I have one of the Regular 3DS models. (Not XL) and have had it for about a year. In that time It's never given me trouble. However, while playing Pokemon Y when I'm in game if I try to return to the home menu (Such as for taking notes or for changing brightness settings) it'll freeze and I'll have to hard shut down the console. I haven't hacked the console (although I haven't updated to the newest firmware due to the extremity of nintendo's response to hacking.) It hadn't been giving me problems while playing X/Y before so why now and how do I fix this?
..Preferrably without updating with that nasty subclause added in. (It's the principle of the matter. It's /my/ console and there's no point in turning my console into a brick since hackers will work their way around that anyway.)
