I emailed Shinen about the problem. Here are the exact steps I took again to reproduce it for them:
- Began playing a new game on save file 2
- Played through Story Mode Cell-01, Cell-02, and Cell-03
- Played Arcade Mode Cell-01, received a score of 10150 and did not win the Nano Coin Challenge
- Backed out without going online and played Story Mode Cell-01 again, lock up did not occur
- Went back to Arcade Mode, without playing a cell I pressed X to view Online Ranking for Cell-01
- Continue, My Rank, immediate freeze as it showed the results
Frozen on the screen are 5 results, #32 to #36 - Vail, Tofu, MicroByte, Sporky (me), Nessie
- Turned off the system, turned it on again, launched the game
- Loaded save file 2
- Played Cell-03, when I finished the purification scene played, ship flew off, fade to black, frozen
Could anyone else who has the game try these same steps and see if you can trigger it too? You probably don't need to exit out and play a cell over again, just view the Online Ranking after beating the Arcade level.
Any other info that you can think of that would help narrow it down? My card's a US edition, and I connect to the internet via AT&T U-verse VDSL with a WPA-PSK (TKIP) encrypted password. My 3DS OS is 3.0.0-5U.