Hi there! Today I wanna talk about a common issue. On this site, you'll find lots of people who need help, and sure, not everyone is armed with everlasting knowledge of every subject, and that's completely fine, but I cannot stress how much incorrect information circulates surrounding the topic of 'Gateway'. Now, this isn't one of those threads, where I slurp the Gateway team's asshole because they're the pioneers of the 3DS Scene, but I wanna round up some of the stuff that's spread around that isn't true, and clear up some misconceptions. Let's begin, shall we?
"Steep price"
Well it's not like I can do much to argue this, but what I can say is, the price of your Gateway depends on the reseller you get it from. These prices can reach an upwards value of $80, but can also reach as low as $40. Maybe less if you buy one used, and sometimes even free ifthey brick your legitimate Gateway card you make a large amount of high quality cheats on Maxconsole/fort42 (i think).
"The Gateway is a useless cart"
Well, not exaclty. Both FOS CFW and Gateway CFW have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they CAN be applied in many different ways. For example, Gateway has .3DS loading, which essentially is a drag n' drop process. This can be useful to alleviate wait times from installing your games. It's also useful for romhack developers who would like to quickly test their games without waiting for them to install. There are other advantages, like their splendid cheat system, currently it's an extremely easy way to get off of 8.1J (no browser), and @shinyquagsire23 uses his as a very nice second SD slot
"You can get BANNED from online if you don't have a private header!"
Well it's not exactly hard to get a private header. Chances are if you bought a 3DS before you bought a Gateway, you'd have at least one retail cart to dump the header of, but of course, this wouldn't always be the case. So if it gets to that point, you can always buy a random cheap bargain bin game and use that game's header for the rest of your games. It's also not hard at all to get the header, either, but if that still isn't your style, you could just install your online games as .CIA, and leave your offline games as .3DS. (But still though, I haven't heard of an online ban since the Summer of 2015 maybe.)
"You should probably sell or throw away your Gateway tbh"
Why? Unless anyone has any legitimate issues with Gateway that they particularly can't stand, which definitely does happen, what gives you the right to suggest that someone throw away something they spent money on? Gateway isn't the plague, it's not something you have to avoid like a toxin. I can understand telling someone to update to the latest that's available, but it's not like Gateway doesn't still get support. You can still use Gateway if you choose to join the latest bandwagon. Even if their updates are a bit on the sporadic side. At least selling gives the user back some of the money that went into their investment, but yeah, this is a pretty dumb thing to say.
"Brick code snipes legit users and gets unsuspecting users"
No, it's not morally right to intentionally brick someone's piece of plastic for using another piece of plastic, but this is a piracy company. They're bad enough without the brick code, so could we just, break the boundary of morality for a sec? Now let me tell you a tale about brick code. Back in 2013/2014, Gateway burst onto the scene and made a monopoly over a good amount of people. With their success, came the people who would want to mooch off of it. This sprang a series of clones to come to power. Gateway, wanting to prevent their property, name, and sales, implemented a brick code which would encrypt your NAND. However, they made a no-no with this. Legitimate users who used Normatt's region free Launcher.dat modification would also be subjected to the brick, as Gateway's brick code would trigger when using a modified launcher.dat. An odd few amount of people with legit cards were bricked from this. Gateway did attempt to replace those people's 3DSes, however. Flash forward to 2015, the Supercard DSTWO+ releases, and only a couple weeks to month later, a new brick code is here, and it's better than ever. It's effective, and this time doesn't brick legit users. Most people would say, "Gateway bricks unsuspecting users!" but this simply isn't the case. Gateway puts explicit warnings against using clone cards in their release, and Supercard makes you go to Gateway's website in order to download their launcher. While we can place the blame on Gateway for making the bricks, we can't put it past Supercard for distributing them.
Gee, that sure took awhile. But I'm glad we addressed the elephant in the room.
Btw, I've seen some people saying "They brick clones for stealing their software when all their software is stolen" :^) at this point there weren't any cfw to steal from so... and in the second round of brick code the only people being robbed of code was them :^)
"Brickwait A9LH"
Before I start, NO I AM NOT TELLING ANYONE TO GO OUT AND INSTALL GW's A9LH. Just wanna clear up some things people might not know about it. Gateway's A9LH is indeed available to the public. However, they recommend against going through the process unless you're an experienced user with a hardmod. But looking past this, Gateway's Time Machine isn't as unsafe as most would assume. It was unsafe, but now sometimes it gives me better results than even PlaiSys. (This is no longer a strength, due to CTR transfer (god bless) and OTPless install.) Gateway DOES have you make backups before going through with the process, in fact you can't initiate the process without one. If you do happen to install Gateway's A9LH, it's not at all hard to get rid of it, simply install your pre-A9LH backup with their menu; and you still have your OTP, so you don't have to downgrade again. Oh yeah it doesn't brick as much as it used to, either. Despite all of these, their A9LH implementation simply ISN'T worth it. It locks you to their payload, and it's quite unstable at that.
"The Gateway team is full of dirty code thieves"
I'm not too aware of this, if someone would like to shed some light, please do. I DO know for sure, however, that Gateway stole 9.6+ emuNAND from Rei and didn't give credit. But I'd mostly like to brush on the subject of people thinking they claim to have discovered A9LH. Maybe it's just me, but how is naming your own implementation of something "stealing"? Gateway has its own userbase to cater to, if it makes its own implementation or fork of A9LH, they have the right to name it as they want. Giving credit however, is a completely seperate issue. An example I can think of is the popular "Luma3DS". It started off as a fork of "ReiNAND" titled "AuReiNAND", but later underwent a name change. Does this mean AuroraWright claims ReiNAND to be hers? No, it doesn't. The same goes for all of Luma3DS's derivatives.
EDIT- my fault, I guess I didn't make this clear enough. I'm not saying AuroraWright doesn't credit ReiNAND, I'm saying that even though her CFW is a fork of ReiNAND under a different title, it doesn't mean she claims it to be her own.
Conclusion??
Gateway isn't perfect.
Would I recommend buying one today?
Not really. I know some people have bought one specifically its cheat engine, I personally wouldn't put money into a 60 dollar cheat device, and it's not that easy to get your hands on one in some areas. Also like some have said, you're spending money to always be outdated, despite the perks it may have.
Would it even be worth it if Gateway released some crazy new innovation?
Probably not, community devs would reverse engineer and steal it, then release it to the public anyways.
So if all that's true, what's the point of this thread? I doubt people will read it in full anyways.
Well I'm desperate. I strongly dislike seeing people of this popular mindset spout the same nonsense over and over again, even when what they're saying is factually incorrect and based on secondhand information.
If you read this, thank you. If you decided to just pass it over and skip straight to the replies section to tell me why you don't see the point of anyone buying a Gateway anymore even though everyone already knows that, well, it can't be helped.
Enjoy the rest of your day, folks.
"Steep price"
Well it's not like I can do much to argue this, but what I can say is, the price of your Gateway depends on the reseller you get it from. These prices can reach an upwards value of $80, but can also reach as low as $40. Maybe less if you buy one used, and sometimes even free if
"The Gateway is a useless cart"
Well, not exaclty. Both FOS CFW and Gateway CFW have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they CAN be applied in many different ways. For example, Gateway has .3DS loading, which essentially is a drag n' drop process. This can be useful to alleviate wait times from installing your games. It's also useful for romhack developers who would like to quickly test their games without waiting for them to install. There are other advantages, like their splendid cheat system, currently it's an extremely easy way to get off of 8.1J (no browser), and @shinyquagsire23 uses his as a very nice second SD slot
"You can get BANNED from online if you don't have a private header!"
Well it's not exactly hard to get a private header. Chances are if you bought a 3DS before you bought a Gateway, you'd have at least one retail cart to dump the header of, but of course, this wouldn't always be the case. So if it gets to that point, you can always buy a random cheap bargain bin game and use that game's header for the rest of your games. It's also not hard at all to get the header, either, but if that still isn't your style, you could just install your online games as .CIA, and leave your offline games as .3DS. (But still though, I haven't heard of an online ban since the Summer of 2015 maybe.)
"You should probably sell or throw away your Gateway tbh"
Why? Unless anyone has any legitimate issues with Gateway that they particularly can't stand, which definitely does happen, what gives you the right to suggest that someone throw away something they spent money on? Gateway isn't the plague, it's not something you have to avoid like a toxin. I can understand telling someone to update to the latest that's available, but it's not like Gateway doesn't still get support. You can still use Gateway if you choose to join the latest bandwagon. Even if their updates are a bit on the sporadic side. At least selling gives the user back some of the money that went into their investment, but yeah, this is a pretty dumb thing to say.
"Brick code snipes legit users and gets unsuspecting users"
No, it's not morally right to intentionally brick someone's piece of plastic for using another piece of plastic, but this is a piracy company. They're bad enough without the brick code, so could we just, break the boundary of morality for a sec? Now let me tell you a tale about brick code. Back in 2013/2014, Gateway burst onto the scene and made a monopoly over a good amount of people. With their success, came the people who would want to mooch off of it. This sprang a series of clones to come to power. Gateway, wanting to prevent their property, name, and sales, implemented a brick code which would encrypt your NAND. However, they made a no-no with this. Legitimate users who used Normatt's region free Launcher.dat modification would also be subjected to the brick, as Gateway's brick code would trigger when using a modified launcher.dat. An odd few amount of people with legit cards were bricked from this. Gateway did attempt to replace those people's 3DSes, however. Flash forward to 2015, the Supercard DSTWO+ releases, and only a couple weeks to month later, a new brick code is here, and it's better than ever. It's effective, and this time doesn't brick legit users. Most people would say, "Gateway bricks unsuspecting users!" but this simply isn't the case. Gateway puts explicit warnings against using clone cards in their release, and Supercard makes you go to Gateway's website in order to download their launcher. While we can place the blame on Gateway for making the bricks, we can't put it past Supercard for distributing them.
Gee, that sure took awhile. But I'm glad we addressed the elephant in the room.
Btw, I've seen some people saying "They brick clones for stealing their software when all their software is stolen" :^) at this point there weren't any cfw to steal from so... and in the second round of brick code the only people being robbed of code was them :^)
"Brickwait A9LH"
Before I start, NO I AM NOT TELLING ANYONE TO GO OUT AND INSTALL GW's A9LH. Just wanna clear up some things people might not know about it. Gateway's A9LH is indeed available to the public. However, they recommend against going through the process unless you're an experienced user with a hardmod. But looking past this, Gateway's Time Machine isn't as unsafe as most would assume. It was unsafe, but now sometimes it gives me better results than even PlaiSys. (This is no longer a strength, due to CTR transfer (god bless) and OTPless install.) Gateway DOES have you make backups before going through with the process, in fact you can't initiate the process without one. If you do happen to install Gateway's A9LH, it's not at all hard to get rid of it, simply install your pre-A9LH backup with their menu; and you still have your OTP, so you don't have to downgrade again. Oh yeah it doesn't brick as much as it used to, either. Despite all of these, their A9LH implementation simply ISN'T worth it. It locks you to their payload, and it's quite unstable at that.
"The Gateway team is full of dirty code thieves"
I'm not too aware of this, if someone would like to shed some light, please do. I DO know for sure, however, that Gateway stole 9.6+ emuNAND from Rei and didn't give credit. But I'd mostly like to brush on the subject of people thinking they claim to have discovered A9LH. Maybe it's just me, but how is naming your own implementation of something "stealing"? Gateway has its own userbase to cater to, if it makes its own implementation or fork of A9LH, they have the right to name it as they want. Giving credit however, is a completely seperate issue. An example I can think of is the popular "Luma3DS". It started off as a fork of "ReiNAND" titled "AuReiNAND", but later underwent a name change. Does this mean AuroraWright claims ReiNAND to be hers? No, it doesn't. The same goes for all of Luma3DS's derivatives.
EDIT- my fault, I guess I didn't make this clear enough. I'm not saying AuroraWright doesn't credit ReiNAND, I'm saying that even though her CFW is a fork of ReiNAND under a different title, it doesn't mean she claims it to be her own.
Conclusion??
Gateway isn't perfect.
Would I recommend buying one today?
Not really. I know some people have bought one specifically its cheat engine, I personally wouldn't put money into a 60 dollar cheat device, and it's not that easy to get your hands on one in some areas. Also like some have said, you're spending money to always be outdated, despite the perks it may have.
Would it even be worth it if Gateway released some crazy new innovation?
Probably not, community devs would reverse engineer and steal it, then release it to the public anyways.
So if all that's true, what's the point of this thread? I doubt people will read it in full anyways.
Well I'm desperate. I strongly dislike seeing people of this popular mindset spout the same nonsense over and over again, even when what they're saying is factually incorrect and based on secondhand information.
If you read this, thank you. If you decided to just pass it over and skip straight to the replies section to tell me why you don't see the point of anyone buying a Gateway anymore even though everyone already knows that, well, it can't be helped.
Enjoy the rest of your day, folks.
Last edited by CreAtor135,
