It’s 9:30pm on Sunday, April 7th. In 20 hours and 30 minutes, support will be pulled for Nintendo’s 3DS and WiiU online services. I’m feeling retrospective, as I feel anyone ends up becoming when they hear an era is ending. Let’s talk a bit about Nintendo’s 8th generation consoles.
The 3DS was released on February 26th, 2011, as the follow up to Nintendo’s hands down revolutionary moneymaker, the DS/DSi. As a successor it did its job flawlessly; as someone who’s first handheld was the 25th anniversary DSi XL, it felt like a natural progression into a better, feature packed, superior game’d console. Its games were diverse, with that perfect Nintendo innovative charm they tend to bring to the table. The 3ds isn’t perfect, by any means, but man, was it fucking awesome. The 3d screen gimmick, while useless in the long run, was the immediate attention grabber, and you stayed attentive for titles such as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Pokemon X/Y, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, or any of the millions of games that little pocket shaped console had to offer right on its own shop.
The WiiU on the other hand; a console that stuck with what worked: the motions of the well known Wii, and the handheld success of the DS. Surely nothing could go wrong?!
About 65 million CAD lost later, apparently merging two rights doesn’t make another right. Go figure.
Still, the WiiU wasn’t a complete garbage pile by any means. Though a failure, those who gave the WiiU its fair shot sure weren’t disappointed. Harboring the big boys of Splatoon, Super Mario 3D World, Super Mario Maker, Mario Kart 8, and being the original target to home Breath of the Goddamned Wild, the WiiU still had a depth that any Atari console from 1983 and onward WISHED they could reach.
If it isn’t horribly evident yet. I love early 2010’s era Nintendo. Though not the one I particularly “grew up” with (that award goes to gen 7 consoles, of course,) I love the WiiU and 3DS to death, and many, many other people do as well. When compared objectively to what we have today, the WiiU’s specs sucked, the 3DS is pixelated and barely achieved the quality that’s in its literal name, and this was the least profitable time for Nintendo. But still, my love for these consoles doesn’t waver.
I got my 3DS XL on Christmas of 2013. Generally when your family is lower class you get the one big gift of the day along with a bunch of other forgettables (mostly because you’re so enamored by the Big Gift.) I fell in love with the 3DS the second its screen lit up. An intuitive and decorative UI I’d never seen up until that point. My first game was Rune Factory 4, and in the first few moments there was a SWEAR (read: “dumbass.) Being the weirdo I was, I pointed out to my dad that he had bought me a game that had the word ass in it, and he just kind of shrugged and said I was old enough. Though I never played a COD game until I was in my 20s, I can only imagine the unlimited power and maturity this console brought me was the same power trip 12 year olds feel when they hear “fuck you” in the openings of COD: Black Ops 1.
My 3DS and I continued to be best friends. I had a literal Ipad at the time and I prioritized the little pink gaming folder over a literal Apple Ipad, which for kids today, is a little wild. My 3DS was my first foray into digital art when I bought Colors!3D for 8 dollars. I took it on trips, and my current Streetpass plaza count is 568. I begged, begged, beggggged my mom to buy my brother a 3ds for his birthday, and mildly suggested my stepmom get one for her son too. When they eventually got them, I spent my life savings (I was 10) on a copy of Triforce Heroes for them. 3DS multiplayer is an experience unmatched. No more smacking eachother with Wiimotes in the living room, we could actually sit back, relax, have our own personal bubble, and yell and shriek over Mariokart 7. I continue to think to this day how Triforce Heroes was practically perfectly crafted for our group of 3.
And the WiiU eventually followed installment at my mom’s house. My brother and I would spend hours making eachother obstacle courses on Mario Maker for the other to struggle through. When a splatfest went live I spend every hour after school on there. Dearly loved despite its flaws, it became our home console. I played my first run of 100% completed BOTW on there. I still play it today.
Eventually these consoles faded from their prominence in my life. They found their ways on shelves, never to be touched for a long, long time. It’s for this reason I almost feel guilty for feeling sad at the online services being shut down—I don’t even use them in the first place. So why do I feel profoundly lost, when I think about the fact that my 3DS will never streetpass another?
It feels as if the more generations pass from 2010, we stray further from a time where consoles were fun. When consoles were crafted by passionate people, ones who placed every ui element just how they liked, who implemented features that were technically useless, but they enhanced so much more. The devs who stood up at meetings and proposed a feature to make 3DS’s handshake whenever they physically passed. The ones who drew every little badge for that badge arcade. The composers who made the perfect little click when you select an application. In the 3ds’ run, there have been about 75 themes in its 12 year run. The Switch after 7 years only has two.
I miss the time when consoles had passion. When it felt like the little details mattered to someone. Whether it be because nobody has passion anymore, or because companies are suppressing it, it doesn’t matter, because you can’t see it anymore. The future seems bleak for the console industry. And with the death of generation 8, it means we’ve finally left it all behind.
But the reality is, Nintendo’s left it all behind. The community has other ideas.
Pretendo is an open source Nintendo Network replacement, created by the fans, for the fans. When it was revealed Hyinx NAND’s were faulty last year, people hand soldered their own solutions where Nintendo didn’t care. Despite official support being pulled, people still are passionate about these consoles. They care, because even though none of it objectively matters anymore, our love for these consoles still doesn’t waver. We recognize the ones who put their heart into every Aero gradient on the WiiU, to those who composed the themes of the 3DS, and we’ll keep it going.
So to generation 8 Nintendo; I’ll wave goodbye in my rearview mirror and hope the road ahead isn’t as bland, plastic and grey as it seems to be. But to what you’ve left behind, I’ll hold it in my heart all the same.