everything and Nintendo would hastily patch it up in a sort of live cat and mouse game. The exploit that Nintendo patched just recently is not hard to do, but older exploits were even easier. One of the earlier 3DS exploits was to simply drop a modified audio file onto your SD card and play it in the 3DS audio player. You would own the whole device in ten seconds flat.




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