Never got a chance to say thanks for this. Never even heard of it at first, but like DQ Joker I really enjoyed it. Its definitely worth giving new games a shot.
There's no obvious pattern, so I wouldn't bother looking too deeply in to it. People have been banned that haven't used their 3DS for months, some on the latest firmware, some still on 11.2. Echos is also not worth basing anything off either.
It can be used for things other than piracy you know. Personally I was in it for the japanese translation patches for stuff like Terry's Wonderland, and being region free.
Being realistic, if they support it at all it'll be years. Unfortunately the Vita scene isn't large enough to spend time working on later firmwares, and Sony is more competent than nintendo.
Awakening is the go to recommendation for new fans, since its the game that pretty much 'saved' the series, and its very casual friendly. From there you can branch out.
I think the Mister is cool and all, but honestly I have seen some video's exploring the difference between hardware and software emulation and the advantages of both.... I would pick software over FPGA, wouldn't mind some sort of hybrid approach but I can only imagine how complex that would be and how expensive.