News Flash: 3DS region lock confirmed, American 3DS won't play Japanese games

Destructoid's posted a video detailing the region locked status of the American 3DS. While the Japanese 3DS plays some old DS games just fine, it won't play American 3DS games, and the U.S.-edition 3DS won't be able to play any Japanese games whatsoever. For import fans, that means you'll need two 3DS systems to play anything from across the Pacific Ocean.

And as an interesting side note, a Japanese 3DS can still mess with your U.S. game's data, as Julian found out when he accidentally killed one of our Nintendogs.

Region locks are generally a tactic to battle piracy -- something that plagued the DS (specifically, the R4 cards), although we'll see how long it takes hackers to find a way around it via the 3DS' SD card slot.

(Video courtesy of Dale North.)