Today, April 8th, 2024, at 4PM PT, marks the day in which Nintendo permanently ends support for both the 3DS and the Wii U online services, which include co-op play, internet rankings and data distribution, according to Nintendo's own news post.

This means that games that heavily rely on online services, like the original Super Mario Maker for Wii U (and 3DS), Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon's online multiplayer, and several other games will effectively stop working, more so for Super Mario Maker since that game is entirely relying on online user-created levels for the gaming experience.

However, all is not lost, as the fan and homebrew community is here to save the day (as is always the case), even in the most dire of events like the closure of all online service for said consoles, with the great community network known as Pretendo.

Pretendo is basically an entirely open source project that aims to replace Nintendo's network for both the 3DS and the Wii U, and even their respective emulators like Citra (or its forks given its recent demise) and Cemu, which will allow all users to interconnect with each other even after the demise of Nintendo's own servers later today, and while their compatibility isn't entirely 100%, they developers behind the Pretendo network are still hard at work developing the service so that more and more games get proper compatibility.

Those interested in trying out the Pretendo network can follow their own installation instructions found at their site, which includes installation guides for both Citra (or its forks) and Cemu, and in the case of the original hardware, the user will require a hacked console, be it a hacked 3DS and/or a hacked Wii U, depending on which console the user has. Just be aware that your current Nintendo ID (and everything that it entices, like friends list and other things) will not be carried over to the Pretendo servers, as Nintendo's servers hold that data, and repurposing the original ID for Pretendo could pose a severe privacy violation, so a new ID will need to be created for usage with Pretendo's servers.

A recommendation for a more detailed look into the Pretendo network is a recently released video by renowned game developer and homebrew enthusiast, Modern Vintage Gamer (MVG), gives takes a deeper dive into it, as well as its current status, usage, game tests and installation of the fanmade network into your own consoles.

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Source
Pretendo Network

 

[RedDucks]

How many people were playing that before the shutdown (ignoring the week leading up to it)?

From my own experience, this was never an issue? Especially in Splatoon. We never had any issues getting into matches for any of our research sessions

How many people have modded consoles and can setup up a connection to the Pretendo servers? And we don't have a DNS for Pretendo so that's off the table, at least for now.

We literally announced our hackless, DNS only, method for Wii U's last night lol

 

[raxadian]

didn't know that the Wii community was a bunch of kids either

Outside the pit of shit that's Discord, that I stopped using for a reason, there is many great people working hard to make the Wii still usable. People tends to be way more polite in forums, don't use TwitX or Discord, is bad for your mental health.

Toxic people exists everywhere but Social Media makes it worse.

 

[Paralel]

Even I have done some bad things in my life, but then again, going back to all the things I've done in 2019, most of it isn't actually my fault.

Just a point of contention here, if you did it, it is your fault. Everything you do, and everything you react to, is within your control. You choose how you react to things. It may not seem like it sometimes, but it is. The only exception is if you are literally insane and that has been proven to the satisfaction to a court of law or to the legal standard set forth for a medical facility.

 

[DragonMals]

Just a point of contention here, if you did it, it is your fault. Everything you do, and everything you react to, is within your control. You choose how you react to things. It may not seem like it sometimes, but it is. The only exception is if you are literally insane and that has been proven to the satisfaction to a court of law or to the legal standard set forth for a medical facility.

Figuratively speaking, you're correct. The only thing that's not correct is a whole server arguing to a 13 year old who started using Discord exclaiming to the owner that I thought you're a woman and not a man.

To this day, I listen to the person by who they are and honestly don't be surprised whenever I hear their voice. It's apart of my life now and I already know how to adapt to those that try messing with me.

Outside the pit of shit that's Discord, that I stopped using for a reason, there is many great people working hard to make the Wii still usable. People tends to be way more polite in forums, don't use TwitX or Discord, is bad for your mental health.

Toxic people exists everywhere but Social Media makes it worse.

Its sad for you to mention those two platforms becsuse those are the two outside of this one that i use the most. Good thing though is that I've actually met a good amount of people from that site, but they aren't perfect: A good friend of mine has a little history with nsfw content, another friend is starting to ignore me because of... I don't know, and most of my followers tgaf about my stuff

Post automatically merged: Apr 9, 2024

We literally announced our hackless, DNS only, method for Wii U's last night

"We?" You're a developer for Pretendo?

 

[RedDucks]

"We?" You're a developer for Pretendo?

I'm the founder and lead developer. I've said "we" and "us" and the like a few times now

 

[DragonMals]

I'm the founder and lead developer. I've said "we" and "us" and the like a few times now

I did NOT know that I apologize if I haven't paying attention to that detail!

 

[Paralel]

Figuratively speaking, you're correct.

No, I'm correct in the literal sense. What I said is literally the law of the land.

 

[raxadian]

Its sad for you to mention those two platforms becsuse those are the two outside of this one that i use the most

I stopped using Twitter (yes back then it was called that) and Discord for a reason and that reason is that they are horrible.

Discord also killed some forums I used to use so fck them.

 

[DragonMals]

I stopped using Twitter (yes back then it was called that) and Discord for a reason and that reason is that they are horrible.

Discord also killed some forums I used to use so fck them.

Understandable. I'm good with what I have, and I already know just to mute/block problems that I encounter on there.

 

[Ettino]

Lol Wii U online in the year of our Lord 2024. Are these people from the past?

 

[raxadian]

Let's be honest the last time people cared about Wii U was when Smash Bros for Wii U came out because it had content the 3DS version didn't.

 

[Larsenv]

fun fact spotpass is up still as of now

 

[DJPlace]

did the

Wiimmfi had problems like this when it came out? i can't recall. i'm not reading the whole topic of problems but i think it's about one mod of pretendo being a jerk to everyone. and should be de-modded and maybe worse case if he keeps acting up ban there butt. i mean banning some saying DUDE is fucked up. i no longer have nintendo systems so i can't test this stuff out... so yeah.... good luck figureing this out peeps. (also sorry for the BOLD text i copyed the words Wiimmfi and it did this.​

 

[LightyKD]

Cant figure out how to link my PNID to my 3DS. Looks like you can't have 2 IDs with the same name and I don't want to format my 3DS just to remove my NNID. It's also unfortunate that you cant change your PNID from the Pretendo site ‍♂

 

[PotatoStatic]

To be fair with them, most of the staff members seems to be reasonable in that aspect (at least those who I interacted with from my experience), just that one moderator seems to fit into everything you described.

It only takes one brain dead moderator to destroy a community.

 

[RedDucks]

i mean banning some saying DUDE is fucked up

He literally was not banned for that. I don't know why people are running with this, but it's just straight up not the reason. He wasn't even manually banned by a moderator. He was auto banned for having too many past violations.

The moderation bot on the Pretendo Discord server can issue warnings, kicks, and bans. If someone is warned 3 times, they are kicked (but are able to rejoin). If someone is kicked 3 times, or receives a 4th warning, they get a ban.

Each time one of these actions happens, the user is alerted of the matter with the reason why. That way there's a clear paper trail of communication regarding why something happened. When being kicked due to warnings, you're even directly told that a 4th warning results in a ban. So he was fully aware of what was happening and why, and just continued to act out.

The user in question was warned 3 times, got kicked due to it, rejoined, and then received their 4th warning which issued the ban.

As for WHY he got warnings, it was due to him being a toxic and disruptive member of the community multiple times, and breaking the server rules regarding piracy.

I've also seen people here claim it's "just one mod" doing this, but he was warned by 3 separate mods at various different times (and the mod who did the final warning wasn't even "that mod"!)

He was also banned from the rverse Discord server for similar reasons. Screenshots from the rverse Discord server, as the messages from our server are long deleted:

Post automatically merged: Apr 9, 2024

It only takes one brain dead moderator to destroy a community.

The fact that the person in question who started these stupid rumors wasn't even banned by this "one mod" just makes this whole thing ironic, to be honest. Multiple mods had to deal with him

 

[NinStar]

It only takes one brain dead moderator to destroy a community.

It gets worse when other moderators seem clueless about what they are doing and don't even check things by themselves.

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

I've said it once and I'll say it again. You people are confusing Discord server bans with service bans. They are 2 different things, and don't inherently overlap. Service bans happen with active cheating in public lobbies in ways that effect other players experiences. Discord server bans happen when you break the Discord community rules.

And if you want to compare the team and management of Pretendo to other projects in the scene, we literally have the exact same Discord rules as the WiiLink Discord, and several people on the team are either current or past members of other projects like Wiimmfi, Insignia, Kaeru, etc. The Discord server even shares some moderators with these other projects own Discord servers. So we share team members with projects you say are fine, we share Discord community rules with projects you say are fine, yet somehow it's different? I find it interesting that you say we're "the ones that would do something like that", and not other projects, yet we have member overlap.

Just because you can't go on the Discord server and post slurs and be a dick doesn't mean anything is being "shoehorned". I'd love to know what "ideologies" you think are being "shoehorned" in, by the way.

Not entirely sure if all of your post really applies to what I stated, considering I never brought up other services for example, I never really made any comparisons either, maybe some of that was for the other user in question. True, Discord bans aren't inherently the same as service bans, but the problem is this:

1. I can't join the server to find the facts out for myself because I'm at the server limit on Discord (100 for users who don't have Nitro, 200 for Nitro users). I should be able to depend upon those who are present in the server or have been in there at least to give honest information though, but it's pretty clear that isn't possible. Maybe I am the dumb one for putting that much trust out there, but when you have no options, what are you left to think or do? That's why I chose my words carefully and stated twice that IF such things were true, even mentioned that people of the internet don't always use it for honesty sake, then here is my point on the matter, otherwise it's just lies that some people are spouting.

2. If you are implying that I condone people using slurs and such (if that last part of the point applied to me that is) then that's a huge leap of logic that my point wasn't even towards, my point was solely being neutral as a service, obviously there's going to be people who join just to stir up trouble (I've had plenty of encounters around my own projects), in this case obviously one shouldn't tolerate it, I was referring to the more petty side of things as from the way things were sounding from other individuals. I've had my share of eye witnessing experiences where moderators, staff in general, for various other projects or services would go on a ban spree just because others mistakingly say something that they didn't like or didn't agree with, and ultimately restrict them from using anything related to such projects. With the way even companies are going, it's basically just one of those things I was annoyed with, which one of my points in my post really emphasized that. It's just to the point now where it seems like no matter where I go, what my interests are, SOMETHING always has to be contaminated negatively in some way by other people, mostly those in charge, the whole hyper sensitively stuff, I'm to the point where I'm just fed up with it all. At least that's how it all seems to present itself, nothing can just be normal anymore.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I get pretty passionate about things I talk about often, so I can be pretty expressive when things are presented in a certain fashion.

 

[Sir Tortoise]

So, are we still getting this alt-Pretendo network to get around the censorship and bias or whatever? I'm hyped to see what the community can accomplish through the power of mass hysteria.

 

[46neko]

The PSVita online functionalities have outlived both Wii U and 3DS online functionalities.
What a timeline to be in, huh?