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My Hacked Nintendo DSi | A childhood dream come true


HDN

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I briefly touched upon this topic in a thread I created a few days ago. Let me fill those of you who didn't read it in:

I got my light blue Nintendo DSi at the tail-end of its lifespan, on my eighth birthday in January 2013. I didn't realize this until the other day when I was researching the system, but I had actually gotten mine after they were discontinued. So this puppy one of the last-ever DSi systems.

"Why did I get a DSi?" you might be asking. That's a fair question; the 3DS had been out for almost two years at that point. The reason I got a DSi instead was because I chose it over its successor. The 3DS, from what I had seen at that point, had a gross-looking circle pad and a dinky little D-Pad. That's why. Not terribly smart, but I really don't regret getting a DSi at all. Never did, even back then.

If you know me, you'll know I'm not one for analog sticks. I'll oftentimes take the D-Pad route unless it's a 3D game or something. Younger me hated them even more. I eventually did get a 3DS XL a few years later in 2015, and later a New 3DS XL. I never did stop using my DSi, however, be it for animating with Flipnote Studio or listening to music. 

All three of said DS's have seen better days. The OG 3DS XL hasn't worked in years. That one's legitimately broken. The New 3DS XL, which has probably gotten the most use of the three, has the "X" and "B" buttons broken. They'll work if you'd press down hard enough. As for the DSi, both the "L" and "R" triggers are dysfunctional. "L" probably works once every 50 presses while "R" is more like once every 200. I would like to fix them, but I'm too scared to take my systems apart and accidentally break something. 

Furthermore, many of you knew that I grew up with a hacked Nintendo Wii in the household. I wasted many an hour playing emulated versions of NES and 2600 games in particular. Ever since I got my DSi, I've wanted to find a way to take those games on the go with me. I recently started softmodding some of my Nintendo systems like my Wii U and adding more content to the original Wii, so I thought I would finally make this old dream a reality.

So why did I choose to mod the DSi over the 3DS? 

I chose to do this for multiple reasons. For one, the DSi was indeed the system I used to fantasize being able to do this on, and I kind of wanted some closure, however silly that sounds. The 3DS also had Virtual Console (which blew me away back in the day), and unless you could the Game and Watch games, DSi didn't. The biggest reason, however, is that the DSi had an easily accessible SD card slot. My New 3DS's microSD lies behind the back plate, which is so beat up I'm afraid it won't go back on if I unscrew it.

I highly recommend trying this softmod out. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. I plan to make later posts in this thread as tutorials for anyone wanting to do this.

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