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Comment by peruvian | Hacker News Reader

Most in-demand 3DS games have not been cheap in years. They've been pretty expensive due to low printing (Bravely Default, DQ remakes, most Atlus RPGs) for years now. I'm guessing Nintendo games are OK due to so many people owning them though.

3DS eShop might be a safe bet but aside from the usual downsides of digital, the games are tied to the system, not your eShop account.

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There are some that remained in print, however, and so I held off on taking the plunge because I didn't feel like dropping $40 for Fire Emblem Echoes (for example), knowing it would probably be a year before I played it.

But knowing that the console and likely all first-party games will soon be OOP certainly lights a fire under me, as I'd much rather pay $40 for a new, sealed copy of the game than $70 for a cart-only copy of the game off eBay in a year's time.

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology evidently went OOP while I wasn't looking, and the Ebay price has already skyrocketed. Argh!

EDIT: And yes, I've got a couple from the eShop (Devil Survivor's 1 & 2 and Soul Hackers), but I prefer carts since they're not locked to my system/account. And who knows when Nintendo will decide to shut down the eShop, just like they did for the Wii shop?

You can dump your own carts or eshop titles to ROM files with custom firmware, which you can then install on another system. Technically piracy, but it's not something I personally have moral qualms about, especially when the clock is ticking on the store's own existence.

If you were to go a step further, the eShop actually trusts the client and you can download the entire 3ds library direct from Nintendo with the right hack. Google "freeshop" and read their FAQ if you're curious. I won't link it here in case it offends anyone.

Nintendo fixed that loophole back in August 2018, didn't they?

Oops, you are correct. I didn't think they'd be able to fix it. Thanks for the update, it's been a while :)

Funny story, this loophole existed for both the Wii U and 3DS eShops. While 3DS got it patched, the Wii U is still vulnerable.

Do you happen to know how they patched it? I thought the idea was that it was bad encryption and once the license generation was broken, eShop couldn't tell if it was a real license or a fake one.

The 3DS homebrew scene seems pretty robust. The hardware is cheap enough now that you can have a modded system for preservation purposes, while keeping another for digital downloads.

I got a lot of popular 3DS games from the used games market and likewise also sold off some of them when I was done with them. I never bought any at more than half the retail price of the game at that time. Of course, for this reason (and also to really own my games) I always preferred cartridges.

I sold my 3ds games for a hefty profit so I agree

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