3DS hacked within a day of launch

Mon 28 Feb 2011 11:42am GMT / 6:42am EST / 3:42am PST
Hardware

Pirated DS games playable via R4; 3DS games secure for now

Nintendo

Nintendo's new handheld the 3DS has already been hacked to play pirated games.

While a method to play bootlegged 3DS titles has yet to emerge, crackers had copied DS titles running on the device within 24 hours of its Japanese launch on Saturday.

This was achieved with the notorious R4 flashcart, and the modification of a 'whitelist' found in the 3DS firmware which dictated the software and cartridges it could run.

At present, this whitelist purportedly must be manually hacked by any user attempting to run copied software on their RDS. Observed the R4i group responsible for the hack, "Expect Nintendo to release a firmware update to block the R4 cards once again."

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10 Comments

Martin Mathers
Copywriter/Journalist

Kind of thought this was going to happen - after all, if the 3DS runs DS software, it's almost certainly going to run DS cart imitators once hackers get their hands on the kit and update whatever firmware they use. Then again, this is a DS problem and not a 3DS problem (yet); pirates haven't managed to successfully crack DSi stuff either, or not to the extent that the games are everywhere at least, so I imagine 3DS stuff will be safe for a while yet.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Martin Mathers on 28th February 2011 12:43pm

Posted:2 years ago

Alex Winton
Website Administrator

Nintendo can't really control anything concerning DS piracy at this point. The horse has long, long since bolted. I don't think they'll be too worried about this (if they were, I'd imagine they'd have gone for slightly stronger security than a simple whitelist).

The real mark of the 3DS' strength against piracy will be whether pirates can get 3DS software running on it. I expect it will happen eventually - but then Nintendo also holds a trump card in firmware updates, where they didn't before. It won't stop piracy, just as it didn't on the Wii or PSP - but it will at least give them SOME opportunity to fight back - and they'll definitely catch some people out, which is better than not catching any at all.

Posted:2 years ago

Michael Armer
Studying Games Development National Diploma Level 3

Lancaster and Morecambe College

still seems odd that there is no dsi hack yet. nintendo should have done what ever they did for the dsi for the 3ds

Posted:2 years ago

Sam Brown
Programmer

Cool Games Ltd.

Ah, but for the hackers to take an interest, Nintendo would have to make the DSi run Linux, then take it away again.

Posted:2 years ago

Stephen McCarthy
Studying Games Technology

Kingston University

@Michael Armer
they got a hack for the dsi but they yet to get it to work with the dsi cam, it only runs it with out the cam.

Posted:2 years ago

Andrew Goodchild

Not to much of a (new) issue whilst it is just DS games, in that most of the people interested in a 3DS at this stage probably already have a DS or DSi, if they wanted to use an R4 card for DS games, they could use their old hardware. In terms of DS stuff, it's a "horse has bolted scenerio". I just hope the security for the actual 3DS games is stronger.

Posted:2 years ago

Patrick Frost
QA Project Monitor

Isn't there an argument to suggest that posting news like this raises the profile of and therefore aides piracy? I know that this doesn't really apply on sites like this but most of the mainstream game sites are posting about it as well. This is particularly the case when the "hacking" is such a non-event.

Posted:2 years ago

Tom Keresztes
Programmer

So the 3DS is not broken, yet.

Posted:2 years ago

Andrew Goodchild

@Tom, give it a week;)

Posted:2 years ago