In light of the closing of the Nintendo 3DS store and cessation of online support for the handheld, the portable console has seen fresh interest from would-be tinkerers. Case in point, this deeply cursed New-in-name-only Nintendo 3DS running Windows 95 (via Tom's Hardware).
YouTuber MetraByte introduces their channel as a place where "We put stupid things on stupid devices, and probably it sometimes works—maybe." It's a tagline that aptly describes this Nintendo 3DS hack. Using a version of DOSBox that's been ported to the handheld, the tech creator takes viewers through setup, including multiple excruciating stretches of typing into the command line with only the handheld's stylus and touchscreen keyboard.
Nintendo's stance on emulation is well-documented. From the recent lawsuit against the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu to making an offer the team behind Ryujinx couldn't refuse, the company has a no-nonsense track record—well, if you ignore the fact that the official Nintendo museum appears to be emulating a number of first-party titles on PC. Perhaps this can be charitably read as the company's stance on emulation having room to grow…but also this hack feels like it's too cursed to really ever be on Nintendo's radar.
It proves a struggle for the 3DS to even get to the desktop. After multiple false starts (including numerous reboots, a blue screen of death, and hurricane Milton), MetraByte makes it into the setup wizard and beyond. Unfortunately, due to the handheld console's teeny tiny memory specifications, doing anything else is a tall order.
It takes an age to even open MS Paint on the 3DS, let alone render a simple drawing. Hopping into the control panel sheds some light on why, revealing that the install of Windows 95 only has 16 MB (not GB) of RAM to play with. One of the draws of the New Nintendo 3DS—before its discontinuation back in 2017—was its whopping 256 MB of RAM compared to the base model's 128 MB. MetraByte tinkers with assigning more memory to the Windows 95 install, but it won't accept anything more than 32 MB without blue screening.
With a flickering display and even the odd spurt of digital screams, it's already a deeply cursed setup—and then MetraByte attempts to introduce music software Ableton into the mix. This goes about as well as you'd expect.
If you're nostalgic for older operating systems like Windows 95, but longing for a handheld form factor, there are easier options out there than hacking any kind of 3DS. For instance, the Ayaneo Flip DS handheld computer seems purpose-built for realising such a bizarre creative vision. That said, this story from 2016 demonstrates MetraByte is hardly the first to attempt this nightmare hack, and they're probably not the last either.
