Ah ok.
What I was looking for was for the game to hang on the 3ds logo. If it did that then it would mean we needed the 10.0 kernel/firmware.bin, not the 9.6 one we are using now. And if we needed the 10.0 one, Rei might as well just use the latest (10.2) revision. Since it got past the 3ds logo it means one of two things. Either the exheader for Story of Seasons checks for an older revision of the kernel (likely since the original game came out on the US with 8.1), or it only checks the major and minor version numbers and not the revision number.
Tbh I don't think we can be certain until another game comes out that we KNOW checks for the kernel. I may download Story of Seasons ;myself and unpack it to check the exheader later.
Btw the reason the game didnt work on the old build but did on mine is because of a bug in the arm9 thread code, specifically the code that handles the version string replacement. I fixed this on my builds.