Well in these cases, almost hard-brick was totally not-brick due to the feature you mentioned. Let's not forget the cause of them was only available for less than 24 hours as well.Actually, they were pretty close to hard-bricks. The 3DS just happens to have what's known as "Safe-Mode Firmware", which is usually untouched by system updates. As a result, it can boot into Safe-Mode and debrick the main 3DS firmware through its system update capabilities.