The 3DS and Wii U eShop is dead. Nintendo decided to take them offline yesterday, which means you’re able to no longer purchase digital games on either of these consoles. This is a travesty for game preservation, as many of the eShop exclusives do not exist in physical form, and can no longer be accessed anywhere, by anyone, ever again. At least, not legally. Yesterday we mourned the loss of an entire generation of games, but today we have reason to celebrate. If all of these games can no longer be bought, then that means there’s absolutely nothing wrong with downloading them on the internet.
I’m serious, go nuts. There is no reason to hesitate or consider the ethical ramifications of pirating old Nintendo games anymore. If you can’t buy them, and you want to play them, then you have no choice but to steal them, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I don’t even know how you possibly could find a problem with it either. It’s just not even a question anymore. It doesn’t hurt Nintendo. You’re not taking sales away from it, because it refuses to sell them. Are you going to deny yourself the ability to enjoy these games because Nintendo doesn’t offer them? I don’t think the people that made them would like their work to just vanish. If you want to play them, you should.
There are some 3DS and Wii U games that do exist physically, and I suppose you could go find a used physical copy somewhere out there, but unless you’re a collector I don’t see any reason to do this. Nintendo isn’t making a dime on second-hand sales, the developers aren’t impacted in any way, and it’s not like that used copy disappears when you download a digital file. The only ones losing out here are GameStop, and, you know, f*** GameStop.
The more I think about it, you’d actually be foolish not to at this point. Every 3DS game ever made has been ripped by pirates, and while it’s unfortunate that that is our most reliable form of game preservation today, at least someone is doing it. The 3DS is also hilariously simple to hack. Seriously, I could tell you how to do it in a few sentences if I wasn’t terrified of Douglas Bowser and his army of lawyers. Google it, you can do it in like ten minutes.
