Our PAL Nintendo 3DS system finally showed up today after being stuck in courier hell for the past 3 weeks. We took the time and tested all North American 3DS games on it to confirm if any are region free or not.
Well, seems the reports we read about the region free option being left to the publishers discretion were either inaccurate or they just all decided not to use the option. We can confirm ALL North American 3DS games are NOT region free.
We will continue to test all future North American 3DS games on our PAL console. If at any point a miracle happens and one is region free we'll post the miraculous results here.