The legacy Nintendo Network is officially dead, after its final user has disconnected

Earlier this year, Nintendo shut down the Nintendo Network servers, the online service for its systems from the previous generation: 3DS and the Wii U. Many dedicated gamers stayed online for a few more months until now, since the final user has finally disconnected.

Twitter/X user @fishguy6564 is famous among Nintendo fans for managing to stay connected to the Nintendo 3DS servers of Mario Kart 7 after the company shut down the online service. In the past, he claimed that his main goal was to keep the game alive for as long as he could, and that he was quite surprised that Nintendo even allowed him to stay around for so many months.

However, after six long months (or 209 days), fishguy6564’s mission finally came to an end. In a recent post, he revealed that his Nintendo 2DS crashed, leaving him out of the servers forever. “It’s over. Rest in peace, Nintendo Network” was the Mario Kart 7 player’s bittersweet final message, since this marks the official end of the 3DS and Wii U’s legacy online service.

Members of the community didn’t hesitate to show up and pay their respects to both the Nintendo Network (an online service that let them connect to each other on 3DS and Wii U for over 12 years) and to @fishguy6564 himself, who surprised everyone with his ability to continuously stay connected on a single console for more than 6 months.

The everlasting legacy of the Nintendo Network

With @fishguy6564’s departure from the Mario Kart 7 servers, we can all proclaim that the Nintendo Network is officially dead. In retrospect, Nintendo fans were not happy when the company announced that it was going to shut down the service in April 2024, mainly due to the fact that many of them were still using it to play titles like Mario Kart 7, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U or the sixth and seventh generations of Pokemon with each other.

While the Nintendo DS and Wii were technically the first Nintendo consoles capable of online connectivity, the 3DS and Wii U are where this functionality first thrived for the company and its fans, an important legacy that eventually carried on to the Nintendo Switch, which also offers online multiplayer and a digital store to its users. It’s important to point out that it is not all over, since Pokemon Bank, an app that lets players transfer Pokemon from one game to another, is still available to use on the 3DS, and it doesn’t seem that there are plans for shutting it down anytime soon.