Reminder: Nintendo's Wi-Fi Service on Wii and DS Closes on 20th May

...Bye-bye Wii/DS online games. o.o

tomorrow! goodbye...online wii/ds

I just dominated and won my final round of Fortune Street today.

Thats shocking as i know of several people who still play Mario Kart online and Love it.

I haven't even tried Advance Wars: Days of Ruin's online yet...Guess I'd better do that today.

I had my last few rounds of Mario Kart Wii and Smash Bros. Brawl today and had a great time, about 5 or 6 hours worth. Surprisingly, Brawl went pretty smoothly, no lag and after a couple of trolls and taunt rooms, I had some awesome hardcore Brawls! I intend to make of most of the Pokémon services later.
Farewell, Nintendo Wi-Fi. We had a good run...

Gotta be honest, had no idea Strikers Charged had online despite my kids playing it for hours. Wii U needs a new version of that and Super Sluggers and a Paper Mario or Mario RPG. It really does feel like Wii had more games it's first 18 months than Wii U. Maybe not big huge blockbusters but games my kids and I played together - Godzilla Unleashed! - that first year. I'ld bet Twilight Princess sold more it's first month on Wii than WW HD on Wii U despite it also being out of Gamecube, same as WW.

Oh well, MK8 next Friday so that feeling should go away

Time to play either some Strikers, Brawl or MKWii maybe Fortune Street.

This doesn't include the Wii's eShop itself, does it? There's one or two games I still fancy picking up…

@ChessboardMan the Wii and DS stores will remain online

@ChessboardMan The Wii Shop Channel should remain unaffected.

I never had any problems with Brawl's online mode.

Heard some people are setting up ghetto servers for Pokémon/Brawl, hope they'll actually work. (but doubt they'd be any smooth)

they should have at least moved games that don't have newer versions available, to new servers, for the time being.

The end of an era indeed... I kinda wish they'd wait until Mario Kart 8 was released at the very least. But oh well, that's only 10 days after the service ends, so it's not THAT big a deal~

handling last GTS stuff today...Now I really have to resort to X and Y to complete my national dex. Lets hope more people migrate, GTS could use a boost. (There are many who still play the DS pokemon games and haven't bought XY yet)

One positive! No more newly hacked pokeymans. Unless someone decides to crack XY. Which I hope they won't but I guess its inevitable.

Does that mean the wii online shop will close too even though it works on wii u in wii mode ?

time to have some last online mkw and ge games

Going to go and have my last MKW games, very sad

@Luna-Harmony The Wii Shop Channel will remain online past May 20th.

"or a potentially laggy fight in Brawl."
Not gonna miss that.

Will always remember My time playing Pokémon online. ;_;7

Just for clarification, does the shutdown start at 23:59 tonight, or tomorrow at 23:59?

@ChessboardMan This is mainly for the games themselves, like others have said, the Shop channels will stay up. Same goes for things such as Netflix and all that.

@Luna-Harmony no shop stays open

Even though Brawl's online was laggy, I have a ton of good memories with it. Definitely going to miss it. Maybe I'll play a bit with some friends today.

R.I.P Wi-Fi on Wii and DS, I loved the online on Mario Kart Wii, didn't lag a lot, but I'm Wondering, can anybody answer this, will local multiplayer on DS still work, or is that going as well???

@Takerkaneanite6 Isn't local multiplayer handled on your own home network or wi-fi? It won't affect that.

@SanderEvers O.K, thanks for the quick reply...

@Dreamcaster-X Thanks to you as well...

@Dreamcaster-X Local has nothing to do with WiFi or your network.

No, you can still play them, you just use homebrew and use custom servers

The name of the service was GameSpy, not Digital Spy. That's another thing entirely.

It's sad to see the games cut off (especially the ones I haven't even gotten yet), but I have to admit that I haven't played online on the Wii or DS in a long time, possibly not since Pokemon Black 2 came out. I'd imagine there aren't very many players on most of the games anymore, which is why Nintendo isn't migrating the games to new servers.

That said, I'll try to play some games online tonight, probably Excitebots, Mario Kart, Brawl, and/or Pokemon. As the article said, it's the end of an era. It may not be a glowing era for everyone, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

I need any last amazing Wii Music videos anybody wants to share! Tried to play an online match in Mario Kart DS but couldn't get the connection to work. Goodbye, sweet blue circle in the corner of packaging...

Bye bye, Brawl. I had fun activating Snake's Codec taunts online. Especially since people would keep me alive to hear them to the end!

So long mario titles you'll be missed.

I spent a good portion of yesterday putting together a quick-and-dirty WEP hotspot and getting all DLC that I could. I was surprised by how much content I missed in the Picross games, and the sheer abundance of it! It would take two game cards to get all of 3D Picross' content, and /ten/ game cards to get all of Picross DS'. I just might pick up a second copy of 3D Picross tonight and get the rest.

It may be the end of an era, but it's also indicative of a new one. Long gone are the days where purchasing a game nets you a complete game experience for life. From now on, certain game features--be it game play modes or extra content--have a finite life span. This is understandable, and I'm not resentful of the plug being pulled, but it only intensifies my regret that DLC became so ubiquitous. Starting tomorrow, anyone who buys, say, Picross DS or a Professor Layton game is going to be missing out. Someone who buys A Link the the Past today gets the exact same experience we had in 1992.

That all said, never discount the fan community. I have no doubt that eventually, some group of intrepid gamers will devise some workaround to grant gamers that extra content--maybe even online play. I sure hope so, because I picked up Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs well after 2011!

Does know what time it closes? I'm guessing it's going to be at 23:59 on Tuesday right?

Poop. I've been meaning to get some extra puzzles on Picross 3D, but it looks like I'm going to miss the boat. Sure wish I could connect to my wifi without changing a ton of settings.

Anyone playing Goldeneye today? I was disappointed last night to see the servers almost abandoned, but we still managed some Team Conflict.

Last Thursday night the last few die-hards played our last round of online Trackmania on Wii. One of my top 5 games of all time and easily one of the most under-appreciated games on the Wii.

@XyVoX It's pure business. Nintendo need to sell more Wiiu's. So now it's time for your friends and the millions of ofter people playing Mario Kart online for free in several years, to show their love for Nintendo and their great games. So tell them to buy the Wiiu and Mario kart 8. Spread the word.

Will WiiUs and 3DS online shut down like this in the future? Because of some license expiring to run it?

This is sad indeed,

Thanks for the reminder.
Me and my friend are just booting up our Wii Us to play Mario Kart Wii now

I will miss the GTS for Black 1 and 2. I did not play anything else online.

Goodbye
Forever
NDS/Wii
Thanks for the memories...
;(

Anyone want to join me and my friend?
My code is 4170-8925-2046
We'll be starting in about 10 minutes.
Reply to me with your code. Anyone welcome.

I'll miss the Excitebike World Rally servers the most.

Time to park the bike....was a wild ride, for sure.....

To be honest I never bought a Wii, my GameCube was sufficient enough (even though I almost bought a Wii just for brawl).
However I will definitely miss the online modes in Pokemon.

Goodbye, I hope you will be missed! So anyone will have a battle in Pokemon Black/White 2? Just for the last day of the servers shutting down.

This really is the end of an era. Good memories of Brawl and Mariokart with friends. And some great pokemon memories as well.

@NiBar Amen, spoken true words. Wish these 30 million people would go and buy Wii U/Kart 8.

Does anyone know if there are any Wii games that will still have online?

Gotta go get some pokemon conquest DLC!

Oh well, "all per serving will end sooner or later"; but I didn't expect so early. oh well, Thanks, Thank you very much Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, until next time.

To many hackers playing mkwii ,,it ruined the game for so many legit players , Nintendo's Hand has been forced is some respects where mario kart wii is concerned .

Would anyone here with the first Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing for DS help me unlock the Online challenges (achievements) please?

@LoBo I found things settled down when the Wii U came out (maybe for the worst if MK8 ends up being affected).

Damn, I wonder when EXACTLY it'll shutdown? I wished it would still run tomorrow, then I had much more time!
I want to play some Goldeneye tonight until the EUR servers shut down!!

Shame the free DLC for games like the DS Professor Layton series and Inazuma Eleven 1 & 2 is going to disappear, and I've still got fond memories of playing Mario Kart Wii and Goldeneye online, but in all honesty I've not used the Nintendo Wi Fi Connection for months now, mostly due to DS games only supporting the old WEP system.

I didn't play online much so it won't really effect me.

I'm going to miss my Mario kart wii online matches. They really bring me a lot of fun and good memories. Too bad than in its last years it was plagued with hackers and the like. But it was great nonetheless. I wish I could say the same about SSBB but well that was a pain in the neck to play. Besides MKWii and SSBB I also played GH3 and CODMW online for a long time but I don't have those games anymore. Anyway, thanks for the good times NWFC and godspeed.

@NiBar This has nothing to do with Nintendo's business. The gamespy servers are being shut down. I thought everybody already knew that already.

No more Pokémon DNS hacks ;(

Bye bye gamespy, and bye bye civ iv online multiplayer...

Monster hunter and Mariocart had the best online for the wii, Bring on mariocart 8 I am ready!

You can still play online with your Wii U, right?

I know it had to happen some time but i honestly feel this is way too soon.

Quick, everyone! Download all of the online Layton puzzles you can!

End of an era indeed. Never did play to much online...but it will be a sorely missed feature.

WAIT ITS STILL POSSIBLE TO TRANSPORT POKEMON FROM BW TO XY WITHOUT WIFI RIGHT?

@ZenTurtle I would if I could ever find an internet connection that worked with my DS games. I really wish Nintendo hadn't locked everyone out of the postgame content in games like Layton and DQ9 by using outdated encryption.

@ZachBeacon
When it worked, NWC was actually quite fun. You did have to be within 8m of the access point, and it took forever to connect, like you said.

@LuckyTJ Yes, you can still transfer from Gen 5 to Gen 6. Bank uses Nintendo Network. In fact, transferring from as far back as Gen 3 will still be possible.

End of an era indeed. Will definitely play some Mario Kart Wii online and might make some Pokemon (legal ones, unfair ones aren't right). Good thing I already created a 6 IV Ditto for breeding in X/Y.

@WillhamBoyGeniu 3DS and Wii U run on Nintendo Network, which Nintendo owns and maintains. They won't go offline unless Nintendo decides to shut off the servers for those specific games.

@IceClimbers So those services are Nintendo-owned that's a relief, thank you.

@Blue-Thunder Pretty sure Pokemon Battle Revolution was the first online Wii game.

Edit: Oops, you're right if you're from the UK area.

Farewell WFC. I had some great times on there; glitches and all. Here are my favorites:

Onslaught, Snowboard Riot, Water Warfare, SEGA Racing, Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Animal Crossing, Excitebike, M&S Olympics, Motoheroz, We Love Golf, Virtua Tennis 2009, and WarioWare DIY.

R.I.P. Wii and DS online play

We shall miss you

@Bulbousaur and @Blue-Thunder I just had the idea to go on Nintendo's Japanese website to see if that had the exact details and great news, it does! Even better news though it that the Wi-Fi doesn't go off until on the 20th itself so we still have tomorrow to play!

We don't have all of tomorrow though, it states that it goes off at 23:00 which converted to England time is 3PM so bear that in mind.

Here's the link to the page: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/information/2014/0227.html

You'll need Google Translate to make any sense of it of course unless you can read Japanese!

This makes me so sad.

I think I'll play some Mario Kart Wii online and visit some towns for the last time on Animal Crossing: City Folk

I never really played much of the Pokemon DS games online, except for using the Global Trade Station. I wish I did.

I've just thought, 3PM in England is in the morning in America so attention all Americans make sure you get your last games in in the morning!

Not exactly, MKW wont be dead till much later.
People managed to get in a custom server so online still works.

Problem is...the hackless version is still on it way...

@Blue-Thunder - "I played it for 300 hours "

Just curious, do you like soccer in real life? My kids both played a lot of Strikers, and 4 years each of soccer when they wee younger, but I'm pretty sure they liked Strikers more. Maybe I'll try to get them into the World Cup this year. Should've had a new Mario vs Sonic Strikers to tie into the World Cup. Almost no point after that.

We had 8 people last night playing Phantasy Star Zero for 3 hours. It was so much fun. All I could think of was that there wasn't a game on 3DS With the quality and options of Phantasy star zero. Really it seems online play with 3DS has moved in reverse. Someone needs to take a good look at PSZ then incorporate what they see into any future online games which have online. It was done perfectly

Mario Kart Wii worked perfectly for me tonight. Smash Bros is stuck on the "Seeking Opponent" screen (my Ice Climbers are ready).

@AyeHaley you don't need the GTS to make hacked Pokemon if you know what you are doing and have the right, fairly cheap hardware and software. My Pokemon are always legal would always pass the GTS security and make it through PokeTransfer. Others are not so inclined.

I am happy to have downloaded my Dragon Quest IX quests and Warioware DiY games.

@ecco6t9 There are extra quests for Dragon Quest IX? I'm firing that up right now to get the quests

This really didn't bother me until I remembered Dragon Quest IX. That's still on my "to-play" list. I've seen a lot of people these past few days saying that without wi-fi, they "might as well just sell their DQIX carts." Is the game really that reliant on the online features? How much of the game will I be able to play without them?

Also sad that I never got around to downloading all of those Professor Layton puzzles, but aside from that, I've had my fun. R.I.P. Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Well, Today I played many races in Mario Kart Wii Online and Yay!!!, many, many racers, but well, for me, because is night here in Mexico, it's all done for Mario Kart Wii Online, Thanks Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, see you in any next time, "hasta la vista", XD

@Gridatttack By hackless, do you mean a non-custom track version?

Surprisingly, Mario Kart Wii actually worked on my Wii U this time, so I had my last bit of fun online. Thanks for the memories Nintendo WiFi Connection!

5/20 R.I.P.
Great Times:
Goldeneye 007 , Super Smash Bros Brawl , Monster Hunter Tri 3 , Kart , Uno Wiiware , Tv Show King , ExciteBike World Rally etc etc

Did anyone ever come across trolls on mariokart wii online that filled tracks to the brim with weapons? I thought that made it more fun.. like racing through a warzone in a fight for survival.

Played scads of Mario Kart Wii the other day. Downloaded all 32 World Record Ghosts. I suggest people download them while they re still up. Some unbelievable shortcuts and exploits to be had in there... Also glad to see players on Excite Bike World Ralley. I played for hours earlier tonight. Then I noticed the Wifi logo on my Excitebots Trick Racing. I loaded Excitebots into my Wii-U and gamed a couple hours more. Power went off momentarily in the middle of a race. I booted my Wii-U into Wii mode and played some more. Same group of die hards I had played earlier. My records were sill intact too. How did I ever overlook the Wifi logo on the Excitebots game? Sadly I sold Super Strikers Charged Wii a while back or I would have played some of that too. For some reason I prefered the GameCube version so I sold the Wii one back. I also enjoyed Smash Brothers Brawl but I suck at it. Maybe I could just spectate some wifi matches but I need to go to bed. But by the time I wake up, the Nintendo wifi will be no more...

Anybody curious, here's the local time in Japan:
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_JP.aspx

Servers are scheduled to go offline at 23:00hr. RIP...

I'm not going to miss it,I barely use online multiplayer.

Servers for some games have gone off at the expected time of 23:00hr, but MKWii isn't one of them!

Well, it's over. I saw this when I tried to visit another Wi-Fi Plaza.

Across today and yesterday, I spent 12 hours on the Wi-Fi plaza. When I started playing on it my game's play time was at 232 hours, and now it's at 244.

It was so amazing getting to see it again, playing all those Plaza games. I hadn't played them for years. There was also some funny stuff, like checking the Plaza News only to see the single News Headline was "Emz is checking the Plaza News...", or seeing people who were hanging around online, but were only ever looking at the bulletin board for Plaza News, never moving away. There was also plenty of chatting and sharing Tap Toys, and I saw a bunch of the same users a few times on different Plazas. It's too bad that I couldn't share details to play together with them somehow, on the 3DS. Doing this for 12 hours was pointless, and it was kind of mindless, but I don't care. I had a lot of fun.

And fittingly, the last Wi-Fi Plaza I got to visit was the special Mew one. Before, I'd only ever seen this once (yesterday!). I didn't even know it existed until yesterday, actually.

_{Not sure if getting to see the Mew Plaza as the last ever Wi-Fi Plaza is wonderful or bad birthday gift from Nintendo.}

WATER WARFARE SERVERS ARE STILL UP. SPECULATION:KONAMI DID BUY HUDSON. I GUESS THE SERVERS BELONG TO KONAMI.

Just Nintendo's way of saying, we give up. Their regional coding cost them a lot of customers in Europe. Some of the poorest marketing I have ever seen. They could have had it all and they blew it. Oh well, time to move on to another console. At least I'll have a wider selection of games to choose from.
Nintendo - R.I.P.

I've just tried Mario Kart and got the discontinued message. But for those interested, both Call of Duty Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3 are both still running online.

Now maybe they will be switched off too but I notice that both games do not have the usual blue coloured "Nintendo Wi-Fi connection" logo on the box, they have a different black coloured "Wi-FI Compatible" logo instead. So maybe they run on different servers?

I've mostly moved on to Wii U COD but I do like to go back to Black Ops and MW3 now and again, so fingers crossed!

Played Trauma Center New Blood and uploaded a couple of scores. I remember when the WFC was so cool and new but the frustration of finding reliable connections or just lack of excitement when playing online kept me away. Ultimately I like local multiplayer or single player experiences.

Yup, just as I predicted. Wifi network was down when I got up around 12:30 CDT. Was greeted by an error message in Mario Kart. I wonder if any people here were gaming the exact instant the plug got pulled. Did anybody playing online get booted off in the middle of a match?

RIP MK-Wii...
RIP Smash Bros Brawl...
RIP Super Strikers Charged...
RIP ExiteBots...
RIP ExciteBike (Wiiware)...
RIP Dr Mario Rx Online...
RIP MK DS...
RIP Pokemon (all DS versions)...

And all the other great games I never played...

But a big Hurray for MK8 coming up! Until then, MK7 is still game on for a long time to come!

Good bye my dear friend...
I will not forget about you... I hope.
This is the end of an era.
To bad, but everything has to end at some point...
R.I.P NINTENDO WI-FI CONNECTION

@Grumblevolcano
No. I mean, theres no way(yet) to play in the custom server without having a modded image file of the game :/

@StarDust4Ever An odd thing I noticed is that if you connected to WFC before the shutdown time you could actually stay online until you chose to leave or get disconnected (the type of disconnect pre-shutoff).

It may be possible for Nintendo to redirect the ds and wii wifi servers to it's own Nintendo Network server in the future. Hopefully!

@WillhamBoyGeniu Doubtful. The games will need to be patched to get them working again, something Nintendo cannot be arsed to do. Homebrew servers would require patched ROMs which means either emulators or mod-chipped systems with bootleg copy of the game. How many people will actually go online with it? Also unless someone has a lightning speed Internet server in their garage, the latency will make the game play like poopydoodle.

Although perhaps it would be possible using the Wii Lan adapter or Wifi dongle to connect the Wii or DS to a PC and use the PC as a fake DNS to redirect the console to another server. That may allow the Wii/DS games wifi games to operate unmodded. But who would run a free server, and do hackers know enough about the protocol to make it work?

Got a disconnect so no more MKWii online for me (8 hours after the shutoff is not bad though!)

@Grumblevolcano 8 hours? That's impressive. How many gamers were left?

@Grumblevolcano #116 Nice! I was still playing Mario Kart an hour after the shut down, but stupidly I thought the fact it was still working meant that it hadn't been shut off yet so I quit the game to switch to Smash Bros and then of course I was stuffed! So were there still lots of people playing when you got disconnected just now?

@StarDust4Ever @Squashy There were still near full races, the one I got disconnected in had 11 people. It was surprising that in those 8 hours there were no hackers, no ultra glitchers (e.g. complete 3 laps of Grumble Volcano in less than a minute), even no track spammers (although random did choose GCN Waluigi Stadium a lot).