Please help preserve your 3DS and Wii U SpotPass data before it's too late!

Technology@lemmy.world – 500 points – 3 months ago

(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.

Done. I've got a modded 3ds LL and it took maybe five minutes, and no SD card pulling required (which absolutely sucks on the XL/LL). I doubt it's going to be useful because I've only had my 3ds for a few months, but who knows, maybe there's something useful that remained from the previous owner.

Thanks so much. Every bit helps. I noticed only 4 people dumped their 3DS data and 0 people dumped their Wii U data in the past couple of hours, so there's going to be a very small amount of extra dumps by Apr 8th at this rate. I'm gonna continue sharing as much as I can. I was gonna go share on r/technology on Reddit, but saw that one of their rules explicitly forbids posts that are a "call to action". What a stupid rule, why even stipulate that?

Post it to /r/3DS. Maybe /r/gaming as well?

r/3ds is run by nintendo fanboys that ban anyone who even mentions custom firmware.

How tf can you defend such a nefarious company?

They're reddit mods.

r/wiiu mods were good. Pinned my post. r/gaming on the other hand... well. They took it down because it had a singular link to this lemmy post at the bottom which was apparently spam according to the moderator I appealed to in DM's.

By being extra paranoid about their nefarious lawyers, haha

Actually this also sounds believable. XD

You can use it perfectly legally for installing your own physical games to your sd card for instance. Running CFW on the 3DS is objectively better as it has zero downsides once you have set it up. You can be a nintendo fanboy AND use CFW at the same time. I mean at least I think so. I hate nintendo, so I can't say for certain.

It's so strange. I've got 120 upvotes on just this one Lemmy post, yet the most likes I have on any of my Reddit reposts is 14 on r/technology, followed by 9 on r/nintendo, and the other 3 subreddits I've shared on have no upvotes at all. I would have thought Reddit, being so much more popular than Lemmy, would get way more upvotes. I've certainly gotten a fair few thousand views already on Reddit, yet so little upvotes. I just find this strange.

Try /r/datahoarders too and some people posting about Nintendo stuff

hop up to r/datahoarders. im sure those guys will welcome you.

I'll go post there now. Thanks.

good shit, used to browse that sub back when i used reddit more regularly. A really common occurrence there is communal archive posts.

Thanks for the suggestion. My post over there currently has 48 upvotes and had at least one person comment they've uploaded their data; a few others said they will do it "soon" or "tomorrow"

I noticed only 4 people dumped their 3DS data and 0 people dumped their Wii U data in the past couple of hours, so there’s going to be a very small amount of extra dumps by Apr 8th at this rate.

This post and the cross-posted ones along with new people waking up in other time zones sure helped to boost those numbers a bit.

I posted it to bluesky, it got a few reposts in nerd circles, hope it helped

Thanks a lot for that! Why didn't I even think of doing this?

Just submitted one from a N3DS.

Contact the mods.

I’ve done it on my WiiU/3DSes as well. I’ll message my friend with a 3DS to do it later tonight as well.

Is there anything else I/others can do to help with preservation on my/their systems before the Nintendo network goes down?

Thanks for asking. I asked on the Discord server, and I was told that the Pretendo Network devs are also asking for network dumps for games that have online multiplayer support, and that you can find out about it on their website. I haven't found where on the site he was talking about yet, but I'm going to look further into it tomorrow to see if I can get any of mine dumped.

Uploaded my 3DS XL data. Was easy as pie with my modded 3ds.

I'll see if I can connect my WiiU tomorrow.

Thanks for the heads up!

No worries, glad I could reach you!

Used to play my 3DS a lot during its heyday so I’d love to contribute, but my 3DS uses a standard SD card and none of my computers have an SD card reader. Is there a good way to get the data off it without one?

I just donated mine and there doesn't seem to be one. Try to go to a computer store, SD card adapters aren't very expensive these days. P.S. I just remembered it uploads automatically if you're connected to the internet

Actually, I was able to dig up an old laptop that as an SD reader in it. I don’t know if I have a spare blank SD lying around, though- can I use my 3DS’s native SD card without losing the data stored on it?

Yes, all it does is create a directory with the data and then upload it to the internet - all from the 3ds

Do keep in mind I have cfw 3ds, without it I don't know if you still have a solution

Yeah my 3DS is unmodded. I may look to see if I have an SD card lying around somewhere at my home when I have a chance

First of all, it's incredibly easy to mod it, and it's something that, since the shop shut down, is necessary to have new experiences on it. Here's a link to the site I used to mod my new Nintendo 2ds.

https://3ds.hacks.guide/get-started.html

There's a homebrew app called ftpd that you could use, but it only works on a hacked system and that requires an SD card reader to initially setup.

What does this data do? Looks like a decent cause otherwise. Submit to /piracy also?

🤔 Might be stupid question but what is spotPass why do we need to preserve the data?

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.

This isn't correct, you're getting confused between StreetPass and SpotPass. Yes, SpotPass is a wireless tech, but it has nothing to do with connecting to other 3DS's or Wii U's (and the Wii U did not have StreetPass; only SpotPass). A StreetPass-like feature would be pointless on a Wii U because you couldn't take it out of the house without it losing range from the console. The 3DS on the other hand, had both features. So yes, the SpotPass did provide you with "DLC's", but it did not have the same features as StreetPass.

Also, the users' profile and their favourite game was shown in the friends list, which was not a part of SpotPass. I can't remember for sure if you needed a Nintendo Network account for adding friends, but I do know that you can add friends offline through the local network, but this does not use the SpotPass network, as the SpotPass network requires internet (and most games which had SpotPass warned you of this prior to activation).

The local wireless connection used in the friends list is the same connection used in local multiplayer games, the same as how it works on the Nintendo Switch.

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.

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.

based on memory, so a little vague, but examples - access to various merchants in Bravely Default required you to have passed others. i remember this because i was sick with flu and spent a couple days with my 3ds and my daughter's running/"passing" each other repeatedly so i could unlock everything.

to the best of my memory, some turn-based rpg's (Persona? SMT? Etrian Odyssey?) would allow you to access customized personas/demons/teams? others had made available. like maybe someone had a really great high level persona (basically a pokemon) with a really great selection of skills on it and you could use it instead of trying to build the same thing yourself, before you might have normally had access to it.

so the latter type thing was cool and fun, but i didn't get many of those. the first example is a situation where the game doesn't really fully work without spotpass.

edit - you could visit houses of people you had passed in animal crossing and buy their stuff, too. so you could see how other people decorated and access furniture you might not have access to yet (seasonal, Gracie).

Certain WiiU and 3DS games have a link with Miiverse, Nintendo's Twitter before it closed 2017, you could post... posts from the game your playing when you beat a specific level or complete an achivement. You could also see and interact with other peoples posts ingame, in Super Mario 3D World for example you would see other players avatars on the world map, see their Miiverse posts and interact with them. It merged ingame worlds with Miiverse extremely well, making it feel like you were part of a tight not community Good Vibes Gaming did a very good video about Pretendo as a whole good watch if your interested

ok never used that feature in anything on my 3ds

I think you're getting confused between the Nintendo Network and SpotPass. Miiverse didn't use SpotPass at all (except for notifications; which were also a function of SpotPass). Miiverse used the Nintendo Network, which as you know, the Nintendo Network was recreated into the Pretendo Network; but this has nothing to do with SpotPass, which is a separate service altogether.

Just done my 3ds that I'd recently installed CFW on, funnily with the intention of hooking it up to the pretendo network.

For anyone hesitant, it was a less than 5 minute job.

Just got it done! Thanks for spreading the word!

Damn, I've disposed of my 3DS battery because it started to fail (and I don't play on it anymore anyways) and THIS is how I find out you can't turn the damn thing on without a battery? Well, I can at least get the ol' WiiU out and do it on there.

Just finished! Thanks for the tip!

I have multiple 3DS and a WiiU, will try to remember to do this tomorrow!

Hey, just checking in and seeing if you remembered to make your dump yesterday? Just in case you forgot.

I appreciate that! I dumped my 3 3DS. The application made it super easy.

~~However my WiiU hadn't been on in forever and forced an update that killed homebrew. We'll get there, I just haven't had the time to deal with it yet.~~

And my WiiU as well!

I'll definitely look into this tonight. Affordable Space Adventures was fantastic and deserves to be remembered, but I've never seen another soul mention it.

Don't mean to bug you, but did you end up getting it done? Just wanting to check in.

Hmm, not sure I'm going to be able to do it. I don't have an SD card reader on my computer anymore... I do have an old ebook that could read it, but it might be a hassle getting everything shuffled around. Plus I need to figure out Python. Might have time for it tomorrow.
EDIT: This is a monumental hassle... my laptop can't properly run the script it seems, CMD just auto-closes after trying to initialize the SD card, so I'm seeing if I can compress, upload to google drive, run it on my main computer, send back, then overwrite the SD card
EDIT2: It looks like I did the injection correctly, but the 2DS is stuck on a loading screen in the Extra Data Management page; the tutorial says "Follow the directions shown on the bottom screen." :/

I used the modded method so I'm not sure I can help you personally, but the people over at Discord will be very willing to help. Here is an invite to the Discord https://discord.gg/bVpaR9EY so you can get help; I'm sure they can help you. Otherwise, there is another method listed on the site that doesn't involve Python, but it only works on the New 3DS or New 2DS though. I don't know if the method is any more or less difficult, though.

Ok, I went out and got an SD card reader (I needed one anyway for my dash cam). Less swapping seemed to do the job, got both my 2DS dump uploaded! Also just finished up with the WiiU spotpass dump :D

I appreciate you've gone to this much effort. Thankyou. I'm so sorry if this affects you. Because your message is 13 hrs ago, I will assume that you weren't affected by this, so you likely don't have to worry:

There was an announcement on the Discord by the maintainer of the server which the entire archive is stored on. He announced that he'd accidentally not noticed that the server storage-space had run out, from all the dumps being made. This means that for at least 4 hrs, all dumps made by contributors were not being received, even though they thought they had been. Here's the screenshot of the post.

So the servers were first overfilled starting April 6, 12PM Pacific Daylight Time (PDT); and was fixed by the server maintainer at 4:08PM (PDT). However, all he knows is that the full amount of time the server was having this issue was "at least a 4 hrs", so it could have started some hrs prior to 12PM; it could have even been the entire day for all he knows. I know this is annoying. I'm not officially a part of this project, I'm just spreading the word, but I'm still sorry for you if this affects you. If you think you made your dump within this time period, you will need to make the dump again. Otherwise, if you made the dump prior, but on the same day, it might be worth re-dumping, because your original dump may have not actually properly uploaded due to this mistake on the server-owners part.

Yeah actually I saw that discord message not two minutes after I submitted my 3ds data haha. Luckily I kept a copy of it, so it was easy to resubmit. Then resubmit again about an hour later~

I am doing my part 🫡!

I lost my 3DS last week 😭

How dare you. jk.

But please try find it if you can, I hope you can.

I'm really heartbroken about it. All my games and saves... And it was in perfect condition too.

I know how you feel. I understand because I lost my game case back in 2016 which contained ALL of my 3DS and DS games in it (plus my wallet); it was possibly stolen. Lost all my games and saves too

My Mii's in Tomodatchi Life probably starved to death, rip.

damn, guess i have a late night project today, and possibly tomorrow.

Don't worry. There's heaps of testimony in these comments that it only took them a matter of minutes.

i already got mine done, i've got siblings and several consoles. It'll be a little bit of work.

Thanks a lot for the help!

got one of my siblings 3ds done, got a wii u down. I'm probably one of about 3, total on that one, so that's cool.

Glad to finally be able to get around to doing one of these nintendo archives.

Well no WiiU here, but I've got an N3DS upstairs somewhere. Maybe a regular 3DS too if I ever got it back.

Will do what I can later today!

Hey, you looked further into getting it done yet? I've had a lot of "I'll do it later" posts, so just checking in on some people.

Had to find the cable to charge it, so it only got power last night. So on the list for after work today.

Hey, even though I'm not officially part of this project, I'm sorry to say that at least for the period of April 6, at 12PM to 4PM PDT (Pacific Daylight Time), the maintainer of the server mistakenly didn't see that the server had run out of storage space. This means that any dumps made by anyone within this time period didn't actually get archived in the end. The exact amount of time is unknown. This 4 hr period is just the least amount of time the server was down for, so for all he knows, it could have been for the entire day of April 6th up until 4PM in the afternoon (PDT). Again, even though this wasn't because of me, I'm sorry about this. If you can, could you please make the dump one last time if possible? As the archive servers are now working correctly again. Screenshot of the Discord announcement

Will try and do again later, yeah

Thanks. Sorry for the hassle.

Awesome, thanks a lot!

My 3Ds has never been played, I assume there's nothing I can contribute here?

Edit: Ignore this comment, what I said is completely wrong. I'm sorry if I inconvenienced anyone and wasted your time dumping a console with nothing on it.

Probably not. Unless you bought it second-hand? Apparently the data still remains on the system even if it's reset, so if you bought your console pre-owned, or was given it by a friend, there may still be a large amount of data still there in the background.

Ooh, I factory reset a used one I bought pretty recently... I might as well give it a shot then

Please forgive me. That information was wrong, the data does not stay after factory resetting. I'm editing my comment to clarify this.

Oh man, that's too bad... The O3DS I grew up with is bricked and inoperable too...

Thanks. I'll do it later

Hey. Gotten around to it yet? Just checking in with a few of the "I'll do it later posts".

Ok. I already dumped it and my data was uploaded :p

Thanks for this thread XOXO

No worries. Thanks so much for uploading it. Glad I reached so many people before the time.

Nope lol. I will put it as a reminder so I don't forget about it later.

Pretendo, yay!

I wish I still had my 3DS with me. Sadge.

Thanks for the post. I will try to do it on Saturday

Will the replacement services be proprietary or open source/free software?

Pretendo is open source.

Would love to contribute, but I won't have access to my 3DSes until around the 22nd.

Also would love to try and know why the data can't be sent after the deadline (it's just data, should not be "time-encoded") but unfortunately the link to the image with the explanation says the image can't be loaded because it has errors. Does anyone have the actual text explanation?

Huh. Thanks for letting me know that. I've had quite a few people ask me this question and I've linked them the same image again but didn't know people were having trouble loading it. Well, the image is a Discord message in the server which reads:

"-obligatory not a dev team member- It is dumpable after the 8th, however, the data this project uses is not the dumped data of the spotpass, but rather the url that leads to the source of the SpotPass (i.e. nintendo or 3rd party servers that distributed spotpass data). You can dump the data still, however, the servers will be gone after April 8th, and as such, submitting the dump would indeed be useless after April 8th.

The data submitted carries a very slim chance, (~10) of actually including sensitive information, however this is due to a system level flaw of the system itself. (Nintendo messed up while coding) It includes a bit of data which is whatever the nand was processing at the time of the dump. Most of the time this is garbage data, and nothing private. The dev team automatically anonymises all the data however, and it is not recommended to ever share your dump data outside of the dev team. (Without previous discussion at least.)

To summarise, the date is when the servers shut down, the url of which is what we are extracting from the spotpass dumps, the team is then accessing those servers to get all the spotpass data they can from there. There is a sub 10% chance of the dump containing any personal info, and as such the dev ream anonymises any and all dumps that are submitted.

Hope that helps, I’ll link a message with a more in depth explanation if necessary."

Also, let me know if the link works now. I accidentally shared a private link, so it should work now. Let me know, thanks.

The data on your console is just a url address that points at a Nintendo server. That server is going offline. So if we don’t get the url before it goes offline, we can’t download the url.

I'll have to dig out my 3dsxl this weekend. Still packed up from moving a few years ago.

Bet it still has a charge on it, lol

Thanks a lot! Don't forget about the time-zone information so you don't miss it. April 8 at 4PM PDT (Pacific Daylight Time)

Have a 3DS and a 2DS both of which I'll make sure to do this with. Sent your post to two of my friends who also own 3DS systems to spread the word. Thanks for putting this out there!

Edit: Takes less than 5 minutes lol

Already done 👍🏻

Pretty easy to do with a hacked DS.

Actually, I have other two 3DS hacked, but I have barely used them (the one I backed up was my main) I wonder if they have any usable data...

Worth a dump, I think. I dumped my modded secondary console which is an OG 2DS which I also hardly ever use, just in case there was something there.

Uploaded my data 🫡

I doubt my 3ds had much, but I went and completed it. Super easy to do on CFW!

Thanks for that. Edit: Sorry, just found out I was wrong about notifications in the paragraph below. They technically are sent through SpotPass, but the process of archiving them, while theoretically possible, is a bit more complicated, and there isn't enough time left to start developing a method now.

I don't know this for sure, but I think that your news notifications are archived as well, as I'm pretty sure they were all received through SpotPass; so while that's not exactly game content, it's still something else.