If, like none of us, you often sit around wishing you could combine your old iPod Hi-Fi with a Nintendo 3DS, today is your lucky day. One YouTube video shows it is possible connect both gadgets — and they work surprisingly well together.
The hack is super-simple, requiring nothing more than a few basic adapters for iPod Hi-Fi’s ancient 30-pin connector, so there’s no need to pull anything apart. And it even allows the Nintendo 3DS to be controlled by an iPod Hi-Fi remote.
iPod Hi-Fi meets Nintendo 3DS
Niles Mitchell, who runs the Will It Work? channel on YouTube, has long been demonstrating that there’s plenty of life left in iPod Hi-Fi. He’s shown us how to hook up modern devices over Lightning, and even an iPad with USB-C.
But what if all that is a little too conventional for you? Well, in Mitchell’s latest video, we get to see how iPod Hi-Fi can be easily married to Nintendo 3DS. And you’ll be surprised by how nicely the two play together.
Breathing new life into iPod Hi-Fi
As you might expect, some trickery is required to make Nintendo 3DS compatible with Apple’s old audio system, which made its debut in 2006. But there’s no need to break out the screwdrivers and soldering iron.
All this hack requires is a couple of basic adapters that turn iPod Hi-Fi’s large 30-pin connector into something the Nintendo 3DS can work with — more specifically a headphone jack and USB port.
Once the two are connected, you’ll not only be able to play music through iPod Hi-Fi using the Nintendo 3DS, but you will also be able to control it using Apple’s old white media remote. Oh, and you can charge the 3DS, too.
Nintendo 3DS lives on
Sadly, both iPod Hi-Fi and Nintendo 3DS are now discontinued. But the latter stuck around for a heck of a lot longer than Apple’s speaker, which was abruptly pulled from the market less than two years after making its debut.
That’s because iPod Hi-Fi was mostly a flop. While critics praised its impressive sound, they couldn’t ignore its rather hefty price tag ($349) — and its lack of features, such as a built-in radio.
