Thanks so much. Every bit helps. I noticed only 4 people dumped their 3DS data and 0 people dumped their Wii U data in the past couple of hours, so there’s going to be a very small amount of extra dumps by Apr 8th at this rate. I’m gonna continue sharing as much as I can. I was gonna go share on r/technology on Reddit, but saw that one of their rules explicitly forbids posts that are a “call to action”. What a stupid rule, why even stipulate that?

No worries, glad I could reach you!

I just donated mine and there doesn’t seem to be one. Try to go to a computer store, SD card adapters aren’t very expensive these days. P.S. I just remembered it uploads automatically if you’re connected to the internet

There’s a homebrew app called ftpd that you could use, but it only works on a hacked system and that requires an SD card reader to initially setup.

My version of a TLDR:

Spotpass is a wireless tech that would auto connect with other 3ds or Wii U systems that were in the immediate area albeit with a limited range. It was their way of having a social community. Sort of like how you might meet other people while walking around outside.

In the case of Spotpass, when you connected, it would show you the user’s profile, their favorite games, etc. And in some cases for specific games it would provide special DLCs or content that cannot be found elsewhere.

Hence why we’d want to preserve that data since some DLC and other features are exclusive to Spotpass.

based on memory, so a little vague, but examples - access to various merchants in Bravely Default required you to have passed others. i remember this because i was sick with flu and spent a couple days with my 3ds and my daughter’s running/“passing” each other repeatedly so i could unlock everything.

to the best of my memory, some turn-based rpg’s (Persona? SMT? Etrian Odyssey?) would allow you to access customized personas/demons/teams? others had made available. like maybe someone had a really great high level persona (basically a pokemon) with a really great selection of skills on it and you could use it instead of trying to build the same thing yourself, before you might have normally had access to it.

so the latter type thing was cool and fun, but i didn’t get many of those. the first example is a situation where the game doesn’t really fully work without spotpass.

edit - you could visit houses of people you had passed in animal crossing and buy their stuff, too. so you could see how other people decorated and access furniture you might not have access to yet (seasonal, Gracie).

Certain WiiU and 3DS games have a link with Miiverse, Nintendo’s Twitter before it closed 2017, you could post… posts from the game your playing when you beat a specific level or complete an achivement. You could also see and interact with other peoples posts ingame, in Super Mario 3D World for example you would see other players avatars on the world map, see their Miiverse posts and interact with them. It merged ingame worlds with Miiverse extremely well, making it feel like you were part of a tight not community Good Vibes Gaming did a very good video about Pretendo as a whole good watch if your interested

SpotPass was/is a free service provided by Nintendo that was only on the 3DS and Wii U consoles; Nintendo Switch doesn’t provide this. Essentially what it’s purpose was, was for Nintendo to send various pieces of content to players for their games and apps. For example, Tomodatchi Life had various time-limited costumes distributed to players on a half-monthly bases. This was some of the data I had on my console. Other examples include special distributions of special Pokemon in pokemon games. So, in a sense, you could call the SpotPass data “DLC’s”. That’s why they are important to preserve, as they are DLC content that was distributed for free. They also include notifications, since all the notifications sent to you were through SpotPass. There’s also some DLC’s for New Super Mario Bros. 2 that require you to receive a SpotPass notification in order to install.

Hey, just checking in and seeing if you remembered to make your dump yesterday? Just in case you forgot.

Don’t mean to bug you, but did you end up getting it done? Just wanting to check in.

How dare you. jk.

But please try find it if you can, I hope you can.

Don’t worry. There’s heaps of testimony in these comments that it only took them a matter of minutes.

Edit: Ignore this comment, what I said is completely wrong. I’m sorry if I inconvenienced anyone and wasted your time dumping a console with nothing on it.

Probably not. Unless you bought it second-hand? Apparently the data still remains on the system even if it’s reset, so if you bought your console pre-owned, or was given it by a friend, there may still be a large amount of data still there in the background.