R4 DS And R4 3DS Cards CAN NOT Brick Your Nintendo 3DS.

With the release of the Nintendo 3DS version of the R4 DS card, also known as the R4 3DS card, there has been a lot of talk and rumours about the potential for the item to brick your Nintendo 3DS.  My purpose for writing this is to let everyone know that bricking of your Nintendo 3DS console is impossible, certainly not with an R4 3DS card in any way.  The card is just like a regular game cartridge.  If bricking of your 3ds was possible with these cards, then in theory, any game cartridge itself would be able to brick your system too.

I think what a lot of people fail to mention is that these very same rumours were around in the days when the Nintendo DSi was released.  Someone made a comment or blog post talking about the possibility of your DSi being bricked by using an R4 card.  It soon became very apparent however that even the most remote chance of this happening was unrealistic.  The consensus is that this whole bricking business started back when the DS lite was being flashed - I mean hard flashed, where the user would have to flash the firmware and bios chip in order to enable homebrew gaming to work, with the very first ds flash cards.  It was, at that time, very possible to actually brick your Nintendo DS lite system.  Not because of an R4 DS card, but because you were actually writing to the rom chip.  One bad move, or a firmware that did not work properly, and the DS lite was in fact a very expensive paperweight.

Ever since the very first R4 cards were released, they did away with the need to physically flash the firmware on your hand held console.  In fact, the firmware on the R4 itself is what makes it possible for the 3DS to recognize the card - and this is written on a micro SD card, and not on any rom chip.  Without having to actually tamper with the bios on the console itself, there was no possibility of the system getting bricked or broken.  Today, when it comes to the Nintendo DSi and the 3DS console, there actually isn't any way to hard flash the system bios itself.  Not because it couldn't be done, but because the flash cards have done away with the requirement to actually flash the system itself.

The worst that could happen?  Much like on the DSi systems, when a new update was released for the DSi, the R4 DS cards would not work.  Or rather, they would not be recognized.  This however was quickly remedied with a new firmware update for the r4 itself.  Once again making the card compatible with the latest DSi systems.  In short, bricking is not something anyone has to worry about, certainly not with any R4 DS or R4 3DS Cards.