My 3DS Shell Swapping Problems
Despite being released around my generation, and being a console I wanted for years, I only got my own Nintendo 3DS in 2023. Shoutout to my sister Andy and her husband Albert for giving it to me for Christmas that year!
They got me the original 3DS XL in Black, which is a very nice system! However, for the past year and a half or so I have been kinda curious about faceplate/shell swapping modifications, simply to give it a new look! Unfortunately, these have been giving me a few problems, so I just want to document them here just to sort of get these issues out there.
I have purchased three different sets of faceplates, two of which with the Blue Pokémon X/Y look, and most recently one with Charizard that just arrived today. These are of varying quality, as precisely half of them each work basically perfectly, the lower half to be exact, however the top half has consistently given me issues.
Although the Charizard one does fit way better than the others, it doesn't close perfectly, and has a gap of about a third of a millimetre in the front and the left side from the shell itslef. Although this isn't the biggest deal in the world, it's still quite inconvenient and could possibly lead to quality issues if things get inside.
That being said, though, the Pokémon X/Y ones were far worse in this aspect, as both of the ones I bought the top half did not fit well at all. I remember they had a gap of over a millimetre from the shell, and poked out similarly much from it as well
Now, admittedly, I am absolutely no expert at this, and I even got the help of Albert for swapping my face plates today, who did a better job than I probably ever could. He is no expert either, though, and there might be places that could actually do it professionally and make sure everything is fine, but I don't know if there are any where I live.
Regardless, I just wanted to leave this out there, in part to vent about my frustrations, but also as just a heads-up for anybody thinking about doing something similar to their own 3DS.
I haven't found one I am 100% positive about, however I will give the tip to look into the reviews. For the Charizard plates I saw they didn't have any reviews about how the top didn't fit, and it was indeed better than the others. It'd probably be wise to do more thorough research than I did, though.
