There’s an old adage that goes, “Done the old, make way for the new”. That sentiment may not have been behind Nintendo’s recent shutdown of the 3DS and Wii U eShops, but alas, here we are. With this shutdown, “all Nintendo 3DS and Wii U family systems will be affected, including New Nintendo 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS XL, New Nintendo 2DS XL, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL, Nintendo 2DS, Wii U Deluxe, and Wii U Basic”.
Thank you for supporting Nintendo eShop on Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
Additionally, you can also look back on your time with them via various game stats: https://t.co/YCkkVFaQ7i
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 16, 2022
Gamers have already started to mourn and commemorate their years with the consoles using Nintendo’s My Nintendo 3DS & Wii U Memories website. The site allows gamers to “see their gaming activity on Nintendo 3DS or Wii U… see their total time played on the console, total titles played, and their three most played games and favorite genres. users can also select their most memorable game from their available game library and share their reviews on social media.” All of this memories spans just under 10 years of gaming. For the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF ), that’s just not enough. They care more than stats and social shares. As an organization, they’re “dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games. “. Given this, it makes sense that VGHF had a less than positive reaction to the eShop closures when they took to Twitter to issue their statement. While sympathetic to Nintendo’s business decision, VGHF does not don’t give them s of passes for their efforts that “prevent even libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games”. Whatever Nintendo’s reason for this push toward institutional inaccessibility, the VGHF continued to judge it,
actively destroying video game history.
Our statement on the closure of Nintendo’s legacy digital stores. pic.twitter.com/mG5GzuGH4G
— Video Game History Foundation (@GameHistoryOrg) February 17, 2022
Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi even tweeted his own personal statement. Cifaldi, a former game developer and producer, went beyond Nintendo and tackled commercialism and government as a whole. our struggle to preserve video game history.
The commercial industry will never offer full support for catalog games, and our own federal government makes it nearly impossible for even libraries to help with access. No one will save video game history but all of us, and that will never change.
— Frank Cifaldi (unlicensed).nes (@frankcifaldi) February 16, 2022
To learn more about the foundation’s goals of ensuring that the old is never outsidebut forever in perpetuity, check out their website and a brief video below.
