CriticalMiss said:
Aren't all of their handhelds region free? It's odd that they would ignore region locking in one half of their business but uphold it in another. They'd probably see a decent increase in sales if the west was able to buy Japanese-only games that are mysteriously not good enough for us.
No, the 3DS is region locked and so was the Gameboy series. The only one that was not region locked was the brick Nintendo DS, which is the one I have. The original 3DS can still play some imported DS games however as I've played Jump Ultimate Stars on my 3DS. Nintendo's main reason for region locking is to "stop piracy", the other being if the game were banned in a country but I don't know of any Nintendo games that are banned, but that's obviously not working. Region locking is really archaic and doesn't do a good job at all. Sony dropped region locking on their consoles and handhelds and imports for those are really high. The other reason is so that it "protects Japanese profits" but that's not much in the long run if they never release the game. I can think of a slew of games on Nintendo consoles that I would import if I could.