How the Homebrew Community is Reviving the Nintendo 3DS

Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

The Nintendo 3DS arguably has one of the biggest Homebrew communities out there, with the first exploit being discovered just one year after its release date in 2011. But now that it’s been 14 years of the 3DS’s release date, the modding community has definitely come a long way.

What Is Homebrew?
But wait, what IS Homebrew?
Homebrew, or Homebrewing is basically another word for modding and hacking a system to run your own code and programs. Homebrew communities usually consist of some pretty cool and passionate developers.

Installing Homebrew
If you’re gonna run homebrew on your Nintendo 3DS, you obviously need to mod it to run homebrew. Don’t worry it’s really easy, and all you’ll need is a computer. The steps are pretty simple. Just drag some things to your SD Card, run some apps, press some buttons, and you should be good! But in all seriousness, its pretty easy to mess up a 3DS while homebrewing it. I suggest reading the guide on https://3ds.hacks.guide, as it will always be the most up to date.

Starter Things you NEED to do
You just homebrewed your 3DS, great! Now what? Well there's A LOT you can do to a modded 3DS. Personally, these are the things I did first with my 3DS. First things first. FBI Manager and Universal Updater. FBI is a lightweight but advanced file manager for the 3DS. 
And the main thing is that it can install games, and remotely connect to your computer.



Which is nice for new 3DS users, as the SD Card is locked up behind it’s backplate, which requires a screwdriver to get to (thanks nintendo >:( Universal Updater is similar to that as well, but its basically the eShop for Homebrew software. 
You can easily install software without a computer, which is how I installed most of my software. 
Another necessity Pretendo Network. Basically, its a service that revives online services for your 3DS. I'll get more into that later.

Anemone Fe!n Manager
Apart from the basic utilites that the homebrew community offers, The Anemone Theme Manager offers great customization for your 3DS. Anemone allows for you to download custom themes on your 3DS from a website called the Theme Plaza! You can also make your own too (like I did) and apply it to your 3DS! I personally love this, since having myself on the home screen, or anything you want really, is really freaking cool.

CTGP 7
And speaking of customization, there's CTGP 7 for Mario Kart 7. I personally don't play CTGP 7 that often, but let me tell you, this modpack is awesome. You can do pretty much anything with it (as long as you know how, obviously). From what I know, you can make custom maps, install game improvements, and add characters and custom cars. Just imagine Peter Griffin driving a toy car in Green Hill Zone.

Pretendo Network
Another great homebrew project is Pretendo Network! Like I said earlier, Pretendo Network helps revive the online services for the 3DS! Some of which include online play, friends list, and personal two favorites, Miiverse and StreetPass Relay!

(Widget) Woah, wait a minute, what's Streetpass Relay?

(sirkorgo) Well I'm glad you asked, Widget!

Streetpass Relay was a feature where you could get streetpasses through Nintendo Zone, gbut the people at Pretendo reworked it so that you can get Streetpasses over the internet with people in your friends list, or people you play with online!

Anyways, the guys at Pretendo are doing really good work and are really making the 3DS feel alive. It’s pretty easy to install, and you can follow the guide on their website at pretendo.network

NetPass (excluded from video)

Another software aiming to revive dead services is NetPass! Similar to Streetpass Relay, NetPass connects you to a server where you can exchange streetpasses! This is considerably useful, since adding friends on the 3DS is somewhat of a tedious task, and getting streetpasses in person is out of the question.

Some people, like my friend mjv2011, don't want to use this since it's pretty much cheating going outside, and I respect that.

Emulation

Now, a great quality about 3DS is that it's amazing at emulation. From my testing, 3DSes run so many retro games as if they were intended to run on the 3DS. (well most of them ARE intended to, because of Virtual Console) and there are MANY ways to play those retro games using Homebrew. My go-to is Retro Arch, as it tends to be the “all in one” emulator. But the 3DS starts to lag more with the N64 and PS1, as I guess they’re pretty hard to emulate.

Something interesting about the 3DS is that it can actually natively play GBA games, as it’s built off of the original Nintendo DS, which is why GBA games run so well.

But overall, the 3DS is nice place to store your retro game library and play them.   

Official Software & Content

Oh, and speaking of Nintendo games, Homebrew can be a real lifesaver with your games library. With Checkpoint, another great homebrew utility, you can backup your game's save data! This is `````````` useful for physical games, as you never know when your save data suddenly gets corrupted.

And there's um.. the salty seven seas (pirating). It's surprisingly easy to just download totally legitimate content for the 3DS through the hShop. It's entirely up to you if you're fine with pirating, but I'm not. I like having a game library that I bought that just isn't pirated of off someone else's copy of the game. But if a game has a ridiculous price (like Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii) I'd pirate it.

But overall, right now is the best time to mod your 3DS, as you'll be able to get so much more out of it, and use it as if it was still 2015. And I only covered the tip of the iceberg of 3DS modding, as theres a lot more to it like amiibo hacking, rom hacks for games, and even a web server host for the 3DS. Crazy right? 

That's all from me! See ya. -sirkorgo

This post was imported from my YouTube Video, "How the Homebrew Community is Reviving the Nintendo 3DS"

EARLY ACCESS: 3DS Homebrew Video

 Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

I'm working on a new video about Nintendo 3DS homebrew!

Here's a little sneak peak on the video script.

"Along with the basic things you need, there's a lot more you can do with your 3DS. Take Pretendo Network for example. Like I said earlier, they somehow managed to revive the now-dead online services of the 3DS. Some of these features include Online Play and the Friends List. On the Wii U, they even revived Wii U Chat (which was basically FaceTime for the Wii U)

But personally I think one of the best features was the Miiverse revival. They reverse engineered how Miiverse works so now that its useable! This is really cool, as games like Super Mario Land 3D took great advantage of it.

But the other feature I find really cool is Streetpass Relay.

(Widget) Woah, wait a minute, what's Streetpass Relay?

(sirkorgo) Well I'm glad you asked, Widget!

Streetpass Relay was a feature made by Nintendo where you could get Streetpasses through Nintendo Zone, which is another truckload of explanation, but the guys making Pretendo reworked it so that you can get Streetpasses over the internet with people in your friends list, or people you play with online!

(Widget) Woah, I gotta try that! I just need some friends though.

(sirkorgo) well you can exchange some friend codes on the pretendo discord and reddit communites...

Anyways, Pretendo Network is probably one of the coolest things you can do with your 3DS, as you can use it as if its like... 2015!" Also, I need some of your input! I can't figure out a title for the video, and It's be nice if I could get some help. Below are the candidates, and you can vote through the Discord Server or the comments section on this post.

1. How the 3DS is Still Alive Thanks to the Homebrew Community
2. Modding your 3DS Is a MUST in 2025
3. How the Homebrew Community is Reviving the Nintendo 3DS

That's all from me! See ya. -sirkorgo

Using an Apple Silicon Mac for the First Time

Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

Computers are awesome. They let do you basically anything. From reading and writing all the way to rocket science if you know how. I've personally loved computers. But in my history with them, It was hard to get a high performance computer due to my budget.

However, when I purchased the MacBook Air, it changed everything.

MacBook Air

Now, the macs from this time period were well known for getting really hot. That’s because the Intel i7 is a really beefy chip that needs a lot of cooling. But because the MacBook Air was so thin, it didn’t have enough room to properly ventilate. And who’s to blame? Jony Ive of course, he had the dumb idea to design this overheating laptop.

Don’t get me wrong. This laptop served me well. 

It helped me get through the pandemic with online classes, it helped me learn to code in Roblox Studio, and most importantly, it helped me get started in filmmaking. Without that mac, my YouTube channel would not be here!

Somewhat Critical Failure

But the overheating problems would get worse every year. To the point where I had to place an ice pack on it whenever I wanted to even do simple web browsing! But I had to deal with it, since it was such an expensive computer! I can't just replace it.

When playing anything, even games that aren’t that graphics heavy like Roblox would barely run without having to basically turning off the graphics quality.

Finding A Replacement

I was thinking about getting a new laptop for a while when the overheating was getting out of hand, but I couldn’t figure out which computer I should get. I needed a laptop that was portable, yet powerful, because I was constantly going places.

I wanted to switch to a Windows laptop, but it was hard to give up the apple ecosystem, since I had an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV syncing together.

If I'm going to be honest, I kept looking at the Microsoft Surface line of laptops, but I decided not to, as I would probably have a similar experience.

Getting the Mac Mini

I then consider desktop computers, and I finally landed on the Mac mini with an M2 Pro. It was a good deal, and its chip allegedly could run games really well. But I was hesitant, considering my previous mac's performance. 

I could either A. get an amazing mac that runs awesome, or B. a waste of money that runs just as poorly as my Intel mac did.

After deep consideration, I placed the order.

First Thoughts

When I got the Mac mini, my first impression were the mass amounts of ports, this was a great upgrade from my intel mac with only 2 usb c ports. 

At first boot, I was genuinely astonished at how fast it started up. I thought that the setup interface was in BIOS for it to turn on that fast. But alas, it wasn't.

After migrating my data and updating, I was devastated to find out that Apple Silicon mac's could only output display resolutions at the native resolution. What this means is that I couldn't change the scaling of my screen, so I could fit more on a smaller display. After some workarounds, i got the scaling back to what i preferred.

But those workarounds happened to TANK my performance. So, I just gave in and decided to stick to the native resolution. I've gotten used to it, but it's a real bummer.

Performance

In terms of Minecraft, OBS, and Portal this mac is AMAZING compared to what I had on the Intel mac.

Shaders run smoothly at high settings averaging 120 FPS whilst my intel mac barely ran 3 FPS with shaders, and 40 without.

I can finally have multiple apps open at a time now, since my intel mac would lag like crazy when I attempted to do so. Making streaming a lot easier.

And now I can record my 3DS and PSVita for videos!

My method for streaming on the 3DS is to have my 3DS stream game data using an app called Arctic Base, which then sends the data to an emulator on my computer, which is where the game runs. This is awesome, since I can run high quality 3DS streams without performance drops. And for my PS Vita, I can FINALLY record its audio.

To record my Vita, I have to use a USB cable that sends the screen data to my software. Audio is sent through a headphone cable, but the issue is that my Intel mac would detect the Vita as speakers, not audio input.

The M2 mac was able to detect the audio input, and I can finally make videos with my Vita.

But Overall, the 2020 MacBook Air is an amazing laptop. It helped me get so many things done in only 4 years, and I love that. Sure, it might’ve had its overheating problems and its lag spikes, but it still did a great job.

Now with the Mac mini, I can get EVEN more things done.

That's all from me! See ya. -sirkorgo

This post was imported from my video, "Switching from an Intel Mac to an M2 Pro Mac mini"