It is once again a dark day for gaming.
Nintendo’s last bastion of online gaming, the
WiiU and 3DS, has now been shut down like the Wii and DS before it.
The only thing keeping Nintendo in people’s
good graces is no more and this time there’s no excuse like the shenanigans
with Gamespy that I’m aware of.
The online play is the main reason I got a WiiU in the first
place.
I was considering getting a
Switch and all Nintendo had to do was not fuck up the online play like Sony did
with the PS4 and Microsoft did with the 360 and Xbox One.
Needless to say, the Switch did exactly that
and ended up being a piece of crap with no online play, obviously not counting
scams.
The WiiU and 3DS was where it was
at.
As long as Nintendo still had their
good systems with actual online play, they could still claim to be the best
console manufacturer.
You can imagine my
heartbreak and outrage at the announcement that they were taking that away for
no other reason than “fuck you give me money.”
I was already preparing for this day of doom and dread long before
it came, regularly playing Splatoon, Monster Hunter and Mario Maker, but this
weekend and the day of reckoning, to say goodbye to the online play I love so
much, the last gasp of Nintendo’s dignity and the days in which they weren’t a
garbage company, I played online 3DS and WiiU games constantly from morning to
night. It was an absolute marathon. I was playing online Wii U and 3DS games like
WorldofTshirts drinks alcohol. The only
times I wasn’t playing a 3DS or WiiU game online was when I was eating,
sleeping, stretching and watching the lunar eclipse, which was an amazing sight
to behold that I may never see again.
I said goodbye to the Badge Bunny, who was heartbreakingly
blissfully unaware of what was to come, I exchanged pictures online in Dragon
Quest 8 a few times for old times sake and I played tons and tons of more
involved online features.
I played Super Mario Maker.
I downloaded all the best courses I came across, downloaded a few from
the same creators for good measure, downloaded all the event courses, got every
easy difficulty mystery mushroom, tried to beat the expert difficulty, failed
and got the last of the event mystery mushrooms (turns out you had to beat the
Hello Kitty one twice).
I played Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D. Believe it or not there were still players
online I got to play a few rounds with.
We struggled and lost a few times, but dominated it other times.
I played Senran Kagura 2.
It was hard enough finding players even when the game was newer and now
that assholes online sell copies for upwards of 100 dollars there’s next to no
chance I was finding anyone by waiting, so I found someone online who would
play with me. It’s still a lot of fun
fighting enemies and bosses with others and seeing what costumes the other
player comes up with (even if this one wasn’t doing that much). I doubt the game will ever get a re-release
and I’m extremely thankful to that player for letting me experience the online
play of my favorite 3DS game one last time.
I played Super Street Fighter 4 3D. There were still a few players online playing
at a ridiculously high level and probably abusing the infamous touch controls. I appreciate their dedication to this
unorthodox version of the game, but I ended up going a few rounds with someone
I met playing Monster Hunter. He was not
playing at a high level. Sure I have it
on PC now with my trusty arcade stick, but the 3D experience is something
unique I’m thankful I could enjoy with another person one last time.
I played Xenoblade Chronicles X. I finally got to join a couple of squad
missions with some other players, something I could never quite figure out how
to do before (the game isn’t always clear).
I’m happy I was able to experience it at least once. I also played regularly while connected
online just so the rewards tickets, which make the game a little easier, would
stock up to my maximum for when I play again offline. Barring one difficult objective that will max
them out again, I will never be able to get those rewards tickets again.
I played Mario Kart 7 and 8.
Some of the cutthroat players online just aren’t the same as playing
against a computer and there’s a sense of community fun when so many people are
playing together. Mario Kart may never
have that again now. Online play added a
whole new dimension to the racing.
The big ones I played though are the ones with the biggest
number of players: Splatoon, Monster Hunter 3 and 4 Ultimate. Hour after hour of Splatoon and the Monster
Hunter games, both of which had players possibly in the hundreds.
Splatoon was a ton of fun and I was able to keep trying out
new weapons and outfits, playing against different players on different maps
and once I reached level 10 I could play different modes and it was never
difficult finding players for it. I was
going to play it until the servers went down, but that ended up being far later
than I expected and the ranked matches, for some baffling reason, kept ending
less than a minute after starting, which I suspect was the work of hackers
knowing that it doesn’t matter if they get banned now. Way to ruin the last day of glory, assholes.
Monster Hunter 3 and 4 Ultimate was full of meeting new people to
play with, having tons of fun fighting a wide variety of different monsters
with a wide variety of different equipment and wide variety of different player
skill levels. It helps a lot that the
max level gigachads can practically carry missions for you while you thank them
profusely. There’s nothing quite as special
as chatting it up with other chums alongside emotes or seeing someone trap a
monster then 4 players all demolishing it with giant swords twice their size.
Online Monster Hunter helped me to get a lot of material and
money I can use for the single player game.
So that I never forget the friends I made playing the game, I made sure
to exchange guild cards, with mine having my Steam username for anyone who
wants to contact me on something that’s still online. Players of whom you have guild cards will appear
in your plazas even offline, forever immortalizing the fellow players I met
over this last year of playing and especially the many people I met during this
weekend’s big online play extravaganza.
It all ended when I was playing with another Monster Hunter
in 4 Ultimate I kept running into and we were determined to play until we were
forcibly disconnected. We kept going for
a good couple hours after the servers were supposed to go down while one of us
relayed the games that were being taken down, but I eventually realized was
that a forced disconnect wouldn’t happen and instead the game would simply not
let us reconnect. One of my fellow
hunters was in Britain
where it was 2 a.m., the poor guy. We
played a ton, hunted a shit ton of monsters, got a lot of loot, but we said our
goodbyes and I eventually, tearfully left.
With that, Nintendo online ended forever.
Then it started raining outside.
For all the people I may have played with all these years,
I’m happy to have played with you. Just
being there to play with made the game a more fun experience. This excludes hackers. They can go to hell.
Now Mario Maker is practically useless, save for the many
different courses I saved, Splatoon is even more useless because the main game
mode is gone, never to be played ever again, the social hunting that defines
Monster Hunter now only lets you play locally (though to be fair I have seen
such local groups, but that’s still majorly limiting) and the great many
benefits that made Xenoblade Chronicles X more lenient with its grinding is no
longer there, making the worst parts of the game more of a chore.
Now there is no online play for Nintendo systems, making Sony the best console manufacturer thanks to the PS3 and Vita. All you can connect to the internet with on a Nintendo product is
the Switch and if you try to do practically anything online other than go to
the eshop you get a message that says “fuck you give me money.”
No, Nintendo. Fuck
you.
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