3DS Homebrew with Ninjhax

[xdaniel]

3DS hacker smealum has released Ninjhax, his long-anticipated 3DS software exploit for running homebrew software yesterday. Technically incapable of running copied ROMs, it is instead a relatively easy way of running homebrew software, emulators, etc. on the 3DS, up to the (as of right now) latest firmware, 9.2.0.

 

 

There's not too many homebrews for the system yet, but what's there is pretty impressive, in my opinion, including ex. a WIP Minecraft clone fittingly called 3DScraft - featuring a procedurally-generated infinite world, similar to the original - made by smealum himself, as well as the SNES emulator blargSnes, which is already capable of running quite a few games acceptably, including ex. Super Mario World, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Mega Man X and more.

 

The SNES emulator in particular makes me wonder why Nintendo hasn't made SNES games available officially via the 3DS Virtual Console. If I can play ex. ALttP, with good speed, alright sound and some graphical glitches and missing graphics, in a work-in-progress homebrew emulator, then it can't be technical reasons stopping Nintendo from releasing SNES VC titles on the system.

 

All that said, there's some caveats to the exploit. For one, the game needed to launch the exploit, Cubic Ninja by Ubisoft and AQ Interactive, has gotten very expensive after having been revealed to be the exploitable game. Before, it was just a mediocre platformer languishing in bargain bins, but now it's the $40+ key to homebrew. The game aside, Nintendo is most certainly going to try and patch this exploit by whatever means possible. For example, Cubic Ninja was digitally available on the Japanese eShop (while only being a retail release in other regions), but has been removed very soon after smealum made the game public.

 

So, if you want to try out some homebrew via Ninjhax, you'd better do so quickly... if you can still find a cheap copy of the game.