As you may know, Nintendo has announced that online services for the Nintendo 3DS, 2DS and Wii U family of systems are shutting down in April.
All online communication services, including the distribution of SpotPass data will be discontinued on April 8th, 2024, at 4pm PDT. As a result, features using SpotPass in many titles will stop working once this change has taken effect.
3DS/2DS and Wii U systems store a local database of titles for which you have recently received SpotPass data. This database can be used to check for the urls it uses to download the SpotPass content.
By dumping this database from your system(s), you can help various network revival services in preserving SpotPass content, ensuring that SpotPass features in these titles can be used long after Nintendo has pulled the plug on the service. Database dumps are anonymized when collected. Dumps are sent to network revival services to allow SpotPass features to be replicated later.
In the interest of promoting a fair and open ecosystem, this project is not owned by any one network revival service.
Popular 3DS titles using SpotPass features include:
- StreetPass Mii Plaza: SpotPass was used to distribute special Miis (often of Nintendo employees) and puzzle pieces for the Puzzle Swap minigame. Without SpotPass, Puzzle Swap would normally not receive new puzzles.
- Mario Kart 7: SpotPass was used to receive ghost data from other players and Nintendo.
- Pokémon games: SpotPass was used to distribute special Pokémon during events.
- New Super Mario Bros. 2: SpotPass was used to receive a certain system message allowing the installation of DLC.
- Tomodachi Life: SpotPass was used to distribute special outfits and send messages to other islands.
- Swapnote and Swapdoodle: SpotPass was used for sending and receiving notes (including notes from Nintendo).
Total number of 3DS dumps:
Total number of Wii U dumps:
The way you dump the database depends on your system firmware version and whether or not you have CFW (custom firmware) installed.
Choose a guide matching your system:
Nintendo 2DS/3DS
- Modded systems (CFW) - Any firmware version
- Unmodded systems (no CFW) - Version 11.15.0 and above (NEW 3DS/2DS only)
- Unmodded systems (no CFW) - Version 11.4.0 and above
- Unmodded systems (no CFW) - Version 11.3.0 and below
- Any systems - NAND Dump (advanced users only)
Wii U
Join our Discord!
If you want to learn more about the progress of the SpotPass archival project or need assistance with getting SpotPass data dumped from your system, be sure to check out our Discord server!
FAQ
Q. Apart from dumping my system's SpotPass data, what else can I do to help?
A. Spread the word everywhere. We only have until April 8th to archive as much as we can, so make sure that people understand the urgency of the situation.
Q. Which games have SpotPass data archived?
A. Check the spreadsheets (this one for 3DS, this one for Wii U) to see which games currently have data archived. Do note that if a game is present or marked as "complete", that does NOT mean that all data for that game has been collected. Rather, it means that some data for the game has been collected and it may or may not actually be complete.
Q. How do I make sure that [game] has its SpotPass data archived?
A. Reach out to others who have played that game, as many as possible for a greater chance of yielding new data, and tell them about the archival project and how they can get their data preserved. There's a lot of games (especially niche games) that don't have SpotPass data archived yet, so it's very important for game communities to know about this in order to ensure that SpotPass data for their game(s) is preserved before it's too late. If you have any more specific questions about this, reach out to us on Discord.