I'll miss you Nintendo Wi-Fi

I've been a Nintendo gamer for over a decade.  Though I've definitely invested in other consoles like the PS2 and Xbox 360, Nintendo's systems have always taken my priority.  After they established Nintendo Wi-Fi for online play, they soon also became my go-to company for multiplayer, since I don't have a PS3, my computer isn't very strong, and there's no way in hell I'm paying Microsoft's ransom just to play online.

I played online Nintendo games of all kinds and have always loved the sense of community and competition online play allowed as all my friends moved away.  When I got Modern Warfare 3 for the 360, I traded it in for the Wii version (and used the extra money to get Okamiden), I played Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship 2010 and Jump Ultimate Stars religiously, and whenever I wanted a little multiplayer fun in my lonely house/apartment, my Wii and DS always suited it.  Even without free communication, there was a special connection you could feel between how you and the other players played.  It was wonderful.

And now... We fight.

Almost all of that came to an end yesterday.



When I heard that Nintendo Wi-Fi was going offline, I was devastated.  It was too soon.  I played online all the time, but not enough to get everything multiplayer many games had to offer.  For the Call of Duty games, the multiplayer is half the game's content!  It was almost like a separate game on the disc!  There'd be barely anything without it, and I expect the value of the Wii version's copies to drastically drop.

I felt like Ninendo Wi-Fi was my slowly-dying friend.  I couldn't leave its life or my experience unfulfilled.  As the date grew closer, I played all my online Wii and DS games more and more, with particular attention to the ones with something to gain from playing it, like Call of Duty and The Last Story, in which I collected every single one of the effect dyes you could only get from playing deathmatches.

I played my heart out in preparation, but I couldn't just leave my friend to die alone.  I made sure that the day it finally vanished was a day I would never forget!  Luckily I didn't have work for much of the week, so I used as much time as I could get on the 19th to play play play play play.

I played it all.  I played hours and hours of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Call of Duty, The Last Story, Conduit 2, Jump Ultimate Stars, Yu-Gi-Oh, and even Animal Crossing: City Folk.  For the first and last time, I visited a friend's Animal Crossing town, had them visit mine, and even used the WiiSpeak microphone for this one time in my entire life.  I also tried Nights: Journey of Dreams, but couldn't find anyone, I used my remaining Band Hero space for custom songs and I downloaded the DLC puzzles for Professor Layton and the Diablolical Box.  The only game I left mostly untouched was Super Smash Brothers Brawl.  I saved that for the next day, but for playing a few rounds, I got one last special picture from Nintendo to remember it by.

According to my Wii, I played Modern Warfare 3 for over 2 hours and Conduit 2 and Black Ops for over one, all in multiplayer.

Wolveriiiiiines!

I had thought the servers would go down at 9 a.m. the next day if not midnight, so I set my alarm two hours beforehand, which ended up being unnecessary because I apparently woke up even earlier of my own will.  After a few Black Ops sessions, I played Super Smash Brothers Brawl online for over two and a half hours with only the occasional short break.  At one point I tried to play my last online game of Yu-Gi-Oh at the same time as a Brawl match, but lost on both counts.  I must need more training.

I recorded two Brawl replays: one of what I thought would be my final online battle at 9 and one that actually was.  Both were fairly epic.

I probably should have recorded one of my fights with a hacker stuck in Giga Bowser form.  I expected to find at least one cheater, since there was little Nintendo could do with the online play going, but I actually found the match to be very unusual and fun as a result, especially since we were playing on the 75 M stage.
The way that round ended was especially funny.  In a sudden death between me and Giga Bowser, he stood in place, unmoving, occasionally taunting, and he wouldn't budge even after I'd brought him to 999% damage and hit him with multiple fully-charged smash attacks (with Ganondorf, even) to no avail.  What's more, his gigantic body shielded me for a while from the raining bombs that appear when sudden death goes on for too long.

I think it's very much appropriate to call hax in this case.

I got my ass seriously handed to me by an incredibly skilled Zelda player multiple times toward my last bout.  They were the only person I could find in the end.  We must've been one of the only two people left on the server.  Finally content and defeated, I disconnected at 12:06 p.m., and after attempting to reconnect, I was told the service was discontinued.

Goodbye Brawl. ;_;

After that I tried playing the hell out of every other online game.  I got a number of good matches in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (and not-so-good matches against some cheating jerk named Dante), more Jump Ultimate Stars fights, and Conduit 2.

I was there when Conduit 2 played its last match.  Me and three other players were playing a game of Power Surge on the Pentagon map, when all but two of us suddenly disconnected before I was completely disconnected from Wi-Fi.  When I tried to reconnect, I was given the error message for a discontinued service.  Time of death: 4:52 p.m. (again, Central Time).

Goodbye Conduit 2.  ;_;

With Conduit 2 dying in my arms, I tried checking all the other online games on both the Wii and DS, even the ones I didn't plan on playing.  The only ones that would still connect were the Call of Duty games.  It all came down to them.  I played them until my eyes were bloodshot as one big, long, final firefight.  I had to play as much as I could, because after this, there'd be no co-op modes, no more customization, no more run and gunning friendly competition, no more killstreaks, no more unpredictable situations.  No more nothing but the other half of the game.  In the end, I played for about 3 and a half hours, give or take a few breaks.

Before I went to bed around 1 in the morning, I had one last round in Black Ops' zombie mode, and it was absolutely incredible.  It was a long, bloody war full of shotguns, ray guns, powered-up weapons, teamwork, and windup cymbal monkeys.  We got to wave 20, which considering my personal best at that point was 13, is no small feat by any stretch of the word.  My teammates' names were Mad Mike, Ravens 808, and Zombiebloodcataract.  On the offchance one of you comes across this post, let me say you're the most skilled players I've ever seen and you should visit for Christmas or something.  That or add me on Steam, maybe play Mann vs. Machine in TF2 with me and dominate the hardest missions.


However, my Call of Duty spree turned out to not be as necessary as I thought, because at the time of this writing, the servers for the Wii versions of Black Ops, Modern Warfare 3, and even Goldeneye are all still online.  I may have my fun with them for a while yet, but, likely sometime soon, they will be gone and it will be goodbye.

Goodbye Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Goodbye Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Goodbye established profile.
Goodbye weapons I never got to use.
Goodbye all the people I've met and allied myself with online.
Goodbye chance of hell in getting anywhere in zombie mode.
Goodbye Special Ops.
Goodbye value.

I typed my statistics down after the zombie massacre in case I could never see them again: Level 55 in Modern Warfare 3 (28 for Special Ops) and 37 (after a prestige reset) in Black Ops.  I played MW3 online for a total of one day, five minutes and Black Ops for two days, three hours, 47 minutes.

And all of this drama transpired just because Nintendo couldn't be asked to migrate their servers.


It's not fair.




Now I suppose I should give more multiplayer time to Star Wars Battlefront 2 on the PC before it's gone at the end of the month too. [Update: since the writing of this article, the original Battlefront 2 got new servers to play on.  Yay.]