In other news, there’s a community-made port of the Half-Life engine to the Nintendo 3DS which you can use if your 3DS is jailbroken.
If you haven't already jailbroken your 3DS, read on.You should – it takes 20 minutes tops, it’s virtually impossible to mess up, all your games/saves/home menu are kept exactly how you left them, and the only tools you need are the 3DS itself and any device with an SD card reader and and internet connection. I used my phone. You don’t even need a screwdriver unless your 3DS is one of the handful of models (New 3DS and New 3DS XL) that keeps the SD card slot behind the battery door. Things jailbreaking a 3DS allows you to do, apart from playing Half-Life, include: - removing the region lock to play imported cartridges and/or eShop games - copying games and save data off physical cartridges onto the SD card as games on your homescreen so you don’t have to worry about losing the cartridges - taking screenshots of gameplay - download community created home menu themes from themeplaza.art- (New model 3DS/2DS only) overclocking the CPU to get rid of lag in some games - installing screen “recording” software to stream gameplay to a PC where it can then be recorded without the need for a 3DS capture card - run emulators for retro consoles up to the N64/PS1, plus run DS(i) and GBA ROMs directly without emulation using the built in DS/GBA hardware, giving full native compatibility and performance - piracy of course - and being able to play Sonic Mania. Things you can do with a stock 3DS that you can’t do after jailbreaking include: - Literally nothing, there is literally no downside You can find a step-by-step tutorial at 3ds.hacks.guide. The guide is phenomenal – “if you see this, do this; if you see this, do this; if you see this, you did the last step wrong, go back and do this.” This will walk you through installing most of the software you’ll need. Once you’ve finished, here are some additions I recommend: - TWiLightMenu++ – run DS games from the SD card, with a cool DSi inspired menu - NDSForwarder – create icons on your home screen for DS games on your SD card, so you can launch them without waiting for TWiLightMenu to load (it must still be installed) - openagbfirm – run GBA games from the SD card without installing them to the home screen (this app runs as a dual boot and starts up way faster than booting the entire 3DS – power off to in game in 5 seconds) - CartInstall – copy 3DS games directly from cartridge to installed on home screen without an intervening .cia step)
You can download the Half-Life port here. You’ll need to supply the game files yourself, but those are free for the next two days, and once you’ve done that you can play the entire game on the go. The 3DS’s processor is just about powerful enough to run Half-Life at the console’s native resolution of 400x240 with minimal stuttering. (The port does not support turning the 3D on – if it did, that would cut the performance in half.) It’s not an ideal way to play half-life by any means, but still, cool!
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