Topic: Wii U / 3DS eShop Exclusive Titles

Oh my goodness, I'm doing everything last minute as usual!

I just put my final £100 onto my account.

I've bought a few random things. I'm scrambling to download updates on both mine and my partner's 3DSs.

Might get a few themed cos why not.

Do I need to put all my Wii U discs into the console to see if they need updates?? Do updates just download automatically on Wii U?

@ralphdibny I think updates do download automatically, and Nintendo has said updates will still be available after the closure, so you should be fine. It's worth getting the free DLC for Sonic Lost World (Yoshi and Zelda themed levels) and Xenoblade Chronicles X (data packs that reduce loading times) if you haven't already though, I don't think those will be available any more. You can claim the DLC even if you don't have the games yet if you think you might get them in the future.

@Dogorilla cheers I got those thankfully. I ended up doing everything that I think I wanted to do by about 3am last night in the end. Including putting all my Wii U discs in just in case!

I might write a longer post here about my experience over the weekend. I think it brought up a lot of old memories as well as a few new discoveries 😅

@ralphdibny That would be good, it's sad to see these stores closing but nice that it's led to people rediscovering a lot of forgotten games from last generation.

@Dogorilla how do you get the data packs for XCX without having the game? I actually have it but it’s sealed so didn’t want to open it just yet.

Edit: Sorry ignore I figured it out! Couldn’t do it from eshop website, had to be on Wii U itself.

@K1LLEGAL Yeah you have to go through the eShop on the console. But at least that's better than on 3DS where you can't buy DLC on the eShop at all, you have to actually play the game first!

Apologies, this is a super super long post! But I am quite emotional after this weekend, perhaps staying up until 3am last night doing eShop shenanigans hasn't helped 😅

3DS (and Wii U) - A Retrospective

At times it has been a wild ride since I started this thread. When the eShop closures got announced last year, I spent a few hundred quid picking up some top picks recommended by people in this thread and elsewhere.

I knew there would be a final push towards the end. But finances struggling by this point, I was apprehensive to put any more money into a pair of dying consoles.

I've put a lot of work in over this weekend, not just in doing the eshop stuff but also finishing a couple projects that I planned years ago but just never got around to. That was greatly satisfying. But in preparing my consoles for the "end", a lot of memories were stirred up and I realised that the wild ride that I've described didn't begin with the eShop closure announcement. It began when I first bought a 3DS and a Wii U.

Projects

I'll start by describing the two projects which I won't describe in great detail so as to respect the community rules. I'll mainly describe my feelings around them which I don't think will break any rules.

Before the pandemic, I picked up a New 2DS XL on clearance from Tesco for £55. This was actually the 8th 3DS I've owned 😅 and I still have 5 of them! My intention was to hack the console. I just never got around to it. Last year, after the eShop closure announcement, I traded in a few things to CEX and bought a second Wii U for the same reason. I'm a bit funny with hacking, as I like to have a legit stock console rather than hacking my main machine.

Well anyway, not knowing a lot about it, I decided to do the New 2DS XL on Saturday. I also did an original 3DS that was gathering dust so I'd have something to play 3D games on as well. It was more of a failsafe. In case I missed something on the eShop, I'd still be able to find games somewhere. I had a play around with the hacked consoles and they showed a lot of promise so I was feeling confident.

I also did the Wii U on Sunday. This was a bit last minute so I wouldn't have as much time to mess around and test it out. But it looks ok, again it shows a lot of promise but I'll have to give it a better look!

I think the main thing for me about hacking these two consoles, is that they were projects that were around 5 years in the making. I'm the sort of guy that plans stuff, gets all the required equipment and then just leaves it for ages before I ever get around to it. I've described other projects, both completed and on going over on Time Extension and Push Square.

Honestly, it was just the greatest relief and sense of achievement to see these projects that have been in the back of my mind for so long become fully realised!

SD Cards and MP3 Players

Messing around with the above projects, as well as time yesterday spent frantically downloading updates on one of my legit stock consoles meant I was doing a lot of SD Card management over the weekend!

As I was backing up SD Cards so I could wipe/transfer them to bigger cards, I found loads of music on them. I had kind of forgotten this but I used to use my original 3DS and later and moreso, my 2DS (the slab) as an MP3 player. A lot.

It's amazing really, it's not the smallest machine to use as an MP3 player but I always had it with me for Streetpass so why not? I had so many albums on there from Eminem, Elliott Smith, Jamie Cullum, Jay Z/Linkin Park, Dizzee Rascal, Lady Gaga, Dr Dre and more!

It really was a great machine and I'm genuinely considering using my stock 2DS as an MP3 player again. Its not doing anything else as my main stock machine is a New 3DS XL (SNES edition! 😍)

Streetpass Plaza

Which brings me onto something I realised. I hadn't bought a few of the Streetpass Plaza packs. It's unlikely I will ever get back into Streetpass Plaza but I picked them up last night for posterity anyway.

As soon as I booted the app, that music kicked in. I hadn't heard it in so long but it was still familiar and nostalgic. Yet almost immediately, it filled me with with anxiety and dread.

I think I have a bit of an addictive personality and that has manifested as game addictions over the years. A few notable titles I have been addicted to are Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fuelled, The Simpsons Tapped Out and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.

Unfortunately Streetpass Plaza is one such game that I became addicted to and I spent what felt like so much of my life playing those games. The main quest, puzzle swap, the gardening game and the tetramino arranging haunted mansion game stick out in my memory.

My goodness, it feels like an age that I spent with those games. I think that's why I checked out when they started releasing more titles for it. I barely had enough time in my day to play the Streetpass games I was playing already, let alone a half dozen more.

Honestly, my memory of the whole Streetpass Plaza is bittersweet. Sure I enjoyed playing it, that feeling when Miis lined up at the gate, trying to be tactical about which puzzle pieces I chose, messing around with the console date and shaking it for the pedometer coins etc.

But I will never get that time back and time in my finite life is so precious to me now.

Last Minute Pick-Ups

Yesterday, I put around £130 into my Nintendo Account to pick up some last few games. I had already bought a lot of the recommended titles over the last year but a series that I hadn't played before intrigued me. That was the Ace Attorney games, 3 of which would be locked to the 3DS.

I was waiting for Capcom to drop them in the sale like they did in the US but unfortunately they never did. So I ended up buying them full price. I also found out that two of them had DLC, after some frantic googling of how to actually buy this DLC (I don't think I have ever bought DLC on 3DS before 😅), I managed to buy them!

Also, themes! I am surprised I even did this to be honest but all the NL articles that mentioned themes really got to me. Particularly with regards to the Sega ones.

Every theme I've had up until this point has been free. The only theme I've ever actually used was a Breath of the Wild One which has that familiar minimalistic soundtrack that I fell in love with so much back when I played Breath of the Wild. I always thought they were a bit pointless and a waste of money otherwise.

Welllll, I went mad. I bought so many themes last night 😅. Lots of Sega ones and also a Metal Gear Solid one that plays the song Snake Eater on the home menu which is one of my favourite video game songs ever!

Seems a bit pointless really if I am sunsetting the consoles but oh well, at least I'll have some more stuff to mess around with and appreciate in the future!

New Things I Learned

The 2DS and the Wii U stylus are actually the same length! I accidentally put the Wii U one into the 2DS while I was multitasking on 6 different consoles last night and was only stopped by the different shaped end that clips it into the console.

Wii U download management - I've had loads of stuff in my download list on the Wii U for years. I put all my discs in last night to make sure they were all updated. Many said "update applied" as I put them in and my Download List got smaller. I had no idea that launching the game would clear it's completed update from the download list. Just goes to show how many free updates and paid DLCs I've bought over the years without actually ever returning to the game to play them!! 😅

Other Memories

Ambassador Games - When the 3DS came out and it was £229.99, I balked at it. No way was I going to spend that much on a handheld! Not when the Gamecube was £129.99, the DS was £99.99 and the Wii was £179.99!

Well, they dropped the price after a while and rewarded early adopters with ambassador games. Now I don't think those games were worth the cost of the price difference so I never felt particularly gutted about missing out on them when I eventually bought my reduced price 3DS

But I did see an ambassador 3DS on eBay some time later for a reasonable price that I could recoup by trading in the hardware. So I bought the 3DS, merged the data with my own and traded in the second 3DS to make my money back.

The 2DS - This gets its own entry because I absolutely loved and adored that original "slab" design of the 2DS.

It might not have had 3D but my goodness, it looked so beautiful to me. I know many people think it's ugly but I absolutely adored it.

To me, it looked so retro. Like a really tall Game Boy Advance. Just perfection 👌

I had a similar love for the Wii Mini revision, another "ugly" console by popular standards but one that I thought was so utterly beautiful.

I never bought the Wii Mini, much to my regret (how can I justify spending a hundred quid on a stripped back Wii?!) but I loved how retro it looked. With its textured plastic and black and red design that reminded me of a Mega Drive 2.

Multiple 3DSs - Yes I did say that I've had 8 3DSs in my life. My original 3DS was an aqua blue one. A beautiful machine. Unfortunately one of the shoulder buttons stopped working so I traded it into Game (it was before I had started fixing my own consoles). I initially traded it in for a Pokémon 3DS XL. I remember doing the system transfer in the shop, much to the chagrin of the shopkeeper.

I didn't notice until I got home that the new 3DS XL had like a burn mark under the plastic of the screen. So I took it back to (a different) Game to return it. This shopkeeper wanted me to jump through a bunch of hoops like ringing the Game head office and getting a return authorization code, blah blah blah. I firmly pointed out that that is not how faulty returns work lawfully in the UK and said if he wants to do all that internal bureaucracy, then by all means he can have at it but I needed to return the faulty console.

Of course he did it but I did push my luck by asking to system transfer to my new console in store. To be honest though, I had to right? I couldn't lose all my games and data. The shopkeeper informed me that head office said the burn mark on the screen was a common fault with 3DS XLs so I opted for the newly released slab shaped 2DS this time to be on the safe side.

Then I later bought a Cosmos Black 3DS for cheap off Amazon. This allowed me to play games in 3D again. I didn't system transfer so I kept my 2DS as my main machine. I was actually a bit disappointed by this 3DS, they'd changed the manufacturing of them and it used a yellow-hued screen instead of the bright white-blue screen of my original, long since traded in Aqua Blue 3DS.

Then the New 3DS was announced. I wanted the small one because of those SNES coloured buttons that weren't present on the XL variant. I couldn't justify dropping that amount of money on a console that I barely played any more though. Then the SNES edition of the XL was announced. I had to have it, not least because it solved the XL SNES button colours dilemma! I system transferred from my 2DS and this now became my main machine and still is to this day.

Then the New 2DS XL came. I held out, I quite wanted the Pokéball version when that was released but couldn't justify the price when I already had 3 different 3DSs already.

Some time later, perusing deals websites I found out Tesco were offloading their New 2DS XL consoles for £55. Black and Lime Green. I did a lot of driving for work around this time so I made a lot of (sometimes quite lengthy 😅) detours to different Tesco's to see if they had them in stock. I came out empty handed every time until one day I didn't. I bought two, one to hack and one to remain "stock" for my partner.

I actually bought a DSi that had Four Swords Anniversary on it around this time to system transfer to my partner's New 2DS XL. I already had it on my 3DS. I also finally redeemed the physical download codes for Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal and divvied them up between our two main machines for trading purposes. Of course, as things go, I never actually played either Four Swords or the 2nd Gen Pokémon games on either 3DS!

So my final list of 3DSs:

• New 3DS XL (SNES edition) - my main stock machine
• New 2DS XL (Black/Lime Green) - my partner's main stock machine
• 2DS (Black/Blue slab design) - a third stock machine with a few updates for certain 3+ player games
• New 2DS XL (Black/Lime Green) - hacked machine
• 3DS (Cosmos Black) - hacked machine

3DSs I have said goodbye to over the years:

• 3DS (Aqua Blue) - my original machine, it's bright blue/white screen will never be forgotten and will be forever in my heart 😍🧡
• 3DS (Aqua Blue) - the ambassador machine I bought from eBay to merge/trade in
• 3DS XL (Blue Pokémon design) - burn mark under screen, returned within a few days

Final Thoughts

It has honestly been a ride. It feels like the end of an era.

That's kind of an odd thing to say when I have literally just exponentially increased my 3DS and Wii U backlog by buying so many digital games and hacking more consoles.

But I feel done. I feel happy and content. The journey is over. Perhaps a new journey is beginning but who can say what the future holds?

At least I have done everything I can to lay foundations for that possible future if I choose to explore it.

And I can look back knowing that I had a good time and journey with the 3DS (and Wii U 😅)

✌️

I feel like a lot of these retrospectives are going to pop up over the next few days!

I just want to add a big thanks to all the contributors to this thread:

@Dogorilla @Taceus @Sunsy @anynamereally @1UP_MARIO @Tyranexx @Johncomms @Ralizah @Krull @Vivianeat @Ninfan @Eel @Tyranexx and others!

Also a shout out to @CharlieGirl and @Shnaps for making me aware of more NES Zapper games that made it to the Wii U VC with Wii remote controls. I had no idea that Wild Gunman, Bayou Billy and Hogan's Alley were even on the eShop until you mentioned them in the comments for the Duck Hunt eShop Spotlight article!

And also a big, big thanks to @dartmonkey and the rest of the NL staff for their tireless work writing numerous articles, guides and features and for making video guides that helped me (and everyone else, I'm sure!) prepare for this final outcome.

I have been flicking through all of those articles over the weekend and watching Zion's video guide to help prepare and make all the final arrangements!

@ralphdibny You're welcome. I'm glad to have contributed some games to this list.

For fun, here's some of the final games I've bought for my systems. Some of these aren't exclusive, going to mention them because it feels like an end of an era...

Wii U - Metroid Prime Trilogy
3DS - 80's Overdrive
New 3DS - Zara the Fastest Fairy (this one's exclusive to New 3DS, fun endless flying game IMO)

I never did a system transfer as I wanted to keep games on my old 3DS. I did get double games on both New 3DS and old 3DS just to have their multiplayer modes.

Yes, I have two copies of Tank Troopers... go buy it right now, now, do it now... drive a tank on your 3DS, right now. It's like Nintendo's own World of Tanks! Did I make myself clear?

@Sunsy ✌️

Haha nice! I actually do have multiple physical (and some digital) copies of certain 3DS games so I can play multiplayer with my multiple 3DS. I have never actually found any of my friends to be that interested in doing so though! Most of these were picked up cheap, like £3-8 or were free somewhere down the line:

Street fighter IV 3D - 2x physical
Dead or Alive Dimensions - 2x physical
Tri Force Heroes - 3x physical
Federation Force - 3x physical
Mario Kart 7 - digital/physical
Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D - digital/physical
Four Swords adventures Anniversary - 2x digital

I actually did consider picking up digital copies of some games I own physically that are now (or will be) very expensive to buy physically. But in the end I decided against it because beyond a couple, I probably won't even get around to selling the physical versions because I'm too attached. These include:

Metroid Prime Trilogy (Wii)
Pandora's Tower (Wii)
A Shadow's Tale (Wii)
Game & Wario (Wii U)
Bayonetta 1&2 (Wii U) - not too expensive right now
Star Fox Zero Launch Edition (Wii U) - this includes the Star Fox Guard physical copy but again, I don't think this is too expensive right now

@ralphdibny "It has honestly been a ride". I can agree with that feeling just from reading it .

Oof now I want to think about my 3DS history. I’ve had a lot of them, now that you mention it.

@ralphdibny I'm glad I could contribute to the thread! And thank you for reminding me the 3DS can play music, I've still got quite a lot of space on my SD card so I might as well chuck some songs on there

Had a few more thoughts on the Wii U...

• It looks freaking amazing on an OLED Tele. I got my OLED in November '21 and every game I've played since I hooked the Wii U up has looked brilliant. Like I had no idea that Wii U games looked this good as I had mainly played it on older HD teles and monitors beforehand.
• I've never noticed the home screen tiles have like a reflection of their app in the gel-like bubble that surrounds them
• Whatever happened to that TVii icon that was down the bottom? It was there from launch until one day it just wasn't. I do wonder what they actually had planned for that before it got scrapped!
• Wii U Chat - seems like such an awesome idea. Too bad I could never get my one other friend who had a Wii U to ever use it with me 😂
• Wii Street U was always awesome. My dad and brother were photographed by the Google car walking down a street on the beachfront in Margate like a decade ago. I always liked going on this app and finding them! I think the proper Google maps has been updated by now and they are no longer there

@Balta666 haha not sure what that's supposed to mean 😂

@Eel nice! It's probably my most-owned console, weirdly. I think it's the sheer amount of revisions and I must have been at the height of my console collecting bug at the time!

Looks like an article on this very topic went live on the main page today! Mind you, I did tag @dartmonkey in my post but I haven't been cynical enough to check which was posted first 😂

@Dogorilla cheers and no worries! I actually downgraded my 2DS SD card from 32gb down to 2gb in this whole process. Maybe I should upgrade it again for some MP3 action!

Well they won’t truly die until they stop supporting them completely.

@ralphdibny No problem at all! Always happy to help when I can. The 3DS family (and, by extension, the DS family) is among my favorite consoles ever. It's sad that the Wii U and 3DS eshops are now in their twilight years (Not dead yet since redownloading games is still available), and we're losing access to many unique games because of it. It was necessary to try to spread awareness as much as possible!

My backlog and general interests mean this system is far from dead in my case.

Perhaps now we can use this thread to share what our last purchases were, panic or not. That would be interesting to see what everybody ended up with.

My final purchase on each system was Love Hero on 3DS (which I've started playing and don't entirely see the appeal of yet, but the music is nice and it was only 87p) and Legend of the Mystical Ninja on Wii U. I won't go through everything else I bought in the last year or we'll be here for a while, but I've got a lot to look forward to finally playing

Mine on WiiU was New Super Mario Bros. (Virtual Console), and on 3DS I suppose my true very final purchase was the Highlander character class DLC for Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 which I bought mere minutes before the shop went down.

If we add some more categories, my final 3DS software purchase was Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn, and my final DSiWare purchase was True Swing Golf Express (which I wish I had purchased before because I’m liking it a lot!).

For WiiU software, I’m actually not sure, it was many years before they announced the closure… But according to my account activity it was Runbow…?

My last game purchase for 3DS was Etrian Odyssey V, the one I was still missing because it never got any discounts unlike all the other Etrian Odyssey games. My physical copy of New Super Mario Bros. 2 arrived just in time so that I could also download its DLC. It's really weird that you have to wait for a SpotPass message before you can access the DLC shop in that game.

For Wii U, I got some Wii games I'd missed over the years, including Pikmin 2 and Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise (or Rhythm Heaven Fever if the European name sounds weird). I've beaten Pikmin 1 and 3 but never played 2. I was very close to buying it back in the Wii days after I finished the first game. Its price had already started climbing up so by the time I looked into it again, it was too expensive. As for Rhythm Paradise, it was cheap and easily obtainable for such a long time that I kept pushing it back and buying something else instead. Then one day I was surprised when I couldn't find it anymore.

My last Wii U eShop purchase was the Humble Friends of Nintendo Bundle which gave me Affordable Space Adventures, Darksiders II, Freedom Planet, Shantae and the Pirates Curse, Runbow, Swords and Soldiers II and Citizens of Earth. That's actually good chunk of what I'd consider the essentials right there.

For the 3DS, it was rounding up the remainder of the Guild games. It's sad to see all that innovation go down with the ship. They're still available on Japan-only cartridge, I guess, but good luck ever finding one.