Hey everyone! Well, I just wanted to share my recent experience with my (pretty darn old) New 3DS XL. This will probably be on the long side, because I want to explain the process I went through of unearthing and trying to bring my 3DS back to life. I sort of doubt the problems I ran into are ones unique to myself.
So, basically, when I got my Switch way back in 2017. I’m a little embarrassed to say that my New 3DS XL sort of fell by the wayside. It wound up in the bottom of a rather old backpack (and not in the nice carrying case I owned for it, for some reason my even older DS Lite was in there). It’s especially embarrassing because I *loved* this system, and spent a great deal of time playing lots of games on it. I seemed to recall playing cartridges on this thing and was hoping to find some cool games with it – like especially Link Between Worlds and the Ocarina of Time remake since I’m in a Zelda mode lately – but the only cartridge I can find is the one in the 3DS – Xenoblade Chronicles. Which is cool, but is also a game I’ve had access to on my Switch.
I almost gave up when I saw how utterly disgusting and destroyed the outer shell casing of my 3DS was, but I was pleasantly surprised at what the inner screens looked like after I went to work on them with some microfiber cloths and a tiny bit of moisture.
At that point, the issue I had was that my 3DS was totally dead and had not been powered on in something like 8 or 9 years, and one thing I absolutely could not locate was the charger – so I went on Amazon and saw that I could order one for just $8 to get here in 2 days, and that’s exactly what I did.
Three days later my charger finally arrives, and it is with some trepidation that I plug my 3DS in for the first time in ages, not having any clue whether the light is even going to come on or not. To my shock the system immediately powers right on, and I am greeted with my screen full of downloaded games from the last time I used it. I am stunned to see both Link Between Worlds and the Ocarina remake right there, downloaded and ready to play – along with a bunch of other cool stuff. I guess I forgot that I had already started buying digital games before I even bought my Switch.
So after letting it charge all the way up, I sit down and start playing Link Between Worlds and everything feels and looks great – even the stereoscopic 3-D still looks absolutely perfect when I slide it up to max – though I immediately slide it back down again because who actually plays with the 3-D on? The speakers still sound as good as ever, analog stick feels clean and smooth and responsive, none of the buttons stick or sound weird – I’m really pleased with all of this. But then the battery dies after maybe 35-40 minutes of gameplay, which I guess shouldn’t have really surprised me.
So I order a new battery on Amazon next, and it’s going to take a bit longer to ship but actually only costs about as much as the replacement charger – $8, which is pretty cool. I keep trying to use my 3DS in the meantime, but start running into more significant problems. The system will randomly just error up and shut down for seemingly no reason, and after I opened up the back plate to access the micro SD card it got way worse – I was lucky if it ran for 5 minutes before crashing. Sometimes it would just fail to turn back on at all, after this. Certain apps – like the camera – just seemed to make the system crash immediately upon loading. I was beginning to fear it might require more serious repairs. It seemed worse when I left the screws out of the back casing though, and a little better when I actually screwed them in, though. Hmmm.
That’s when I actually tried popping the battery out of its slot, and I was a bit shocked to see that it had swollen up a fair amount and become something of a “spicy pillow”, I think – see the third pic. At this point it seemed to me that the problems my system was having probably had to do with this swelling bomb of a battery inside of it, so I leave it out and wait for the replacement to arrive.
Which it finally did, last night. I was really impressed at first with how snugly and perfectly it fit into the slot. I screwed the back case in again and powered it up with some trepidation. And man, it’s like night and day. Not only did this fix the crashing issue, but everything works perfectly now. Even the camera – I opened up the camera app and it actually loaded for the first time and just worked perfectly, right away. So as far as I can tell, the swollen battery was probably putting pressure on other components in there, and not making perfect contact with the receiver in its slot which may have been why my 3DS would just randomly die for no reason before I replaced it, and then fail to restart.
So, that’s pretty much it – it seems back in full working order at this point, and any more work on the system will be mostly cosmetic – like a replacement shell, which would be my next order of business, obviously. I have to say that I’m really surprised overall at just how inexpensive it’s been to get the replacements I’ve needed for this – I thought it would cost more, but so far I’ve spent less than $25. Just $8 for a replacement charger, $8 for a replacement battery, and $6 for a 4-pack of styluses that fit in the slot.
Posted by timeflylikearrow