(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.

  • AlligatorBlizzardEnglish
    42·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • DreitonLullaby@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      37·
      9 months ago

      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?

      • Exec@pawb.socialEnglish
        5·
        9 months ago

        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.

            • DreitonLullaby@lemm.eeOPEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

              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”

      • SailorMossEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        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?

        • DreitonLullaby@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          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.

    • DreitonLullaby@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      If they didn’t factory reset it before you bought it from them, than it definitely would still have that old data lying around in the background.