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How I Tried to Make Gateway 3DS Work
4 months ago, I recorded a video: «What you need to know about Nintendo 3DS in 2023», where I briefly mentioned flash cartridges for this console. One of these flash cartridges is Gateway.
There, I mentioned that the cartridge is morally outdated and only works on consoles with firmware 9.2 or lower. But one thing bothered me – I couldn't verify these claims. It's unlikely that the guides about this cartridge were lying, but I still wanted to check everything myself.
And once that decision was made, it was time to figure out how to do it. The biggest problem was that I needed an UNMODIFIED console (and while they are becoming rarer, they still exist). It also had to have firmware 9.2 or lower. To put it into perspective: firmware 9.0 was released in 2014, so almost 10 years have passed since then. And as you can imagine, the chances of finding such a console were close to zero. Of course, I could have asked every seller of a 3DS, and surely, at some point, I would have come across such a console, but how many years would that process have taken?
Buying the Console
And then a miracle happened. Two people from the Moscow region (possibly the same person, but with two different accounts, considering that both had the address of Nekrasovka metro station) posted a huge pile of consoles on Avito. All these consoles had one drawback – they didn't work on battery power.
I wrote to the seller and realized that I was lucky - not only was the console on firmware 7.1.0-8E, but it was also unmodified.
I knew that these were "Kiosk" versions of the 3DS. That is, consoles intended for events and display stands, not for sale.
In terms of differences, any 3DS can be made to work in "Kiosk" mode and vice versa. For this, you need to resolder one resistor to the adjacent track.
What is the fundamental difference between these modes? With rare exceptions, when the Home button is disabled, the main difference is that in normal mode, the console works on battery power, while in "Kiosk" mode, it only works when plugged in. That is, if you unplug the charging cable, the console will turn off. Also, a console in "Kiosk" mode cannot be turned off - it is always on (and can only be rebooted by resetting to factory settings).
And so I bought a Nintendo 3DS XL. I was also very pleased with the price - 6 thousand rubles. Not only did this console fully meet all my requirements, but it was also quite cheap.
All that was left was to buy the Gateway flash cartridge, which I did the same day, spending another 2 thousand rubles.
All that was left was to wait, though not for very long. Just 4 days later, everything arrived. I had to struggle a bit to find the relevant software for the Gateway cartridges, and I was ready.
Now that we've reached the cartridges, let's talk a bit about why there are two of them and what they are for.
Gateway Kit and Features
Gateway flash cartridges come in a beautiful box:
Inside, there are two flash cartridges, one in the Nintendo DS format, and the other in the 3DS format:
Why were there two cartridges? The blue one is a regular flash cartridge for Nintendo DS on R4 Wood firmware. The red one, however, is the flash cartridge for Nintendo 3DS games.
In short (and I will write more about this in the review/guide for the cartridge), the hack looked like this: you needed to write the Launcher.dat file (which contained the Gateway shell) to the console's memory card, then insert the blue cartridge and launch the NVRAM Installer program. Next, you had to reboot the console and go into the settings, and then into the Nintendo DS settings menu (such a menu exists in the 3DS console settings). And the Gateway shell from the Launcher.dat file would open, where you could do things like: emuNAND, downgrade the console, and other things.
It seemed simple. But on my gray Nintendo 3DS XL, nothing wanted to work. I found the manual for the flash cartridge from the developer, and it turned out that there was no mention of the blue flash cartridge at all. The Gateway shell loading was based on a browser exploit. That is, the first step was to open the browser and enter the developer's website address: go.gateway-3ds.com, and then the Gateway shell would load.
But there was one problem. The gateway-3ds.com website closed back in 2018. And to all questions about Gateway asked on various forums, there was one answer – reflash the console to Luma 3DS.
I, of course, was a bit upset, as it turned out to be a strange situation: I found the right console, but the cartridge didn't work. And what to do next was completely unclear. The only clue was in the archive with the Gateway files. There was a brief instruction with pictures (like a comic), which said that it was only for firmware 4.1 – 4.5. But it looked quite sad. I was lucky to find a console with firmware 7.1, but where to find a console with firmware 4.1 – 4.5!?
Continuing to Buy Consoles
In general, I had one thought. The guys who threw the kiosk versions of the consoles on Avito might have kept some console with firmware 4.1 – 4.5. But I was unlucky, they only had a console with version 2.1.0. I bought it (for 5 thousand rubles) in the hope that maybe a miracle would happen and the cartridge would start.
But again, nothing worked out for me. The blue cartridge didn't want to start, although there was progress: a gray screen appeared in the DS settings (in the 3DS settings menu), but nothing else happened. And the browser exploit couldn't be launched because the browser only appeared in console version 5.0.
That is, I definitely established that I needed a console with firmware 4.1 – 4.5. Digging into the internet, I found out one interesting feature of 3DS consoles: original Nintendo 3DS cartridges contained firmware patches. That is, if a game required firmware 9.2, then it had all the necessary patches for this. And even if you didn't have internet, you could update from the cartridge itself. I started searching the internet and found that the game Animal Crossing: New Leaf required firmware 4.5, meaning it had the patches I needed for the update. My second joy was that I already had this cartridge in my hands, I bought it with something else.
Proud of myself, I inserted the cartridge into the console and agreed to the update… A couple of minutes later, I was met with huge disappointment. The console updated to firmware 11.0.0E.
After carefully studying the cartridge box, it became clear that it couldn't have been released during the time of firmware 4.0 (it appeared in 2012). After all, there were mentions of all New Nintendo 3DS versions of the console, and they only appeared in 2014.
After starting to figure it out, I found out that Animal Crossing on 3DS came in two versions: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (with firmware 4.5) and Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome Amiibo (with firmware 11.0). I had the second version. That is, it was another miss: now I had a console with firmware 11.0, and it definitely didn't fit.
But you have to look for the positives everywhere. At least it became clear that the idea with cartridges works. And it also became clear that even flashing the console to 11.0, the browser wouldn't appear in it. You can only get it by updating the console via the internet. But if you do it via the internet, the console will update to the latest firmware. Even if you launch the firmware from the cartridge with the internet on, you will still update to the latest firmware.
By this point, 13 thousand rubles had already been spent with practically no results. But stopping halfway would have been stupid, so I decided to buy another console.
I contacted the same guys again and bought from them (for another 5 thousand rubles) a third 3DS, this time with firmware 1.0.0E. First, they sent me the wrong console (Nintendo 3DS with firmware 7.1.0, and without a browser, meaning both exploits (via cartridge and browser) couldn't be launched), and I had to go to Nekrasovka metro station to exchange the console. But in the end, I got a Nintendo 3DS 1.0.0.
Parallel to this, I started looking for the right cartridge with the firmware. The site 3dsdb.com helped me a lot, where it was written up to which firmware the console would update (to be honest, these might be the minimum firmware requirements, but they also correspond to the patches on the cartridge). After going through the games, I found a decent option that could be bought cheaply on Ali – Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 3D (game code: CTR-AWTP). This cartridge was supposed to update the console to firmware 4.3.0E. and cost 700 rubles.
Finally, after getting the cartridge, I inserted it into the console and pressed the update button. I was a bit worried, but in vain. In the end, I got a console with firmware 4.3.0E.
Next, I wrote the Launcher.dat file to the console's memory card, inserted the gray Gateway cartridge, and finally, the desired menu opened. Instead of the DS settings menu (in the 3DS settings menu), the Gateway shell opened. I made a SysNand backup, then made an EmuNand, and everything started working. Parallel to this, I managed to flash EmuNand to firmware 11.7. That is, now the console boots into firmware 4.3.0E, and then from the memory card, it launches firmware 11.7, and everything works perfectly.
Epilogue
To make the Gateway flash cartridge work, I had to spend 18,700 rubles. Not including the cost of deliveries and other expenses, such as travel. But the funniest thing is not this. On the day I managed to launch Gateway, I accidentally stumbled upon a website that said the Gateway developers' script for the browser exploit was not very good. Even at the very beginning of my attempts, I was able to run this script on my website by finding the necessary files, but it still didn't launch the Gateway shell.
It turns out that the problem was not only that firmware below 9.2 was needed, but also that the browsers on 3DS consoles were slightly different. I found a PHP script that took all these features into account. And in the end, I managed to make Gateway work on a gray console. That is, instead of 18,700 rubles, I could have spent 8,700 rubles and stopped at buying a gray Nintendo 3DS XL.
