Look at this terribly cursed setup: Windows 95 running on a Nintendo 3DS hacked

The Nintendo 3DS has been gaining new interest in recent months, especially with the closure of the Nintendo 3DS Store and the discontinuation of online support. This deeply cursed New in name-only Nintendo 3DS (via Tom's Hardware) running Windows 95 is a case in point.

MetraByte, a YouTuber, describes their channel as "a place where we put stupid things on dumb devices and probably sometimes it works--maybe." This hack for the Nintendo 3DS is described by a tagline. The tech creator uses a version DOSBox that has been ported to handhelds, and guides viewers through the setup process, which includes multiple painful stretches of typing in the command line using only the touchscreen keyboard and stylus.

Nintendo's position on emulation has been well documented. The company's track record is impressive, from the recent lawsuit against the creators behind Switch emulator Yuzu, to the offer made to the team behind Ryujinx that they couldn't refuse. This can be read charitably as the company's position on emulation being able to grow... but also this hack feels too cursed to ever be on Nintendo radar.

The 3DS struggles to get to the desktop. MetraByte finally makes it to the setup wizard after multiple false starts. Due to the tiny memory of the handheld console, it's difficult to do anything else.

It takes a long time to open MS Paint, let alone render even a simple drawing. The control panel reveals that Windows 95 has only 16 MB of RAM (and notGB). The New Nintendo 3DS had 256 MB RAM, compared to 128 MB on the base model. MetraByte can assign more memory to Windows 95, but it will not accept more than 32MB without blue-screening.

It's a cursed setup with a flickering screen and the odd digital scream. Then MetraByte tries to add music software Ableton to the mix. This is as expected.

If you're nostalgic about older operating systems, like Windows 95, and long for a portable form factor, then there are better options than hacking a 3DS. The Ayaneo Flip DS portable computer, for example, seems to be designed specifically for realising this bizarre creative vision. This story from 2016 shows that MetraByte was not the first to try this nightmare hack. They're also probably not the last.