Ahh, I see. So I would only be able to play cartridge games with a Sky3DS? That's what the flashcart comparison chart on the wiki said, but then I saw some things about .cia files, and then I got confused again...
CIA can only be installed on consoles with firmware 9.2 or below as well. At least for now.
If you want to play roms, you really have no other alternative other than Sky3DS. And even though Sky3DS isn't region free by itself, since you can run the homebrew loader, you can also run the region free homebrew which allows you to play out of region roms with your Sky3DS.
There's more than a few disadvantages with Sky3DS though but like I said, you don't really have much choice unless you get a new console with exploitable firmware.