cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/28549378

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 at 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. This archival project can only be made possible by the donations of any individuals owning a 3DS and 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.

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.

Update: Just adding this in because someone in the comments asked why SpotPass preservation is important. SpotPass sent you various pieces of content that were exclusive and often time-limited offers; so in a sense, you could call a lot of this SpotPass data we are archiving "Free DLC's". Does that help anyone understand the importance of this better?

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 do not 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.