The end of an era – 3DS and Wii U online services shut down

The day has finally arrived – after over 13 years, the online services for the 3DS and Wii U family of consoles have finally been shutdown. It’s something we all expected to happen eventually, but it’s still sad to see the end of an era. It feels like, not that long ago, I was playing Pokémon Y, Omega Ruby, seeing people from all over pop into existence on the lower screen. So, what now?

Well, there’s a community project aiming to recreate the Nintendo network – Pretendo. This project has been around for a good long while, but with the demise of the official services, it takes a new importance. This project is by no means complete, but it does work for a number of games, as well as the friends list.

You can check Pretendo out here, and you can find the installation instructions here – keep in mind not everything works as you’d expect it to yet.