Every week I try the best DS, 3DS and Switch hacks from Reddit on real consoles, and write down what actually works.
Latest posts
Switch homebrew toolbox: 1080p60 over USB, Tailscale on the console and more
Five Switch homebrew releases from this month worth installing, from a capture-card-free 1080p60 stream to save backups that finally restore at the right size.
I added real 3D-slider depth to the A Link to the Past 3DS port
Cliffs, walls and statues that actually stand up when you push the 3D slider, a bottom screen in the A Link Between Worlds style and a walkthrough tab. It is a pull request for now, not a release.
Read a walkthrough on top of any Switch game, without reaching for your phone
Guide Watch is a free Ultrahand overlay that spots the game you are playing, opens its walkthrough over the left of the screen and remembers the line where you stopped.
Read a walkthrough on your 3DS top screen without leaving the game
3DS In-Game Guides is a free Luma3DS plugin. Press L + R + Select in any game, the walkthrough shows on the top screen, press B and you are back exactly where you were.
Put a GameFAQs walkthrough next to every game on your handheld's SD card
RetroMod Guides is a free browser tool. Pick your SD card's ROM folder and it matches each game to an English GameFAQs walkthrough and saves it as a .txt beside the ROM.
Read a walkthrough mid-game on the Miyoo Mini Plus, no phone needed
Guide Watch for OnionOS buzzes when your game has a guide, opens it with L2 + R2 then Down, and drops you back exactly where you were. Plus a downloader that fetches guides over wifi.
From donor to daily driver: a full DS Lite teardown, step by step
Every RetroModLab build starts the same way: a genuine donor console on the bench and a full test before a single screw comes out. Screens, touch input, every button, the hinge, charging, both...
The translucent shell playbook, from Atomic Purple to Crystal
Ask anyone who grew up in the late nineties about their favorite console color and you will hear the same word: Atomic. Translucent purple plastic defined an era of hardware, and it never...
Shell kits, done right: what cheap plastic gets wrong
Search for a DS Lite shell on any marketplace and you will find kits from a few euros to several times that. They look identical in photos. They are not identical on the bench.
Why the DS Lite is the perfect console to restore
Nintendo sold about 94 million DS Lite units. That number matters for one simple reason: donors. A console this common means healthy motherboards are still everywhere, and a restoration business...
What I tinker with
- Switch overlays
- Luma plugins
- DSpico loaders
- OnionOS apps
- Native ports
- Shell swaps
- Soldering
- Save sync
- Pixel UIs