Like many johnny-come latelies and procrastinators, I literally waited till the last minute to raid the eShop.

Well, the last day anyway.

Late last night I took a good hard look at the requirements for buying 3DS games in the post eShop card era (the way I had funded all my 3DS eShop purchases up to today), and finally sparked up a MyNintendo account and muddled my way through the menu tutorials teaching you how to earn and claim a sample set of redeemable coins. I then linked my Nintendo Network ID (NNID) by entering my username/password and merged the six-ish dollars I had in the account to make it accessible to both electronic marketplaces. While I was there, I picked up the free demo for Bravely Second and RPG Maker Player.

When you link a NNID and MyNintendo account and merge the funds together, the money transfer is a one-way affair. You can unlink the accounts later, but the money won't flow back to the old system

The following morning of the 27th, I went to pull up my user menu and go from there to the "shop menu". I added $20 to the account with a debit card (on a secondary account in a different bank than my primary) and went back to my 3DS to see if this 'token' amount passed through properly (it did). It's a moot point now, but if you were already in the eShop on your 3DS (and presumably WiiU), the displayed balance doesn't update. At least I never saw it do that. You have to close the eShop app and re-launch it to see the money you added. Also, Nintendo only allows you to add money in $10,$20,$50 or $100 increments (meaning if you only wanted to add $30, you would have to make two separate transactions), I made a few more trips back to the add-funds page over the course of the day, adding another $50 later that morning, then another $50 late in the afternoon from a credit card. I had a hastily-assembled list of games to pursue, and while I went with gusto for some titles I had in the back of my mind to get "someday", others that initially looked enticing lost their luster after I eyeballed some YouTube reviews on them.

I spent quite a bit of time looking over those reviews, and sometime after nightfall, I figured I had about $100 worth of games left to pursue. Figuring that making two back-to-back $50 transactions would look sus to my bank, I attempted a $100 buy, which MyNintendo rejected with a "This card cannot be used" message. A $50 purchase did go through, so I figured maybe Nintendo tightened funding restrictions on the last day of the eShop. That $50 went quickly on two not-really-discounted games, and when I found that both the debit and credit cards were getting rejected (they both still had pending purchases from Nintendo from earlier in the day), I decided to link my PayPal account to get those last couple of fund chunks. Well, that went through slicker than grease on an oil spill, but before adding more money (this was about 9:15pm EST), I thought "maybe I ought to look at the eShop one more time just to make sure it's still good" and I was presented with a big picture of Mario above the following scrolling message:

"It is no longer possible to make purchases in Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo 3DS family of system. It is also no longer possible to download free content, including game demos"

(Yeah, the grammar errors are a direct quote)

Well, that sucks. Would have sucked more had I added the funds first since I don't own a Switch to spend that money on. The grand total of money I had in the account upon the Great Closing? 55 cents

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So, what games did I manage to get on the last day of the 3DS eShop?

--3/27: 3D Gunstar Heroes -- 5.99
--3/27: Adventure Labyrinth -- 5.00
--3/27: Bonds of the Skies -- 4.99
--3/27: Blaster Master Zero -- 9.99
--3/26: Bravely 2nd demo -- free
--3/27: Infinite Dunamis -- 4.99
--3/27: Journey to Kreisia -- 4.99
--3/27: KORG M01D -- 17.00
--3/27: Machine Knight -- 4.99
--3/27: Mega Man Legacy -- 2.99
--3/27: Metroid Samus Returns -- 39.99
--3/27: Mighty Switch Force 2 -- 2.99
--3/26: RPG Maker player -- free
--3/26: RPG Maker FES -- 2.99
--3/26: SteamWorld Dig -- 1.99
--3/27: Steamworld Dig 2 -- 3.99
--3/27: Steamworld Heist -- 2.99

What did I miss out on had I few more hours?

3D After Burner II, Butterfly Inchworm Animation 2, and a few others that are actually still available as physical gamecards (albeit more expensive). The disappointing part is that the shop dies early -- some titles that were on sale stated the price was good till 3/27/23 23:59, which I took to mean the shop drops dead at midnight. Obviously it didn't.

Now, I'm no ravenous game connoisseur. I don't even try to ram my way through to completing them, instead playing a game long enough to get a handle on the play mechanics, then wandering away for days, weeks, sometimes months before I revisit it. Two thirds of my Dreamcast collection is still in shrinkwrap. I even have unplayed games on my Saturn and Atari Jaguar. According to my 3DS's Activity Log, the last time I used my 3DS to play an actual game was in December 2021 (O_o). Considering the number of JRPG's in the above list, I won't be finishing today's purchases for a good long time. My best hope is to learn to fiddle with KORG M01D, a 3DS synthesizer/mini DAW that can apparently put out some competent-sounding tunes.

...So maybe one day, I can resume putting train videos on YouTube, embellished with a dinky animation at the beginning, and "credits" with some outro music janky enough to not get flagged by ContentID at the end :D


(oh yeah, haven't forgotten about art. Much stuff I want to get to still)