cubic ninja

May 4, 2015

Easy Way To Make Your 3DS Region Free

Peter Paltridge 3DS, cubic ninja, nintendo 0

Region lockouts make it so a Japanese 3DS game cannot be played in an American or European handheld. There are various legal reasons why they’re used, but it’s never stated publicly why, and to make things more confusing, they’re only applied about half the time. All the handhelds in the Game Boy line were region free. The DS line has been the opposite. But not anymore! Someone’s discovered a way to make any 3DS game from any country play in an American system, and you don’t need special chips or a soldering iron. 3DS hacker Smea (who has done other things like make a Portal game for the DS from scratch) discovered the exploit and made a video detailing how to pull it off. All you need to take advantage of the flaw is…..Cubic Ninja. Yes, that again. Remember Cubic Ninja, and its firmware-breaking powers that allowed homebrew to be installed on the 3DS? It didn’t take long for Nintendo to sew that loophole up (and remove Cubic Ninja from

November 20, 2014

The Most Valuable 3DS Game (today)

Peter Paltridge 3DS, cubic ninja, homebrew 0

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