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 with user-submitted dumps. This effort has now concluded and we are happy to present the results.
A total of about 4 TB of data was gathered prior to the servers fully closing, thanks to tens of thousands of BOSS save dumps uploaded by dump contributors. If you submitted dumps to our project while dump collection was active, you made this project the success that it is and we cannot thank you enough.
We have published an archive of all of the SpotPass data we were able to collect. It can be accessed here.
Thanks to your help, network revival services such as Pretendo will continue to distribute SpotPass content for many titles, ensuring that features in many of these titles can be used long after Nintendo has pulled the plug.
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 collected 3DS dumps: 21,491
Total number of collected Wii U dumps: 8,307
Join our Discord!
If you have any questions about the archived data, be sure to check out our Discord server!
FAQ
Q. Which games have SpotPass data archived?
A. Search No-Intro's Dat-O-Matic to see which 3DS titles had data archived.
Q. How can I get the SpotPass data for (game) on my 3DS?
A. As each 3DS game has its own unique implementation of SpotPass, there is no single way to inject SpotPass data that works for all titles. Ideally, network revival services such as Pretendo will one day distribute SpotPass data from this archive, allowing users to use the data in supported titles. Other than this, there is no straightforward way to get the SpotPass data onto a 3DS.
Q. What about Wii U?
A. Unfortunately, across all of the dumps we received, we were unable to archive data for any Wii U titles.
Q. What's next for the archival project?
A. The archival project has served its purpose and preservation activities have concluded. Our Discord server will remain open to assist people who want to use data from the archive.