The Most Valuable 3DS Game (today)
In 2011 a game was released for the 3DS called Cubic Ninja. Three years later, after the game has gone out of print and its development studio has folded, Cubic Ninja has now skyrocketed in value. Over the last few days its average price has gone from $3 to $40, with some copies being sold for as much as $500. This must be a really good game, right?
Not exactly. More like it’s the one game that turned out to enable an exploit that would bypass Nintendo’s security features and allow any hacker to paste his homebrew into the firmware.
This week a hacker did just that. 22 year old Jorden Rabet published his findings on the forums of the GBATemp website, announcing he had successfully cracked the 3DS, with the help of a “mystery game.” Later he edited his post and revealed it was Cubic Ninja. Activating any homebrew material requires an SD card with Rabet’s hack on it (which has not yet been released). It also requires Cubic Ninja in the 3DS slot, as whatever mechanic allows the tomfoolery is located in the game’s save data.
Rabet has a lot of experience hacking Nintendo handhelds. He’s the guy who created Aperture Science DS, an unsanctioned portable Portal game running impressively on the original DS’s hardware. Despite the obvious potential for abuse, Rabet is insistent that his Cubic Ninja hack will not allow backups or copies of 3DS games to be played….only homebrew software.
Of course, that’s not really up to him, and it may be rendered moot anyway when Nintendo inevitably finds out about this crack and updates their firmware to patch it up. But then again, considering how few people will be able to get access to Cubic Ninja, will they even care? Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime, unless you love games about cube-shaped ninjas too much to part with them, NOW is the time to sell.