From the original GameBoy to the Nintendo DS, Nintendo's handheld game consoles were never region locked, which means you could buy a game in Japan and enjoy it on your European or American console and vice-versa.
Source: Kotaku
On-going discussion
Needless to say the news and the perspective of having to purchase multiple systems to enjoy games from different regions isn't to the liking of most gamers around here. Post your thoughts in the discussion thread linked below.Kotaku said:According to an email from Nintendo's Japanese support, the Nintendo 3DS is region coded, which means that players cannot play games from different regions on the system. As Nintendo support explains, if one plays a Korean 3DS game on a Japanese 3DS (or vice versa), it won't work — and so on and so forth.