Region-locking has long been credited with being a very anti-consumer practice, as it essentially screws over the enthusiast who is looking to legitimately play games from other countries.

Thanks to the brilliant folks behind the RegionThree hack, you can now play on any previous generation 3DS (not the “New” 3DS), region free. Featured above, you can view a quick run down of how the entire process works. It looks pretty simple, actually.

Here is the basic rundown of the entire procedure thanks to NeoGAF:

• download “Launcher.dat” from the repo (or compile it yourself);
• copy “Launcher.dat” to the root of your SD card;
• insert the game you want to run into your 3DS and power it up;
• open the “Download Play” application;
• hit the home menu button, but do not exit the Download Play application (keep it running in the background);
• open the Web Browser applet;
• go to Gateway’s exploit page (here’s a mirror, as the main site has piracy-related links); and
• wait a few seconds; the screen should turn black and after a bit your game should boot up.

This is certainly exciting for someone who is on a budget and can’t afford buying another system just to play games from (probably) Japan.