Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

npr.org

140 pointso8o8o8o115 comments

What a shame the article spreads some fud about roms and diminishes the community, making it seem like a futile individual effort:

"In order to play a game on an emulator, you need a copy of the original title, commonly saved as a ROM (or read-only memory) file. Depending on how the title is copied, what the condition of the cartridge or game disc is in, or the geographic region the game is locked to, you can find yourself with a buggy version of Pokémon Crystal or Super Mario Bros. 3 that can hardly run. Creating and distributing ROMs is also fraught with legal issues."

Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years, and the strength of the community ensures you don't get burned. Every game for every region has a rom already, for each game a few roms of "analytical grade" at this point, and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days. Sometimes the community even fixes bugs nintendo left in. Here is a handy key for the identifiers the community often annotates for their roms: https://gist.github.com/ramiabraham/ff41ba74f2b7104ecece

>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years

Almost exclusively illegally, hence the "fraught with legal issues." Downloading a ROM for a game you own on a cartridge violates US law. You need to create your own copy, where you very likely will face the issues they raise.

Or you technically violate the law, which NPR likely doesn't want to condone for a puff piece.

> You need to create your own copy,

It's funny because custom electronics are way more cheap and accessible than they used to be. In the 90s, I wished I could dump my game carts and saves. I saw someone posted PCBs to do it over ISA bus but I didn't have the skills or ability to do it myself. Recently, I found this open project that can dump that era: https://github.com/sanni/cartreader

One issue with dumping, even if you have the equipment for it, is that in some cases you will still need to patch it to defeat the copy protection.

Those can be distributed as patches. This is typically how people distribute fan translations, for example.

We live in a world where the common notion of buying something and owning it has been completely violated.

I don't "own" the movie, music, or digital media I buy, I am merely "temporarily renting it" through "licensing agreements". Yet every other physical good that I own, I perform a cash transaction of it and it is understood that it is mine. I can do with it what I want. I buy eggs at the store. I can cook and eat them or throw them out the window. Nobody cares. I own them. I bought them.

Only when my purchase is digital am I suddenly combated with "distribution rights", "reproduction rights", "rights to modify", etc.

The laws need to be changed, I tell ya!

We've been burned by this repeatedly. Remember several years ago when people "bought" Disney movies on Amazon Video, and then Disney pulled their catalog, and everyone's "purchases" subsequently disappeared? Good times.

I thought that might be a catalyzing moment, but I've learned that literally nothing is a catalyzing in America. No matter the issue. No matter the act. Literally nothing changes.

One half of politics makes "Nothing should ever change" basically their entire platform, and people LOVE it.

This isn’t the time to politicize this tragedy. And it’s certainly not time to talk about the identical tragedy that earlier this year, or the identical one that happened last year, or the identical one that happened a decade ago, or the identical one that happened…

I don't think that's strictly true though... if you bought a Beatles' LP in 1971 you can't do what you want with it. There are still rules about what you can and cannot do with the reproduction of it.

There are basic, fundamental things you can do with a physical LP that you can’t with “licensed” bits.

For starters, you can resell an LP. Can you resell a music file?

Probably not from any of the big labels at least, so you couldn't resell your Beatles' album download.

Physical media makes it easier to do things but those same things aren't without issues just because they originated on physical media.

Actually its the opposite. Digital media makes it far easier to copy, redistribute and modify, hence why there's so many restrictions placed on it.

If I wanted to sell my Beatles LP I could do it no problem, because reproduction of it (now bear with the metaphor here) is more difficult and time consuming. Hell, even bootlegging it (which is illegal) would be an order of magnitude more difficult because I'd need to set up the equipment to do it and there's a cost of of entry associated with that. Scarcity of supply affects demand yadda yadda.

Digital? Just a few clicks. That's their problem. The fundamental shift to digital media has removed all these barriers hence completely removing scarcity from the equation. They can't control the scarcity. They can't control their product. Once its out that's it and that makes it fundamentally "worthless" in their eyes. And so here we are with laws passed that try to fight the inevitable: helplessly maintain control of their withering walled garden.

Don't pity them. These motherfuckers don't deserve it. Not with how they treat their artists like cattle, or how they happily got away with printing albums with one good song and 13 dogshit tracks. Now they try to muscle in on live shows which are the only way artists make money.

I'm sympathetic to this, I really am. But this has always been the case for IP, even in the analog era. If you carefully traced a painting to make duplicates, or re-typeset a book so you could make copies (say, a university that wanted to provide cheap textbooks for the whole student body), that was always in breach of copyright law.

The only thing that's changed is how easy it is to actually make the copies. It used to be a considerable to super-unfeasible amount of work for most of the things that were protected by copyright, and now it's laughably easy for almost every work.

From an ethics point of view that change alone isn't the justification we need for making a change. I think perhaps exceptions that honor the aim of preservation of culture, while still allowing IP-based business models to work, would be more defensible.

Quick example law: When any form of DRM is used in a product that is 'sold' (licensed) to the public, the company must provide to the Library of Congress an unencumbered copy of the software which will automatically be made publicly available after a fixed embargo of 15 years. This applies to both "games" and also to the firmware, so that the games can be played. A console, beginning 15 years after its launch, must be able to be made user-flashable to accept non-DRM software. (The means to do this would be required at the launch of the device, to avoid businesses dissolving before the 15 years elapses)

One of the most fun small moments of my career was when I was working for a company that had licensed a bunch of old games. I had to download quite a few from shady warez/abandonware sites that put up a little "disclaimer" that said something along the lines of "unless you have explicit written permission from the copyright holder, do not download this file." I'm quite possibly one of the only people in history who clicked through on good faith, explicit written permission in hand.

> puff piece

How was this article a puff piece? It's highlighting a large and growing issue around preserving our culture, often overlooked by the mainstream.

"Puff piece" may not be the best term, but I'd bet this story was reporting on a YouTube video someone at NPR watched. A somewhat low stakes story that didn't want to dive into legal minutia.

With these sorts of actions by Nintendo, the idea of keeping ROMs as backup for your purchases gains legitimacy.

First party legit online stores for emulated classic titles could be a real disincentive to people playing on third party emulators, if they wanted it to be. But the fact that they'll shut off the stores means people will not consider those purchases to be stable. They'll turn to third party emulators and ROM dumps.

> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years

And they have been successfully sued for it. So where is the FUD? People illegally share all kind of content, and sued for it, doesn't make it legal just because they do it.

> and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days

Maybe, if you need to get pointed somewhere, it might be because people are aware that they are doing something that is not without problems.

People get sued and the sites might be hard to find for some, but I don't think buggy ROMs are really a thing. Buggy emulators maybe, but even then not for Pokémon Crystal.

For organizations like the Video Game History Foundation (https://gamehistory.org/) that are trying to preserve video games in an above board way, things really are as dire as this article describes.

For VGHF to fulfill its mission, it's just not enough that this work is done. "Nobody is prosecuting us" isn't a firm enough foundation for an above board, charity funded organization that makes this work legal and accessible.

Are the statements about the quality of the copy true as well? I had always assumed, it's digital, so it either works or it doesn't. I know there are problems emulating some games well, but I always thought that was because of shortcomings in the emulator or things like chips on the game cartridge that also need to be emulated.

I'm not sure exactly what statements you're referring to, but consider if you've ever seen a [b] in a rom filename, that means it's known to be a "bad dump". Compare this to roms with [!] in their filename, which signifies a "verified good dump".

Damn. I wonder how many games I fully played through back in the day against a known "bad" dump.

EDIT: Now I'm even more confused as to why some of those "good sets" would even contain known bad dumps.

I think the Good Sets were meant to archive every single dump of every game.

Once upon a time there was a program called "GoodTools" that maintained a database of all known dumps, so you could run it against your ROMs and it could identify which ROMs were known bad. Dumb completionists then decide to collect and distribute sets containing every ROM - including the bad ones - in the GoodTools database, so-called "good sets", which besides wasting lots of bandwidth and storage space (at a time when this stuff wasn't quite so cheap!) also unfortunately helped bad dumps stick around.

It's definitely overstating things. Bad dumps are possible and were somewhat common back in the day when people were spreading ROMs via GeoCities pages and Usenet, but these days databases like No-Intro and Redump have helped make sure that they're rare - you can easily verify your ROMs against known good ones.

One consideration is that some games implement checksums and other copy protection measures to detect if they've been copied, and then refuse to run - or appear to run normally at first but sneakily punish the player. Preserving these games in a playable format necessarily means you have to defeat the copy protection. I have to imagine that it looks bad to do this even when you have noble intentions.

I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small. The more prescient threat is DRM and server only experiences.

So many games will never be experienced again after the servers are turned off. I think it’s the community’s job to lobby game publishers to release source code for games and severs if they are sunsetted forever. Convincing the corporate world to let go of IP before copyright expires will be tough, but we’re naïeve to believe that these companies will still have intact source code in 50 years. Hard drives fail, cloud buckets get abandoned and then the bill doesn’t get paid, etc etc.

It’s not looking super optimistic for game archival, but there is _a path_ forward to improve the situation.

> I think it’s the community’s job to lobby game publishers to release source code for games and severs

Very very unlikely (unfortunately), especially for outfits like Nintendo. As long as there are eShops and remasters, there is the opportunity to cash in on old IP. And getting source code for games is one thing - getting the assets are another. Even for the example of Doom that is everywhere, only the shareware assets were set free.

For consoles, emulation and reverse engineering are probably the best and likely only way forward IMHO.

> I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small.

This is true, but they're fun to read about! https://tcrf.net/Category:Games_with_anti-piracy_methods

> I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small.

I remember Game Dev Tycoon released a ‘hacked’ copy of their own game to torrent sites in which you’d always eventually lose due to ‘losing sales due to pirating’, but that’s the only instance I remember.

Did much older games do similar things?

Some but it's pretty rare. Earthbound spawns more and more enemies when it detects a legit version isn't being played and will break on the final boss if you make it that far. It's a bit more common on home computer games I think because the barrier to copying a floppy or CD is much lower than a cart but it's still a lot of effort to add.

This is something society needs to deal with. If not for groups like them eventually the media will be lost. IMO there should be a rule that if something isn’t for sale by the rights holder for X years it becomes legal to distribute copies freely.

Agreed, but that still wouldn't help with games that have primarily online experiences, because things like server programs and content management systems also need to be archived for those -- and these (almost) never reach the hands of the people.

Yeah it must be demoralizing to know the community is executing at a level they simply can't achieve. Maybe that calls into question the need for their existence or their mission.

Maybe their rolen is to fail so laws can change.

The VGHF is a part of the same community that builds things like the MiSTer. Just a different wing of it, doing a different job.

A wing that is advocating for changes to the law, by the way. So maybe you should donate! https://gamehistory.org/donate/

I leave that for those who care about above/under board.

Thank you for that gist. I had assumed that rom codes were just region codes and it never occurred to me to even look for a key.

> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years

Longer. I had a Chinese friend on vacation who had like 64 Gameboy games on one cardridge. Meanwhile, I had only one. His method was more convenient, legality be damned.

My kid has been playing with mame and roms since around 8 years old, he's 16 now, sure I used to have to jump in from time to time, but if anything ROM's and custom built images are what got my son into a basic understanding of how a lot of tech works. If a kid can do it so can others. The sheer amount of effort that goes into emulators is insane and I'm grateful for being able to share a lot of my childhood with my son because of those people's work and dedication.

It's funny he gives those examples in particular, as Pokemon Crystal and SMB3 both have commented source code (by disassembly ofc), let alone bit-perfect roms.

>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years, and the strength of the community ensures you don't get burned.

Not just that, Nintendo got caught distributing community ROMs in their own virtual console.

I assume you mean Nintendo using the iNES file format to distribute NES ROM files?

All evidence currently points to them simply using the format (possibly because they hired an iNES developer way back in the day), not them selling you pirated ROMs.

For one, none of Nintendo's ROM files match any pre-existing ROM files you can find on the internet. [1]

During the gigaleak (an event where Nintendo's internal network was breached and many files were stolen), it was found that Nintendo has a vast archive of master ROMs that they pull from whenever they need to re-release a classic game. While they may use community-dumped ROMs for internal testing, they are highly insistent that they ship their own original copies in retail products. In fact, it was even found that they had a tool to convert from their internal format for storing NES ROMs (CHR and PRG ROM data stored in separate files) to the iNES format. [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/uaszvp/no_ninten...

[2] https://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/682410911082921985/no-nin...

>Every game for every region has a rom already, for each game a few roms of "analytical grade" at this point, and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days.

It goes deeper than that. I run an online retro games business, and occasionally get extremely specific requests from the preservationists, like particular AU-exclusive serial numbers that still haven't been dumped.

The .iso for the PAL demo version of Sega Soccer 97 was from a disc in our possession too, although due to not realising what we had we let it go for $10...

Since the 3ds/wiiu, games are signed, and these signatures are difficult if not impossible to forge. This makes it really easy to verify whether a dump is correct, at least for the encrypted portions of a cartridge.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’ve been buying games on Steam for 15 years. Even my earliest purchases are still downloadable and playable, and have been on every PC I’ve owned, including most recently the Steam Deck.

The same is true for my GOG library. Even more so, since I can (and do) save the DRM‐free installers of the games I buy.

Don’t reward hostile media platforms with your money or your attention!

The whole idea of an archive is to archive stuff. "Just memory-hole the stuff that's hostile to archival" is not a solution.

You misrepresent my suggestion. By all means, archive. But Nintendo’s hostile practices succeed because ordinary people with no interest in archival are willing to buy the same game rereleased for console after console. Long‐term carrying over of purchases is perfectly doable, as evidenced by the fact that this is the norm in the PC market. It is possible that market pressure can cause Nintendo to budge in its practices.

Steam has benefited from a long period of good quality stable leadership, but as Gabe gets older I get more and more concerned for Steam.

I love the service, I've used it since launch alongside Half-Life 2 etc on PC, but I am extremely worried how it looks 15 years after Gabe Newell dies or sells. I would not be shocked to see Microsoft buy them in the end.

There's no public plans for what Valve looks like in the post Gabe-era, and as a privately held company there's not much need to explain/disclose either. I agree its been run great until now, but the future is unclear.

Valve is full of good people, like minded with Gabes ideas. I dont fear for Valve.

This simply won't matter if Gabe sells company to the "wrong" person/entity, which is a risk today.

This makes me curious about its ownership structure and what would happen if he died tomorrow.

Isn't Gabe one of the rich guys investing in life extension? If we're lucky, they figure it out before he dies and he can become Steam's eternal steward. Otherwise I absolutely see the platform going to shit once he's gone.

>It doesn’t have to be this way.

fyi it's mostly because Nintendo don't want to comply with the "new" payment regulations at least in the EU. Since 2021 Strong Customer Authentication (aka 2FA) is needed for most online purchases [0].

OK "don't want to comply" is a bit harsh but it's pretty much not worth implementing the 2FA system on 3DS/WiiU. They already removed credit cards access a long ago so even today you could only buy games if you top up your Nintendo account which is shared between Switch and the still functioning other stores.

Also you will be able to redownload games. They are just removing the option to buy new games. Better to CFW though and dump everything (but that was already recommended even before this closure)

0, https://www.jpmorgan.com/europe/merchant-services/insights/P...

I don't know how Valve will behave in the long term, but so far this has been one of the best things about Steam (other great things include auto management of updates and making multiplayer Just Work).

Our Steam games library goes back well over a decade and anything we ever want to play still works. Separately, during that same time period we bought 4-5 consoles, and currently exactly zero of those console games are playable because over time the consoles fall into disuse or peripherals break, then the consoles get boxed up, are too much of a hassle to get out when you have a slight hankering to play a game, and then eventually they just get tossed/donated away.

Apart from a Steam Deck or something similar, I don't foresee us ever buying a console again. Now, if we could only get Nintendo to be just a software company...

Older titles do occasionally have issues. Fortune Summoners has weird input lag, and Split/Second is incredibly picky about gamepads, for example. Fortunately the community guides usually have workarounds or fan patches.

I have about 2500 titles owned going back to the early 90s. Of those I have about a dozen or so that just do not work. The entire DOS set is emulated fairly good these days. A few are starforce being the usual suspect and a 'no-cd' crack not being available. I have 5 or so that just do not work on newer version of windows. Either relying on some quirk of XP/98 or a particular CPU speed range. One is longest journey which works again thru scummvm.

Emulation is about the only way I can keep my games running long term. Due to hw changes or OS changes.

Steam/PC games are a slow rot. Some of my games have issues running on modern platforms because of things like DRM, broken/missing APIs and problems from modern hardware not agreeing with the game in general. Sometimes you get lucky and some dude has created a new executable for modern times, or the fix isn't too bad and documented somewhere but sometimes it's a multi-hour fiddling process.

It's the same for the 3DS and WiiU eShops. Nintendo has said you'll be able to download your purchased content into the forseeable future. They're shutting down the ability to purchase content.

Steam has also removed the ability to purchase some content: https://delistedgames.com/all-delisted-steam-games/

AFAIK, Steam delisted and removed the option to download purchased games in the past. Devotion springs to mind.

While not a "PC", I have games in my Steam library and from GoG that I can't play on a modern mac anymore because they removed 32-bit support post Mojave, so I keep an increasingly-difficult-to-use MacBook Pro on Mojava.

So, Steam didn't save me :(

Fortunately with homebrew, there are a multitude of on-device tools for backing up DS and 3DS titles using a 3ds. I have spent the last 6 months doing exactly this for my physical cart collection!

Shout out to AuroraWright, TuxSH, d0k3, Bernardo Giordano and RocketRobz for building such incredible programs.

I recently bought a console and was considering a Nintendo Switch but went for the much more open Steam Deck instead.

And I can now play almost any released Nintendo game, even a lot of the Switch games can be emulated well (my kids love Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros!).

Honestly, if you're fine with tinkering a little bit it's a much superior platform.

And I haven't even mentioned access to the amazing Steam store, which makes Nintendo's stores seem like a joke.

I own both the Switch and the Steam Deck and use neither regularly. I use my PSP Vita and Gameboy Micro much more frequently because they are easier to carry around, and both system are hacked wide open. I have friends with keychains larger than the GB Micro. I wish we would go back to more portable systems, and I feel like the Steam Deck is a step in the wrong direction because of it's bulk.

And this is why hardware/software hackers breaking these devices are a very good thing.

Exactly this. Nintento et al. are unwaveringly adversarial in their insistence around locking down games and aggressively pursuing archivists (who they claim are pirates), even after said games are no longer available for sale.

It is our moral imperative to preserve this software despite the interests of these companies, lest it be lost forever.

Due to the unique form factors of the DS, 3DS and Wii U, it is very unlikely that the majority of these games will be ported to newer, single-display systems like the Switch, so the argument for them selling them again on a newer system is largely moot at best and disingenuous at worst.

My question in the face of these kinds of actions is what can a non-technical person do in the face of having access to their “purchases” taken away?

My younger brother deals with autism and is worried that he won’t be able to play his games anymore if something happens. What’s the first place to go to to actually own what you bought on these platforms?

Get a flash cart. You can now play any game forever.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_cartridge

Good idea for older systems, but 3DS flashcarts are basically obsolete and pure software methods are better.

How is the ease of use Though?

If I can set up a flash cart and send it to him that’s much better than walking him through jailbreaks

I would rather spend money than time and the limited patience of a young man who is struggling :)

Flashcarts on the 3DS aren't the same as flashcarts on older systems, where you just put in the cart and it acts like a normal game. It requires special software on the console itself to accept the fake cart, and they fell out of use so many years ago that I don't think the software is even compatible with any recent 3DS firmware.

The pure software approach available nowadays is much easier and more convenient, as long as whoever uses it after it's hacked can follow some basic instructions (how to install games, how to not update the firmware if nintendo releases an update without first updating the hack, etc)

Checkpoint and Godmode9 are probably your best solutions

Both the 3DS and Wii U can be easily hacked to play pirated games without purchasing any additional hardware, there's numerous guides on how to do this that are a simple google search away, and the entire game catalogue has been dumped by game preservation groups like no-intro. As long as the consoles still work, all of their games can continue to be played even if Nintendo no longer sells them.

Install CFW then dump your games

https://3ds.hacks.guide/

https://3ds.hacks.guide/dumping-titles-and-game-cartridges.h...

Your purchases are not being taken away. This shutdown only affects future purchases.

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

The ability to re-download purchases is being taken away and Nintendo doesn't provide a way to back them up.

Can you link to a statement from Nintendo saying that?

Ah, looks like I was mistaken about that. I had thought the eshop was being removed entirely, and it contained the interface for redownloading. Looking over the announcement it looks like they are keeping just that part alive for now.

I am somewhat amused that a rather mainstream "archive" site seems to have all the ROMs for the Nintendo 3DS already (... and not archive.today, arxiv.org, or archive of our own)

I hoard roms and isos of old games. In my usual backup scheme. Especially for less popular games. They aren't going anywhere!

Its easy to maintain your own full rom library when these games are so small too.

Exactly - it's nothing to me!

I have every N64 game ever made on an SD card in my Everdrive. Same for GB/GBC.

Likewise, every GBA game totals around 6GB on my backup drive. Every SNES game is ~1.1GB

Some modern games use more VRAM than that

A GBA Everdrive is next up for me. I've been a little less motivated for that since I have so many original carts + they don't have the same battery issues old GB games do.

Same, and it was born out of past experience with Nintendo, actually.

Yes, this article definitely reads like the writer watched that "The Completionist" video on YouTube and then concocted the story without doing any further research. The archival problem for 3DS and Wii U games is basically solved.

Fair warning though, just because they're there doesn't mean it is legal for you to download them, depending on what country you live in.

It also kills the value of used machines --- I've always regretted not getting a Wii U, and actually have two games for it which have not yet been ported to the Switch: (Twilight Princess HD and Xenoblade Chronicles X).

XCX has a datapack on the Wii U shop which when downloaded allows the game to play much faster, with much less time spent on loading screens --- there's no way I'm buying a Wii U now without the ability to download that.

There is emulation of WiiU titles which might save you the cost.

I can honestly say that the WiiU is worth it. It’s nice playing games that don’t have all the boring and time wasting tactics that modern games have.

But that’s just me. I play my WiiU once a week at least!

But especially in the case of the aforementioned Xenoblade Chronicles X (i love that game, i think i put in about 300hrs back then) the second screen on the controller is not just a gimmick but actually useful - is this emulated as well? (sorry, a bit out of the loop in the whole emulation game)

I'm kicking myself twice over for not buying a Wii U --- could have bought one for short money when I was working part-time for Amazon but didn't, then couldn't bring myself to buy one of the XCX bundled units which were available in Japan and the UK.

At this point, I just want Nintendo to port it to the Switch (or more likely the switch's successor) --- I've also given up on getting Xenogears and Xenosaga chapters II and III.

Emulation is something I just don't have time for --- I've seen at least one report that it's possible to download the packs manually onto a Wii U --- maybe that's what I'll do.

The only good thing is the WiiU and 3DS were blown so wide open by developers that the eShop is almost practically archived as it is.

lol yeah, there was a period of time where you could download the files directly from the official nintendo eShop CDN directly without paying

My old 3DS is broken, and I've been trying to find a 2DS XL for months now. I am floored with how much they are selling for on ebay. Regularly $100 more than a Switch Lite retails for. I'm guessing the volume is low, but I'm surprised to see Nintendo continuously take moves to stop supporting old consoles when there's clearly still demand.

> I'm guessing the volume is low, but I'm surprised to see Nintendo continuously take moves to stop supporting old consoles when there's clearly still demand.

I'm surprised too, but I would point out that the Switch came out six years ago! Nintendo did keep supporting the 3DS, with new games even, for a long time after it was succeeded.

Buy physical media. When will people wake up to the fact that "online only" means "will disappear arbitrarily".

I would very much like to play the Metroid Prime remake, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy a digital-only version that will go away.

Ars has a good article on this too with focus on preservation and the Video Game History Foundation [1].

A youtuber also went through and purchased every game on the Wii U and 3DS eShops and donated them [2].

1. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/03/why-game-archivists-a...

2. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ujHUMG0Uovs

I'm shocked a company with as good of a track record as a reliable gaming company to have in your living room & backpack would make such an incredibly shortsighted & negative a frackas as this. This is such a huge unforced error.

Nintendo has such a huge cash reserve, & can easily own this for another couple decades, at minimal cost. However they failed to materialize the internal will to do the obviously right & easy thing, to let their own past works burn, is a huge error that will greatly injure Nintendo's name for decades.

Nintendo's openly stated position, since like the 80s, is that current american law is wrong and you don't have a right to a backup copy of games you buy. If Nintendo could suck memories of super mario out of the brains of people who didn't pay a yearly licensing fee, none of us would remember the 90s and Nintendo fans would STILL preorder everything they touch.

Do you have a reference for this?

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

They say that video games should not be covered under the exemption for backup copies and that they are not "software only".

That is an aggressively hostile interpretation of fair use on their part. For shame.

They already shut down the Wii shop, I think with about $4 of my credit on it too. If I had a Wii U, I think there was a way to migrate content and credit, but I don't have a Wii U; thankfully, they've moved away from the Flooz model of buy credits in fixed amounts before you buy content with the credits that many of the consoles were doing. That they're keeping the store online for redownloads is a nice touch though, but for how long?

Does anyone have any 3DS Eshop game recommendations I need to buy before the closure? Unique stuff that can't be obtained on other platforms?

There is a general masterlist https://old.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/su4w7k/with_the_e...

There are also some free tools and games worth getting

- Bravely Second Demo (story that's not avaialable in the full release + exclusives you can transfer over)

- Pokémon Sun & Moon - Special Demo Version (Ash-Greninja pokémon that you can only get here and transfer over to the full game)

- Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Special Demo (Glalie pokémon that you can only get here and transfer over to the full game)

- Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter. Pokémon Bank will be free (currently $5/year) BUT the Poké Transporter app can be only downloaded from INSIDE the Bank app which only works if you have a sub... All NEW downloads will be impossible after the date so you better get the Transporter app now (pay the $5 for the remaining days) or else > doesn't bother and just pirate it. But honestly the writing is on the wall for the Pokémon Bank...

- Save Data Transfer Tool (permanently move, not copy, save data files from a physical cartridge to the 3DS

- 3DS F2P digital Pokémon games (Pokémon Picross, Pokémon Rumble World, Pokémon Shuffle)

- Flipnote Studio 3D and Picross Zelda (Nintendo My Rewards games but you can still get them)

Thanks! Don't think I'll ever care that much about Pokemon but good to know, and I'll take a look at that list!

Attack of the Friday Monsters has shown up in a lot of recent “cool stuff on the 3DS eShop that isn’t available anywhere else” retrospectives.

It’s worth noting though that it’s trivially easy to softmod a 3DS and install any game you like from archive.org, as well as a bunch of cool homebrew.

I’m torn, personally—I of course want to support the developer, but buying something in the knowledge that I’ll lose the ability to re-download it almost immediately feels like it’s just encouraging the apathy the commercial games industry has towards preservation.

Shovel Knight looks stylish with the 3d effect and your inventory on the touch screen, but it's definitely available on other platforms.

Are every single games ever released for Wii, Wii U and 3DS available in those famous rompacks or are there some missing?

Archive.org has every single game (for years)

I remember checking a few years ago and not finding a wiiware game developed by a tiny company I used to work for but it is available now :)

Back up your networks, folks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com