(MAJOR UPDATE: ONLY 10 HRS REMAIN BEFORE SHUT DOWN AT TIME OF WRITING THIS UPDATE)
Hello everyone. For everyone who owns a 3DS, 2DS, or even a Wii U, I’m sharing this out to as many places I can think of, where the awareness can make an impact. Please read if you own a 3DS or Wii U at all, or know anybody who does:
The SpotPass servers by Nintendo will be shutting down on April 8th, 2024 (4PM PDT). The SpotPass Archival Project has been created by the 3DS and Wii U Homebrew modding community, to make sure as much SpotPass data as humanly possible is preserved for the foreseeable future and not lost forever in the coming few days. A huge amount of SpotPass content is essentially free DLC for various games and apps, and they could have been installed without your knowledge. They are not required for most games to play, but without their archival, many games will lose DLC content permanently and some features may no longer work. This archival project can only be made possible by the donations of any individuals owning a 3DS or Wii U (not a donation of money, but rather a donation of SpotPass data stored on your system)
This data can only be collected before April 8th. Any and all dumps made or sent after the end-date will be useless due to the nature of how the archive process works. The dump does not require you to have a modded or Homebrewed console, and can be done completely unmodded. All you need extra as an unmodded user, is a PC or laptop. There is also zero risk of having your console banned; so rest assured. The guides can be found here: https://spotpassarchive.github.io/#guides.
Update: For those who can’t recall the difference, what we’re archiving here is SpotPass, not StreetPass. The difference between the two are: StreetPass: Is a 3DS exclusive offline wireless tech which connects your 3DS to other systems and shares various bits of data with random people you pass on the street (in the real world). For example, in the game StreetPass Mii Plaza, the data sent to random passers are your Mii, along with your most recently played game, and your Mii can be played with in the various minigames that StreetPass Mii Plaza offers, and vice versa. SpotPass: Is an online wireless tech available on both the 3DS and Wii U. Unlike StreetPass, it does not connect to other 3DS systems directly, but rather connects to Nintendo’s SpotPass servers online. The data sent could be anything from notifications, to in-game content. This is what we’re archiving; not StreetPass data. Streetpass is not an online service, and thus does not lose content after April 8th; but SpotPass data will be lost after the 8th if it’s not archived. Wikipedia article.
Even if you make the dump before April 8, and send it to them afterwards, the dump will be useless regardless, this is why we are frantically trying to spread the word about the project as quickly as possible, as there is a lot of data that is still going to go away permanently regardless of the efforts of this project. The data is stored offline locally on your 3DS and Wii U, so you may be confused as to why you can’t just make the dump after the date. For a better explanation, here is a Discord message from the official Discord server which explains things. I am not a developer of the project, I’m just someone who is passionate about gaming and technology preservation, and wants to get this out there, and the 3DS was a wonderful part of my late childhood.
The data is going to be used by the developers to put towards developing a replacement for the SpotPass network, similar to what was done by the Homebrew community who created the Nintendo Network replacement, dubbed “Pretendo Network”.
Even if you don’t think you have much data on your system, please help dump it towards the archive as soon as possible (within the next couple of days), because you likely have some things you don’t know about. The process does not require a modded console at all, and the official site here, has instructions for both users of modded consoles, and users of unmodded consoles. You can ask for help in the official Discord server of the project here and people will be very willing to help.
There are also many many niche, lesser known games, which have absolutely no data archived for them still to this day, so any help archiving them is vital. Thanks for reading, and I ask you to also share this out to as many people as you possibly can. Even if you don’t own a 3DS or Wii U, please share this out to anyone you know who owns one, or even those whom you suspect might have one.
Edit: added some extra information, removed some no longer relevant information, fixed some typos, improved some wording slightly.
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I’ll definitely look into this tonight. Affordable Space Adventures was fantastic and deserves to be remembered, but I’ve never seen another soul mention it.
Don’t mean to bug you, but did you end up getting it done? Just wanting to check in.
Hmm, not sure I’m going to be able to do it. I don’t have an SD card reader on my computer anymore… I do have an old ebook that could read it, but it might be a hassle getting everything shuffled around. Plus I need to figure out Python. Might have time for it tomorrow.
EDIT: This is a monumental hassle… my laptop can’t properly run the script it seems, CMD just auto-closes after trying to initialize the SD card, so I’m seeing if I can compress, upload to google drive, run it on my main computer, send back, then overwrite the SD card
EDIT2: It looks like I did the injection correctly, but the 2DS is stuck on a loading screen in the Extra Data Management page; the tutorial says “Follow the directions shown on the bottom screen.” :/
I lost my 3DS last week 😭
How dare you. jk.
But please try find it if you can, I hope you can.
I’m really heartbroken about it. All my games and saves… And it was in perfect condition too.
I know how you feel. I understand because I lost my game case back in 2016 which contained ALL of my 3DS and DS games in it (plus my wallet); it was possibly stolen. Lost all my games and saves too
My Mii’s in Tomodatchi Life probably starved to death, rip.
I doubt my 3ds had much, but I went and completed it. Super easy to do on CFW!
It seems there aren’t remind me bots yet (please correct me if I’m wrong) so let’s do this the old fashioned way
If someone reads this comment and it is 9 hours old, please reply to it so I get notified :)
Edit: thanks for all the reminders :) unfortunately, while i found my 3DS in a box, i didn’t find the charger and it’s dead. from what igatehr this was more about getting more obscure data, and i really only ever played the really popular games (the 3DS still has sm4sh in it).i don’t think my data will be missed.
Done. I’ve got a modded 3ds LL and it took maybe five minutes, and no SD card pulling required (which absolutely sucks on the XL/LL). I doubt it’s going to be useful because I’ve only had my 3ds for a few months, but who knows, maybe there’s something useful that remained from the previous owner.
Thanks so much. Every bit helps. I noticed only 4 people dumped their 3DS data and 0 people dumped their Wii U data in the past couple of hours, so there’s going to be a very small amount of extra dumps by Apr 8th at this rate. I’m gonna continue sharing as much as I can. I was gonna go share on r/technology on Reddit, but saw that one of their rules explicitly forbids posts that are a “call to action”. What a stupid rule, why even stipulate that?
Try /r/datahoarders too and some people posting about Nintendo stuff
Post it to /r/3DS. Maybe /r/gaming as well?
r/3ds is run by nintendo fanboys that ban anyone who even mentions custom firmware.
You can use it perfectly legally for installing your own physical games to your sd card for instance. Running CFW on the 3DS is objectively better as it has zero downsides once you have set it up. You can be a nintendo fanboy AND use CFW at the same time. I mean at least I think so. I hate nintendo, so I can’t say for certain.
How tf can you defend such a nefarious company?
By being extra paranoid about their nefarious lawyers, haha
They’re reddit mods.
r/wiiu mods were good. Pinned my post. r/gaming on the other hand… well. They took it down because it had a singular link to this lemmy post at the bottom which was apparently spam according to the moderator I appealed to in DM’s.
It’s so strange. I’ve got 120 upvotes on just this one Lemmy post, yet the most likes I have on any of my Reddit reposts is 14 on r/technology, followed by 9 on r/nintendo, and the other 3 subreddits I’ve shared on have no upvotes at all. I would have thought Reddit, being so much more popular than Lemmy, would get way more upvotes. I’ve certainly gotten a fair few thousand views already on Reddit, yet so little upvotes. I just find this strange.
Just submitted one from a N3DS.
I noticed only 4 people dumped their 3DS data and 0 people dumped their Wii U data in the past couple of hours, so there’s going to be a very small amount of extra dumps by Apr 8th at this rate.
This post and the cross-posted ones along with new people waking up in other time zones sure helped to boost those numbers a bit.
I posted it to bluesky, it got a few reposts in nerd circles, hope it helped
hop up to r/datahoarders. im sure those guys will welcome you.
I’ll go post there now. Thanks.
good shit, used to browse that sub back when i used reddit more regularly. A really common occurrence there is communal archive posts.
Thanks for the suggestion. My post over there currently has 48 upvotes and had at least one person comment they’ve uploaded their data; a few others said they will do it “soon” or “tomorrow”
I’ve done it on my WiiU/3DSes as well. I’ll message my friend with a 3DS to do it later tonight as well.
Is there anything else I/others can do to help with preservation on my/their systems before the Nintendo network goes down?
Thanks for asking. I asked on the Discord server, and I was told that the Pretendo Network devs are also asking for network dumps for games that have online multiplayer support, and that you can find out about it on their website. I haven’t found where on the site he was talking about yet, but I’m going to look further into it tomorrow to see if I can get any of mine dumped.
Uploaded my 3DS XL data. Was easy as pie with my modded 3ds.
I’ll see if I can connect my WiiU tomorrow.
Thanks for the heads up!
No worries, glad I could reach you!
I have multiple 3DS and a WiiU, will try to remember to do this tomorrow!
Hey, just checking in and seeing if you remembered to make your dump yesterday? Just in case you forgot.
I appreciate that! I dumped my 3 3DS. The application made it super easy.
However my WiiU hadn’t been on in forever and forced an update that killed homebrew. We’ll get there, I just haven’t had the time to deal with it yet.And my WiiU as well!
Already done 👍🏻
Pretty easy to do with a hacked DS.
Actually, I have other two 3DS hacked, but I have barely used them (the one I backed up was my main) I wonder if they have any usable data…
Worth a dump, I think. I dumped my modded secondary console which is an OG 2DS which I also hardly ever use, just in case there was something there.
Just done my 3ds that I’d recently installed CFW on, funnily with the intention of hooking it up to the pretendo network.
For anyone hesitant, it was a less than 5 minute job.
My 3Ds has never been played, I assume there’s nothing I can contribute here?
Edit: Ignore this comment, what I said is completely wrong. I’m sorry if I inconvenienced anyone and wasted your time dumping a console with nothing on it.
Probably not. Unless you bought it second-hand? Apparently the data still remains on the system even if it’s reset, so if you bought your console pre-owned, or was given it by a friend, there may still be a large amount of data still there in the background.
Ooh, I factory reset a used one I bought pretty recently… I might as well give it a shot then
Just finished! Thanks for the tip!
🤔 Might be stupid question but what is spotPass why do we need to preserve the data?
My version of a TLDR:
Spotpass is a wireless tech that would auto connect with other 3ds or Wii U systems that were in the immediate area albeit with a limited range. It was their way of having a social community. Sort of like how you might meet other people while walking around outside.
In the case of Spotpass, when you connected, it would show you the user’s profile, their favorite games, etc. And in some cases for specific games it would provide special DLCs or content that cannot be found elsewhere.
Hence why we’d want to preserve that data since some DLC and other features are exclusive to Spotpass.
Thanks you. I will try to extract the data from my 3ds later but I never used to that feature. So I am not sure if it will much help.
This isn’t correct, you’re getting confused between StreetPass and SpotPass. Yes, SpotPass is a wireless tech, but it has nothing to do with connecting to other 3DS’s or Wii U’s (and the Wii U did not have StreetPass; only SpotPass). A StreetPass-like feature would be pointless on a Wii U because you couldn’t take it out of the house without it losing range from the console. The 3DS on the other hand, had both features. So yes, the SpotPass did provide you with “DLC’s”, but it did not have the same features as StreetPass.
Also, the users’ profile and their favourite game was shown in the friends list, which was not a part of SpotPass. I can’t remember for sure if you needed a Nintendo Network account for adding friends, but I do know that you can add friends offline through the local network, but this does not use the SpotPass network, as the SpotPass network requires internet (and most games which had SpotPass warned you of this prior to activation).
The local wireless connection used in the friends list is the same connection used in local multiplayer games, the same as how it works on the Nintendo Switch.
based on memory, so a little vague, but examples - access to various merchants in Bravely Default required you to have passed others. i remember this because i was sick with flu and spent a couple days with my 3ds and my daughter’s running/“passing” each other repeatedly so i could unlock everything.
to the best of my memory, some turn-based rpg’s (Persona? SMT? Etrian Odyssey?) would allow you to access customized personas/demons/teams? others had made available. like maybe someone had a really great high level persona (basically a pokemon) with a really great selection of skills on it and you could use it instead of trying to build the same thing yourself, before you might have normally had access to it.
so the latter type thing was cool and fun, but i didn’t get many of those. the first example is a situation where the game doesn’t really fully work without spotpass.
edit - you could visit houses of people you had passed in animal crossing and buy their stuff, too. so you could see how other people decorated and access furniture you might not have access to yet (seasonal, Gracie).
SpotPass was/is a free service provided by Nintendo that was only on the 3DS and Wii U consoles; Nintendo Switch doesn’t provide this. Essentially what it’s purpose was, was for Nintendo to send various pieces of content to players for their games and apps. For example, Tomodatchi Life had various time-limited costumes distributed to players on a half-monthly bases. This was some of the data I had on my console. Other examples include special distributions of special Pokemon in pokemon games. So, in a sense, you could call the SpotPass data “DLC’s”. That’s why they are important to preserve, as they are DLC content that was distributed for free. They also include notifications, since all the notifications sent to you were through SpotPass. There’s also some DLC’s for New Super Mario Bros. 2 that require you to receive a SpotPass notification in order to install.
Certain WiiU and 3DS games have a link with Miiverse, Nintendo’s Twitter before it closed 2017, you could post… posts from the game your playing when you beat a specific level or complete an achivement. You could also see and interact with other peoples posts ingame, in Super Mario 3D World for example you would see other players avatars on the world map, see their Miiverse posts and interact with them. It merged ingame worlds with Miiverse extremely well, making it feel like you were part of a tight not community Good Vibes Gaming did a very good video about Pretendo as a whole good watch if your interested
ok never used that feature in anything on my 3ds
Used to play my 3DS a lot during its heyday so I’d love to contribute, but my 3DS uses a standard SD card and none of my computers have an SD card reader. Is there a good way to get the data off it without one?
I just donated mine and there doesn’t seem to be one. Try to go to a computer store, SD card adapters aren’t very expensive these days. P.S. I just remembered it uploads automatically if you’re connected to the internet
Actually, I was able to dig up an old laptop that as an SD reader in it. I don’t know if I have a spare blank SD lying around, though- can I use my 3DS’s native SD card without losing the data stored on it?
Yes, all it does is create a directory with the data and then upload it to the internet - all from the 3ds
Do keep in mind I have cfw 3ds, without it I don’t know if you still have a solution
Yeah my 3DS is unmodded. I may look to see if I have an SD card lying around somewhere at my home when I have a chance
First of all, it’s incredibly easy to mod it, and it’s something that, since the shop shut down, is necessary to have new experiences on it. Here’s a link to the site I used to mod my new Nintendo 2ds.
There’s a homebrew app called ftpd that you could use, but it only works on a hacked system and that requires an SD card reader to initially setup.
Damn, I’ve disposed of my 3DS battery because it started to fail (and I don’t play on it anymore anyways) and THIS is how I find out you can’t turn the damn thing on without a battery? Well, I can at least get the ol’ WiiU out and do it on there.
I’ll have to dig out my 3dsxl this weekend. Still packed up from moving a few years ago.
Bet it still has a charge on it, lol
