(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.
🤔 Might be stupid question but what is spotPass why do we need to preserve the data?
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.
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.
Note that if you got the console second hand (even if it was factory reset), apparently, the SpotPass data stays on the console in the background, so it may be of more help than you think.
Edit on May 13, 2024 (Originally commented April 5): Sorry, but this information was incorrect and no data remains after a factory reset. Mainly making this edit for future readers.