R4 3DS .org

Watching movies on your Nintendo 3DS is in our view one of those things that everyone should be able to do - and something that should be available out of the box for the 3DS.  It wasn't there for the Nintendo DS or the Nintendo DSi systems.  And for some reason, it's something that has only just been added, in a very limited way, on the 3DS console.

That is exactly where homebrew and freeware developers come to the rescue - again.  With a card like the R4 3DS or the R4i Gold 3DS, gamers can take advantage of the multitude of media players already available as freeware apps.  There are 2 applications we here like to use.  One of them is the favorite of most users out there.  It's called Moonshell.  Now at version 2.10, it's still the go to media and movie player for the R4 3DS cards.  If you have a Nintendo DS, DSi or 3DS system and want to watch movies, then this application is the go to application.

Moonshell is more than just a movie player though, it has always aimed to be a multimedia player app.  Other than movies it allows you to play back audio files in various formats as well as picture files in various formats too.  In fact, it goes so far as to allow playback of music formats found on older computers as well.  For example, the .MOD file format was very popular back in the days of the Amiga computers (and early PC's too) and Moonshell turns your Nintendo 3DS in to a powerful portable MOD player.  For a full list of the media formats supported by Moonshell, see the list below.

Supported file formats

• Music formats: MP1, MP2, MP3, OGG, WAV, M4A, AAC, WMA, TTA, MID, RCP, R36, FLAC
• MOD formats: MOD, IT, MTM, S3M, XM, 669, MED, STM, AMF, GDM, ULT, UNI, ASY, IMF, OKT, STX
• Chiptune formats: SPC, NSF, GBS, HES, AY, SAP, KSS
• Playlist formats: M3U, WPL
• Picture formats: JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, PSD
• Support DPG movie files.
• Support text files.

In terms of homebrew gaming and the popularity of certain games or applications, Moonshell is probably one of the most popular apps for the Nintendo DS, DSi and Nintendo 3DS systems.  While it does enable a slew of multimedia functions and file types, it is Moonshell's ability to bring Movie playback to the most popular hand held system out there that has made it as popular as it is today.  While movie watching on portable devices because popular with smartphones like the iPhone, it was something that had been around - and with a freeware app no less - since the first few weeks of the original Nintendo DS release.

We have an entire section of our website devoted to how to watch movies on the Nintendo 3DS, and the tutorial is in fact for how to use Moonshell on your Nintendo 3DS system using the R4 3DS card.  We urge you to read over the tutorial to get a good idea of how to use Moonshell, and then head over to the 3DS homebrew Section to download the latest Moonshell 2.10 so that you too can start watching your favourite movies right on your 3DS or 2DS system.