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How does the Wii U / 3DS Online Services closure affect Animal Crossing and Splatoon games?
As per Nintendo’s announcement, online services officially shut down on the Nintendo Wii U and Nintendo 3DS consoles on Monday, April 8th 2024 at 11pm UTC. This closure comes with some huge implications for games in both the Animal Crossing and Splatoon series.
This page will let you know what’s affected and how to access online services again on both consoles.
What games are affected?
A variety of games on both the Wii U and 3DS consoles featuring content from the Animal Crossing and Splatoon series will be affected. This section will mention what games are affected and in what way are they affected.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer
- Unable to upload creations online
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
- Unable to upload your town via the Dream Suite
- Unable to invite others to visit your town via the internet or visit other peoples towns via the internet
- Unable to get information on friends status
- Unable to play Tortimer Island online
Mario Kart 8
- Unable to play online
Nintendo Badge Arcade
- Unable to collect new badges at all and unable to swap badges through the badge box
Splatoon
- Unable to buy any items from shops
- Unable to play online (basically Story Mode, Amiibo Challenges or Battle Dojo only)
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U
- Unable to play online
Theme Shop
- Unable to download any more themes (you could still download a limited selection after the eShop closure)
How to continue playing Wii U or 3DS games online?
I’ve mentioned it a lot: Pretendo Network.
You’ll need a modified Wii U or Nintendo 3DS to access it, you can install custom firmware on these consoles (Aroma/Luma3DS) by following the excellent guides set out at https://wiiu.hacks.guide or https://3ds.hacks.guide. It’s not too hard to do and if you need help, people at the Nintendo Homebrew Discord server can help you (or you could even ask some knowledgable people in our Matrix space) if you get help at any point or if you don’t feel confident modding your console without supervision.
Once you have got the essentials for custom firmware all set up, follow Pretendo’s guides for getting connected on the Wii U or 3DS pages.
For Wii U, if you want to use your save data, you will need to migrate your save data over with SaveMii. I intend to edit Pretendo’s Wii U guide soon to teach people how to use it since I’m not entirely sure myself so people can get all their data over to their Pretendo profiles.
Also, if you’re reading this before the servers shut down, do Pretendo a favour and dump data from your console.
Dump SpotPass data: https://spotpassarchive.github.io/ Dump all other network data: https://pretendo.network/docs/network-dumps