Some early 3DS adopters have noted an error - dubbed the 'black screen of death' - while playing various games on the system. The screen turns ꦑblack with white lettering which reads, "An error has occurred. Hold down the pow♊er button to turn off the power, then turn it on and try again."

The problem doesn't appear to be nearly as bad as the Xbox 360's red ring of dea🔯th - it doesn't generally brick the sy💯stem. Like Window's notorious blue screen, a restart seems to put things back to normal in most cases. A few, however, have stated that the message appears repeatedly, and that they've had to replace their systems.

It's unclear what triggers the error, as it haಌs 🦂been reported to occur while playing multiple different titles, and in the menu. We played Super Monkey Ball 3D, one of the games causing issues for some players, for hours yesterday and never came across the black screen.

Mar 28, 2011