It's fine, really. I understand the frustration that comes with it. All I mean is that if it's the 3DS and not the cartridge, you don't have to worry about losing your town. I think that if any of us had to choose between a broken 3DS and a broken cartridge, they'd pick the former.
Yeah, that's true, especially since I've got two dreamies and stuff. It's just irritating because I'll have to re-add people on my husband's 3DS and all kinds of garbage just because I decided not to spend $15 on a freaking screen protector.
Update: Just went ahead and tried playing my game on my husband's 3DS to try and help myself calm down a bit. Well, it had the opposite effect because I just another black line of dead pixels not even two minutes ago. Either, it's the game or both of our 3DS systems are damaged and the fun part is, I don't know how to tell what the actual problem is!
If he can play his copy without seeing dead pixels, black lines and whatnot, then I'm afraid it really is the cartridge and not your 3DS...
At this point, there's only one thing I can think of, and that's contacting Nintendo and telling them you only experience it with this specific copy. I'm not sure what they could do to help you, and I think if they sent you a new copy you'd lose your save.
I was thinking maybe you could buy a digital copy from the eShop and just transfer the save data from the physical copy to that, but... the eShop doesn't have a save transfer for ACNL on it...
I just played my husband's copy of the game on my 3DS for about half an hour and saw no lines. That makes me confident that this issue is pretty much only effecting my game. He said he's never seen any of the lines in his own game, so I guess it's not surprising.
Now, I'm just back to wondering if I even want a new copy of ACNL. I think if I were to get another copy, I'd probably go with a digital one that way we wouldn't have three copies of the same lying around our house. That would be too confusing, but I'm just super paranoid right now that the new copy wouldn't last long at all.
I mean, my first copy didn't even last a year so....