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"

My Experience with the Nintendo 3DS

Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

The DS family lineup is probably the BEST thing to happen in the 21st century. And sadly, now that it’s been officially discontinued with the closure of Nintendo Network (R.I.P) I think it’d be cool to tell my experience with the 3DS.

The nintendo 3DS was probably one of nintendo's best consoles at least in my opinion. and sadly, now that it's been officially discontinued with the eshop shutdown and nintendo network shutdown rest in piece, i think it'd be pretty cool if i told my story with the 3DS

My First Nintendo 3DS

I got my 3DS somewhat late into its lifespan from a thrift store. It was a launch model cyan 3DS. I remember the first day I got it, I took the console and the stylus into my grandparent’s patio.

Now, the v
patio at their house has these planks with holes in between each plank that led to the crawlspace. Small enough to fit a stylus through. Do you see where I’m going with this? Standing in the patio, I somehow lost my grip on my stylus, and it fell through into the foundation. I. Was. Devastated.

You’re probably thinking, just get a new stylus! It’s not that hard… For whatever reason my brain didn’t think of that for another 2 years.

The Games

I don’t remember what games I had on that 3DS, but I distinctly remember playing LEGO: Pirates Of the Caribbean. I couldn’t get past the first part though because the game kept crashing. I remember my 3DS installing the Tomodachi Life demo after I reset it and removed the previous owner’s data.

The Nintendo 3DS Sound app was a game of itself. The horrendous sounds I recorded on that thing probably broke the microphone. Looking back at them, I'm not sure how I even MADE some of them.

But, my experience didn’t last long with my beloved 3DS. I somehow lost the charger for that console. This charger makes a comeback though, so keep it in mind.

3 Years Later

It’s now 2018, and I find my 3DS in my closet. And it finally came to me that I should buy a new charger and stylus for it! It only took 3 years.

So, after an Amazon shopping trip, I got my 3DS back from the dead, and I wondered, what should I play? I looked at the barren home screen and saw the demo I once played in 2015.

That game was Tomodachi Life. Sadly, I lost the SD card that had my 3DS memories, so I started over in the full version of Tomodachi Life. I played Tomodachi Life for a really long time grinding it to its brim. I was browsing the Games at a Good Price section, because i'm a cheapskate, and I saw Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer. This $20 game was somehow the best game I've ever played.

I LOVED designing the houses for the Villagers with wacky requests, and it has very special place in my heart right next to Tomodachi Life.

I also remember I would shake the HELL out of my 3DS so I could get enough play coins in the Streetpass Plaza, I never got any streetpasses sadly, until I homebrewed my 3DS.

Homebrew Launcher

In around 2020, I found out about 3ds homebrew. If you don't what that is, it's basically modding your 3DS to do basically whatever you wanted. This opened me up to all these cool community projects, even something called Reverse! Reverse was a project that would revive the Miiverse service which was social media for Nintendo consoles. Miiverse was something I never experienced, as I couldn't figure out how I could make a Nintendo Network ID. But with homebrew, I could. I loved setting custom themes on my 3DS and dumping my Virtual Console and DS games to play on my devices.

Shopping Grind

At first, getting things for my 3DS were rare, but My Nintendo would keep me busy, as there were exclusive items I could get using platinum points. I would finish every single quest there was so I could a theme or two, but there was also Flipnote Studio. Flipnote was pretty fun to make edgy animations, but then later down the line, I fortunately got more games.

Sadly, Nintendo announced that The 3DS eShop was closing down, and I didn't want to be stuck with the few games I owned, since physical games would get much more expensive.

I got a lot of games. Just to name a few games, I got: Animal Crossing New Leaf, Mario Maker, Rhythm Heaven: Megamix, Nintendogs+ cats and a lot, and I mean a lot of virtual console games.

What I couldn't get, however were the new 3ds exclusive games. So, for my birthday, I got my current New 2DS XL. I remember the first thing I did was get Earthbound and Super Mario Land.

Random Reunions?!?!

Remember when I dropped my 3DS Stylus I dropped? It made a comeback in 2023 because of my brother.

I told my brother about the stylus, and for whatever reason, he thought it would be a good idea to get the stylus that was in the crawl space. To be honest, I thought it was buried in the sand in the ground like a fossil.

My brother got it out of the crawl space and this stylus was rusted, and I mean really rusted. The stylus somehow shrunk and no longer fit in the stylus holder on the 3DS.

The charger, also made a comeback in the weirdest way. My cousins were moving out and needed to throw out stuff they didn’t need. They asked me if I wanted to take anything, and among the piles of wires I found the 3DS charger that I lost many years ago. And I don't have a recollection of taking the 3DS to my cousin's house and they never owned a 3DS themselves.

The 3DS was a really big part of my childhood, from me losing it for the first 2 years of me owning it, and then it becoming one of my most favorite consoles. Personally, i thought that my history with it was pretty interesting. 

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

This post was imported from my YouTube Video, "My Experience with the Nintendo 3DS"

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Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

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

Why iPods are still Awesome in 2025

 Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

I recently purchased an iPod nano 3rd generation, as its the most similar to the classic line of iPods but with a small form factor. I personally prefer this model, as it was the iPod I owned when I was younger, which I sadly no longer have.

Credit: Apple

But as you probably know, I'm obsessed with tech from the 2000's. I find their qualities really interesting and charming, in a way.

The iPod was revolutionary for its time, as it could hold so many songs in such a form factor, unlike its competition, from Samsung and Creative which didn't even come close.

A big staple of the 2000's were single-purpose technology. What this means is that instead of having a phone for music, internet, gaming, email, photos, and more, you had multiple devices for different things. At the time, your phone was used for calling and texting, a camera for taking pictures, and an MP3 Player for music.

Credit: Apple

And in that time period, the most popular MP3 player had to be the iPod.

Now that its 2025, everybody just uses their phones for everyday usage. But even though iPods have gone irrelevant with smartphones, people still use them to this day.

But why?

Well, there's a couple reasons. The current state of digital media, and trying to stay focused.

What's the state of digital media?

Right now, you don't OWN your digital media. You just own a license to download it and play it. Which means your music provider can just... get rid of your license that you paid for just with one click.

The same applies to subscription based streaming services. You don't own anything. The providers can just pull the plug on your favorite song, album, or artist!

A lot of people hate this, but don't want to deal with the hassle of CDs or cassettes. Which is where the iPod comes in. You can just rip your CDs and or your cassettes onto it and carry around your entire collection with you.

Personally, I like to buy songs and albums on Bandcamp, and then save them to my local iTunes Library to play on my iPod.

Trying to focus with modern day tech.

Credit: ZDNET

It's pretty hard to focus on anything really because of the amounts of notifications and social medias there are. I like listening to music while I work, but I get easily distracted by apps like instagram and tiktok (rip). The iPod kind of solves that, since its not trying to get your attention. It just... plays music.

But the iPod can't stream music, which is where purchasing songs comes in.

Another reason is obviously nostalgia, but the iPod still provides some functionality. But anyways, iPods are still really cool in 2025. 

That's all from me! See ya.

-sirkorgo

grocery shopping!

    hi guys! me, Sirkorgo© The Character,not Sirkorgo The Person! today i wanted to tell you guys about something cool that happened to me today! today i was just walking down arnie st. (my electric unicycle broke down) when i saw a cool street performer! he was killing it on the ocarina, so i decided to lend him a few bucks!  "it's my treat!" 

     anyway i went to the grocery store today! i was there on a Mission. to find the Elusive... Series 2 Ink Inc. Mystery Box... just to see? today's the release day, you've heard, right!? and lo and behold, they... DIDN'T HAVE THEM!!! some collector nerds went and bought the whole store out...

    i tell ya, some of these people are ruining the hobby for others! and most people are only looking for MONEY!! what about the people that want to open boxes for themselves and enjoyment!? have you ever thought of THEM?? 

    sigh... eventually i realized that "oh, i'm actually running low on food" so i figured i'd stay and go to another store afterwards. i had to pull up my notes app to see my shopping list i made conveniently the day before. it says:

•Full fat anything

•Cloud cakes

•Misty stew

•Tofu

•That new mystery box thing

•Baguettes❤️

    anyway after i was done grocery shopping i head home and im writing this right now! it's 3:74 p.m. and i'm microwaving some stuff in the fridge as we speak. see you next time!

            -sirkorgo ^w^

    p.s. they ran out of baguettes at the grocery store so i had to walk to my local store. they were out too </3

Sirkorgo in the Meantime: Issue #1

 Heyo! Sirkorgo here.

I'm publishing a series of webcomics titled "Sirkorgo: In the Meantime!" They'll be random comics about sirkorgo and his friends just... doing fun stuff! These comics will be pretty short, ranging from around 2-3 pages! I'm considering making a graphic novel in the future that costs money 🤑!

So, enough yapping. Here's the first the webcomic!

This one happened to be for an assignment at school about pHoToSyNtHeSiS!!1

Anyways, this took... a while so I hope you enjoy reading this!

Want to download this? Click here...

Sirkorgo & Friends Spotlight Wallpaper

 Heyo! Sirkorgo Here.

I was feeling kinda bored again, and decided to make new wallpapers based on Sirkorgo and his friends!
I had a very basic rubric for this.

Each wallpaper has:

The character and a little shadow thing in the background
A soft gradient
A pattern of shapes in the background
Japanese spelling of the name

I was going for one of those character introduction things you see in the intro of sitcoms where the show the character names with the character making a face expression.

Also something else to note, is that the colors and shapes I picked tie in with the characters' personalities and lore. For example, Hat Boy's background color is a lavender gradient, and Hat Boy's favorite color is Lavender.

You're also probably wondering, how are "shapes" tied in with character personality? Well to be honest, I'm not sure. I just took the character design and got some shape. With sirkorgo, his body is pretty circular, so the shapes in the background are circles. With Hat Boy, he has that star on his hat, so that's where THAT comes from :D

Also, please do not translate the japanese names into English, they are severely wrong, according to Google Translate. :shrug:

translating into Japanese is hard!!!

If you'd like to download the wallpapers, join the Discord Server and head over to the Creations channel to download them!

discord/#the-sirkorgo-channel
Don't have Discord?

2000s Gaming was PEAK.

Heyo! Sirkorgo Here. 

The 2000's era of gaming and technology, in my opinion was the best era. There was 4 main consoles. The 3DS, Wii U, PS3, and the Xbox 360. And all of these consoles were amazing in their own way. The 3DS was so pocketable and had so much personality with theme customization and StreetPass, the Wii U was if the Xbox 360 merged with the 3DS, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 were both great for online play and crazy good graphics.

In my opinion, it was the best mix between retro gaming and the modern era of gaming. Right now, consoles are all depressing and boring. Partially because every game is at least $60.

Something I also enjoy about the older consoles, is the massive homebrew communities. The 3DS and Wii U both have massive efforts to revive as many online services as possible. I don't know much about the PS3 and Xbox 360 modding scene, but I do know its pretty large. It's nice to see that there are people out there trying to keep their favorite console alive just like they were in 2006 or 2013.

Anyways,
That's all from me! See ya.

-sirkorgo