On April 8th, 2024, Nintendo shut down online services for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
SpotPass was a service used on these systems to distribute data for certain games via the internet. We've undergone a huge effort to archive all known SpotPass data through user-submitted dumps, and it was a massive success. We have since decided to accept more user-submitted dumps, as the SpotPass servers in particular somehow still seem to be online at this time.
In the near future, we plan on publishing an archive of all of the SpotPass data we've been able to grab. More information will be available regarding that when we have more information to share.
Thanks to your help, various network revival services will continue to distribute SpotPass content for many titles, ensuring that features in these titles can be used long after Nintendo has pulled the plug.
In addition to the current dumping initiative, we have more plans for ways to archive old SpotPass data for a few specific games such as the StreetPass Mii Plaza. We hope to have more information to share on that soon.
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, be sure to check out our Discord server!
FAQ
Q. What's going to happen next for the archival project?
A. We plan on moving to archive data for some specific games in the near future. We'll have more news to share about these efforts soon.
Q. Which games have SpotPass data archived?
A. Check the spreadsheets (this one for 3DS, this one for Wii U) to see which games have data archived. Do note that in the Wii U spreadsheet, if a game is 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.