So I am one of the people eagerly waiting on Gateway for 9.2 and therefore have not updated my 3ds to 9.4. Unfortunately I also did not update my game (Pokemon Alpha Sapphire) and was upset that I couldn't use online functionality. Earlier today I did a hard mod to my 3ds so that i could dump the firmware in case I derped up and somehow updated. I was curious and dumped my 9.2 nand and the updated to 9.4 and downloaded the update for my game. I then restored my 9.2 nand and kept the update because it was stored on the SD card and was able to use online functionality. I'm not sure if this is public knowledge but I figured I would share in case someone else is in the same boat I was.