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Getting a a 3ds in 2026, is it worth it?

So, I’ve gotten my hands on an original-ish old Nintendo 3ds, the original model. I got it for free because it was actually my cousins’ childhood 3ds, I am grateful for it since they normally cost up to €300. I got the shiny blue color.

In this post I want to break down what I liked and didn’t like about the console, plus give my personal stance for it.

Homebrew

Modding a 3ds is surprisingly easy

People say it all the time, and it’s true. It took 20 minutes to mod mine and I now have tons of pirate games available. 3ds.hacks.guide is a great, up-to-date tutorial on how to mod your console.

The first things I did when I modded the console were:

  1. Install a theme with Anemone
  2. Get 3hs from Universal-Updater
  3. Get a couple games

Games

I only got six games, to try them all you know:

(the list is in no particular order)

I liked all of these, I didn’t play Pokemon: Sun that much but I didn’t really like it that much. MK7 is perhaps my favorite of these, it’s generally very fun and with Pretendo I can still play online. Matchmaking can sometimes be slow but it’s enough to make a match.

Form Factor

A common complain I see for this console is that it is really small. I think it’s actually a pro, since it fits perfectly in your pocket. The top screen, however, is really small. Like 50% of the space on the top lap is wasted.

I do feel a couple inches more would really help though. I like where the SD card and stylus are positioned, I also like the wireless toggle, and the position of the cardtrige slot.

3D

The Nintendo 3DS gets its name because its well, a descensor of the DS, and because it is 3D. I guess the abbreviation now makes little sense, if you have some imagination you can probably come up with something, but I can’t.

Anyways, focusing on the latter, I see most people not using the 3d feature, I guess it is because if you move then it kinda gets you sick, the New 3DS fixed that, but first looks matter more I guess.

I personally use the 3d feature, if you don’t move the console it’s actually real cool.

Hardware

It’s bad. It struggles to even run the most quintessential of N64 games. It barely has 128MBs, an ARM11 CPU with 268Mhz clock speed and dual-cores.

The New models made it better with double the ram, an ARM11 quad-core 804Mhz CPU; which is still pretty bad even for 2015 standards.

It’s really underpowered, which is sad because with more specs it could’ve had even better games.

Is it worth it?

Value-wise, yes! It’s a decent console with a great catalog, the biggest problems are that it is extremely underpowered, and that its price/value ratio is really low as it is becoming really expensive

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