Not All Games Go to Heaven

Ariane de Gennaro The Nintendo 3DS — one of the most popular and beloved gaming consoles of the past decade — is dying. As of March 27th, 2023, the Nintendo 3DS eShop (a digital storefront for the system) has closed its doors permanently, ushering in the stage in a gaming console’s life cycle that signals its incoming obsolescence.

This is not surprising given the process a console goes through as it ages and is eventually replaced, but the death throes of the 3DS come at a time when video games and game consoles are transitioning into a digital-only atmosphere. In this new stage of video games, digital storefronts present consumers with an easy way to purchase everything from triple A titles to indie gems. Yet, the slow death of the 3DS has once again reignited the ultimate question pertaining to digital gaming, namely: where do the games go when the console dies?

What happens to a digital library when a console has reached the end of its product life cycle? The answer is one that underscores the need for video game preservation and the hurdles that consumers face when trying to preserve their games against the onslaught of the years.  In short, the answer is that when consoles die, so do their digital libraries.

The closure of the Nintendo DSi shop and the Wii Shop Channel — the predecessors to the 3DS and WiiU eShops — provides consumers with clues for what Nintendo’s process for putting aging consoles out to pasture looks like. This process is new thanks to the transition into launching console-specific digital storefronts like the Playstation Store or Nintendo’s various iterations of the eShop, but it plays out in similar ways across aging consoles. As with the Nintendo DS, the 3DS first lost the ability to use credit cards and gift cards in the eShop application on the system, forcing users to jump through hoops to add funds to their systems.

Up until Nintendo ended the ability to make purchases on the 3DS, players had to add funds using a computer or the 3DS’s successor, the Nintendo Switch. And while Nintendo has not yet announced when the 3DS will lose internet functionality, one can assume that given how the DSi was abandoned that the 3DS will inevitably meet the same fate. Losing internet functionality, or the ability to play online with others, is the final moment before a game console ascends to the big video game store in the sky — but it hardly does the same amount of damage that the closure of its digital storefront does.

The 3DS has an immense library of games thanks to its backward compatibility with the Nintendo DS, allowing players to treat the 3DS — as Nintendo did in 2011 — not as a new console, but rather as an upgraded DS. To play 3DS exclusives would not require one to sacrifice their DS game library. The 3DS library was made even more expansive because of its digital storefront, where developers like Level 5 or Game Freak could release digital exclusive content that now, thanks to the eShop’s closure, are inaccessible.

The issue with the closure of the eShop and other video game digital storefronts is not that it pushes players to buy newer consoles, but rather that it complicates efforts to preserve one’s games and video game history at large. The concept of video game preservation was easy enough to understand when video games came in the form of cartridges and disks. To preserve an old console’s library would simply entail preserving a collection of physical media.

Now, as consoles like the 3DS, Wii, and Playstation 3 — which helped to launch an era of digital gaming libraries — lose internet functionality and developer support, the question of preservation has become a question of survival. In Nintendo’s case, the closure of the 3DS eShop has allowed hundreds of digital exclusive games to disappear forever, or at least until Nintendo decides to bring them to newer consoles, which may very well never happen. Even so, Nintendo has left consumers with no official means to preserve their digital purchases.

For the Nintendo 3DS, eShop downloads are tied to a Nintendo account connected to a player’s system and saved to their SD card. Hypothetically, one could simply back up their digital games by preserving their SD card data on a computer, but this does not work for the 3DS. The files are console-exclusive, which means that only the system where the game was bought could gain access to the files.

To move games to a new system would require one to transfer their account information to a new system. This seems like a simple obstacle to overcome, but now that the 3DS is no longer being manufactured and will inevitably lose Nintendo’s support, players’ collections can be threatened if anything happens to their console — causing them to lose their games forever. Some players have prepared themselves for something like this by hacking their systems to preserve their games, but it should not have to be this way.

Nintendo’s convoluted, and frankly anti-consumer, process of digital game preservation is perhaps the biggest hurdle video game preservationists and everyday players must face now that the 3DS has reached the end of the line. Closing the 3DS eShop while providing consumers with no official means to preserve their digital games without relying on an aging console’s ability to not break any time soon is like if Nintendo set fire to a library and locked all the exits save for one. Consumers then had to scramble to save what they could.

It is not fair to consumers and it does not respect the place the 3DS has in history. It is one of Nintendo’s best-selling consoles of all time and is an icon of the 2010s. To see it go out this way, with the hollowing-out of its game library, is disappointing.

Yet, no one expected the 3DS to get this far when it first released in 2011. It was treated like a fluke, a gimmicky system with a 3D gimmick that did not catch anyone’s attention. It was its gaming library that saved it and let it become loved by its players for almost twelve years.

The Nintendo 3DS, against all odds, has lived a long and spectacular life. Its inevitable death, however, raises concerns for how video game history is preserved and treated. Physical games, with their cartridges and disks will continue to be enjoyed for years to come.

Digital games on the other hand will be left to the mercy of corporate decision-makers, unless people decide to emulate the games or preserve them in some other way. The fact of the matter is that when video game consoles die, not all games go to heaven. Some of them are lost to time, unless consumers and preservationists are given the official means to save and enjoy the games as they are intended to be played and saved.

The 3DS — the system that was once laughed at — now enjoys a spot in history after a surprisingly long life of defying expectations.

And what a life it was.

JESSAI FLORES