A "lucky" player is still playing Splatoon 1 on Nintendo servers: here's how it happened

A “lucky” player is still playing Splatoon 1 on Nintendo servers: here's how it happened

Game servers for the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS shut down over 3 weeks ago on the 9th of April at 1am BST right? It turns out, that is not quite true for a handful of players.

Currently, a small group of 9 determined players remain connected to the Nintendo Network playing Wii U and 3DS games.

These players are in 6 different games. 2 in Mario Kart 7. 3 in Xenoblade Chronicles X. 1 in Mario Kart 8. 1 in Super Mario Maker. 1 in Pokémon X/Y. And there's one last player in our favourite goofy squid game, Splatoon.

Most of the players who remain on the servers are unfamiliar faces, apart from fishguy6564, which you might remember from our reporting on ENLBufferPwn, which included Splatoon 1. If it was in the scope of this article, I would mention the other players more in depth, but it is not unfortunately.

The person who remains playing the original Splatoon game is Lcd101 and I was fortunate enough to be able to interview them on being the final player playing the game on Nintendo servers.

We put forward 9 questions to them, 3 from our wonderful community on Matrix and the other 6 from myself.

[Question] To start, I want to get a timeline for what happened since the shutdown on April 9th. I've mentioned that I haven't been following the story too closely unfortunately and I think this will be quite helpful for our readers on the fediverse.

[Answer] “The Nintendo Network was originally slated to close sometime in April. Back in 2023, the Splatoon servers were shut down thanks to an exploit going around and they had just reopened, so it came as a shock to me and a bunch of other Splatoon fans.

Originally, I didn’t even intend on playing on the final day! It was almost too bittersweet for me, but something compelled me to turn the game on around three hours before the shutdown. Now, it was always my dream to play Splatoon on the go and I wanted to live out that dream for the final match, so I dumped and transferred both my original copy of the game (and save data) and my system files from my Wii U to Cemu on my Steam Deck. Other than that, it’s a stock experience.

We played right up until the rotation at 10:00 P.M. EST, which is when the first wave of players got kicked off. I was actually kinda shocked that I stayed in, so I kept battling for a while. By then, it was almost all Japanese players. I took a break and AFK’ed in the lobby for a bit to grab something to eat since I had been playing for hours at that point. When I came back, I was the only one left, except for another player who dropped out immediately. This happened around 2:40 A.M. EST. Another player also was in the lobby, but left around 2:00 A.M. EST when rotations changed.

Since then, I’ve been documenting everything on my Twitter thread and looking forward to the final rotation, which just passed one day from when I write this. I’ve met an amazing group of survivors in that time called the Nintendo Network: After Hours group and nine of them, including myself, still remain connected to the Nintendo Network. Those guys have been amazing to talk to.”

I followed up this question by asking whether Lcd had been using the Pretendo Network servers on their Wii U since the shutdown given that they were playing on Cemu (I originally got in contact with them after finding them on the Pretendo Discord which happened with me talking about the situation).

“Not since the shutdown! I played back in 2022 and when the servers were down for an extended period of time. I’ve been testing Pretendo’s Splatoon servers out in the background, but not since the shutdown. I haven’t opened Steam on anything else or turned on my Wii U just to be safe.

Since I’m transferring all my files and my save back to my Wii U (I use my Steam Deck like a “Switch” for the most part), I’m not quite ready to play until I’m gone from the NN for good.”

I also found out that he lasted over a month on the 3DS eShop, but unfortunately ended without too much fanfare. However, Lcd has gotten a lot more support with this, even getting requests to be interviewed by major news outlets. Hearing about the whole Nintendo Network: After Hours group reminded me of people spending weeks in the 3DS eShop after closure with the old UI (eShop UI was edited to be more basic after closure).

[Question] Next, I really want to know what made you to do this. I have to assume it's for archival purposes, but having a Wii U on for 22 days is kinda insane right?

[Answer] “It’s pretty insane, honestly! I keep the “Wii U” (Steam Deck) in a corner of my room. Luckily, that’s really close to my router, so I haven’t had any connection issues. I worry about the screen sometimes, but I’ve been keeping it dim now and I think that’s working out alright.”

[Question] When was the last time that you were able to play an actual match with someone online on the Nintendo Network?

[Answer] “The last time was against those Japanese players, just after midnight (EST) on the day of the shutdown. I lasted for about two hours after the first wave of people got kicked.”

Just for more detail, people started getting kicked around 3am BST, which was the start of the first rotation after the shutdown. We had players playing in our Matrix space until this time when they unfortunately got kicked. It's a shame I did not get to experience this myself!

[Question] Given that we're on the last ever rotation until 2034 now, do you expect to eventually stop playing on the Nintendo Network soon? Is there much more that can happen at this point other than the shops no longer rotating?

[Answer] “I’m looking to go on for a few more days. There’s nothing else to document, aside from the shops (which seem to rotate client-side but need an online connection to be entered), so I think the maximum amount of time that I’ll keep going for is ten days. There’s really not much left to discuss there.”

If you missed it, the last rotation started on Tuesday at 7:30pm BST. We reported on it at https://wetdry.world/@splatoon/112361627811409441.

[Question] Out of interest, how long have you had Splatoon and the Wii U?

[Answer] “It wasn’t since launch, surprisingly! I remember seeing Splatoon at E3 2014 and thinking it was some crappy third-party kids game or something. My feelings didn’t change when the American advertising campaign started. I think I felt personally insulted by the stupid commercials at the time. Anyway, I had a friend who got it on launch and immediately got into it. By then, I was interested in the Octarians and (secretly) had to have the game that I had made fun of earlier. I got it just a little while later, although I played through the first Splatfest on another copy, and the rest is history. It is my favorite game series of all time.”

Honestly, I do not remember much about Splatoon 1 pre-launch. Not sure if others found out about it like I did, but I found out about it from ZackScottGames (has he changed his intro in the last decade yet?). Looking back at Splatoon 1's advertising, I can see why it would be annoying to look at, but it is part of what made the series memorable and partially saved the dying console.

[Answer] “I have a blog that focuses on broadcasting! I go over weird stuff in American (and occasionally UK) television and talk about whatever else interests me. If you want to check that out, my site’s url is https://lcd101.com. Outside of that, I’m working on a visual novel/adventure game that’s still really early along in development. I hope I can make something really cool someday!”

[Question] Is there anything you do in the game now other than staying idle and checking for rotation changes (with shops and newscasts)?

This question was submitted by @yamari:matrix.org in our Matrix space. Thank you for submitting!

[Answer] “Honestly, I just stay AFK most of the time. Since the lobby servers shut last week, there’s no lobbies for me to hop in, so I’m just limited to Inkopolis Plaza and the shops now. I don’t want to risk going into Octo Valley at the moment.”

[Question] How many hours do you have in the game?

This question was submitted by @[email protected] in our Matrix space. Thanks for submitting!

[Answer] Sure thing! I haven’t checked my hours in a while, but I have somewhere around 500 hours, give or take. There wasn’t as much to do back before Salmon Run, but it was so addicting that I kept playing.

Now, with what I’m doing, I guess my hours have completely doubled.

*Doing the math, 23 days * 24 hours equals 552 hours, which would effectively double it. 1/5/2024 @ 9pm BST to 9/4/2024 @ 10pm BST is roughly 23 days.*

[Question] Finally, how did your most memorable battle go during the last few days of servers being officially open and throughout all time?

This question was submitted by @[email protected] in our Matrix space. Thanks for submitting!

[Answer] “We did have a squid party! I remember thinking each battle would be the last one. I realized around 9:45 P.M. on the day of the shutdown (we were still in until the next rotation) that I was going to end up getting into a new match just as the clock struck 10:00, meaning that I’d be playing the last match in Splatoon NN history. When the match is about to end and the numbers count down from ten, I hit “Booyah!” on each one like it was New Year’s. It was an amazing feeling, but I was even more astonished when I just went back into the lobby after the news for the next rotations happened.”

It was inkredible having the opportunity to interview Lcd as the last Splatoon 1 player.

I am not sure about the other 8 players, but getting to this point must be truly unexpected. People are still actively playing these games online on Nintendo Network servers (fishguy6564 is literally livestreaming Mario Kart 7 right now), but some players did use modifications to continue playing on servers so I assume they were prepared to play for a while.

I genuinely wonder how much longer this can go on for, what else is there to see? I am not familiar with Xenoblade, but I would like to imagine that for the 3 other games, nothing is really going to change at this point. Splatoon is the last one left that showed life and I suspect nothing is going to change now if shops continue to rotate their selection.

Before I end this off, I would just like to remind you to check out Lcd's profiles. He has been covering the post-shutdown experience on Twitter at @Lcd101 and he has an amazing website about broadcasting at https://lcd101.com. If you would like to reach out to Lcd on Discord, you can find them at @Lcd101.

Does the usual hashtags and mentioning stuff work on WriteFreely? We'll soon find out I guess: #NintendoNetwork #NintendoWiiU #WiiU #3DS #スプラトゥーン3 #スプラトゥーン #Splatoon3 #Splatoon #Nintendo #NintendoSwitch @[email protected]