Wii U and 3DS Online Services have Ended

April 8th, 2024 marks the end of an era. Today, Nintendo has permanently shut down the Wii U and 3DS Online Servers.

As of early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end service for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software. Thank you very much for your continued support of our products.

Find out more: https://t.co/nOyzBImHCE

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 4, 2023

As the final hour for these servers approached, some games reliant on them got a wave of activity. For example, Super Mario Maker garnered a community effort to beat every single level ever uploaded. And believe it or not, they succeeded! Additionally, our beloved Super Smash Bros. for Wii U wasn’t left out of the party either. The game saw some last online tournaments featuring old top players to bid it farewell. In the west there was Coinbox’s SM4SH SENDOFF with 358 entrants and in the east there was for FINAL online with 64.

Author’s Note: Despite knowing this was coming, it still feels rather odd now that it’s actually over. Smash 4 almost still feels “new” to me, yet we’ve reached the end regardless. Luckily for us, community servers like Pretendo will preserve the service in a way. And even if stuff like that didn’t exist, the games won’t truly die. People will still be able to play them, whether that be offline or with a third party server. But, most importantly, we won’t be forgetting them or all the times we had anytime soon.

Credits:
Writing & Editing: Zerp
Thumbnail Graphic: Zerp
Social: Zerp

 

Sad to see it go. Then again, all good things come to an end, eventually.

 

pretendo save me

save me pretendo

 

Truly the end of an era. Despite the Wii U not being as popular as Nintendo maybe had hoped, both it and the 3DS provided countless memories for me as I grew up with both of these systems throughout my preteen, teenage, and young adult life, from middle school to high school to early college, so much of my life was shaped by these systems. I enjoyed the many games on them, not least of which the online in games like Splatoon 1, Mario Kart 8, Super Mario Maker, and Smash Wii U/3DS, and while I'm sad to see it go, the warm nostalgic memories will remain will me and many others at least.

 

The end of an Era

 

Unfortunate, but on-line services need to be in the hands of fans anyway. Large corporations like Nintendo will never keep all their old games and services preserved. They do not care about preservation, only about profit. Which is fine, but it means that preservation is fully dependent on fans, roms, and emulated services like Pretendo. Supposedly Pretendo is open source, so that is good, too. I hope it becomes a successful project.

 

$50 bet someone or group of friends in the upcoming future are gonna build a public Wiiu/3ds online server like this guy

 

$50 bet someone or group of friends in the upcoming future are gonna build a public Wiiu/3ds online server like this guy

I suppose that does not work anymore, now that the 3DS & Wii U servers are down. Too bad for me, I wish I had known about this sooner.