Last Orders: The Wii U and 3DS eShop is closing today

thesixthaxis.com:

Today’s your last chance to buy any digital games for the Nintendo Wii U or Nintendo 3DS, as the Nintendo eShop is being shut down for both of these consoles tonight – something which was announced over a year ago.

The specific shut down times are all derived to midnight UTC, which translated to the following times for Europeans and Americans:

After this point, you will still be able to re-download games and DLC that have been previously purchased, receive software updates and play online Wii U and 3DS games.

So, this is your final reminder to make any last minute purchases you want to on either Wii U or 3DS, because after this point the only legal options to buy games for them will be to trawl through second hand stores and marketplaces. Even then, that will limit you to a subset of the full library of games that were released on both platforms, with the 2010s seeing Nintendo really embrace ‘Nindie’ developers making games for their platforms, a handful of which such as the excellent Affordable Space Adventures and Pullblox are fully exclusive and digital-only game releases.

Additionally, Nintendo’s Virtual Console offered up emulated games from NES through to the N64. Many of these will now only available through the Nintendo Switch Online and Expansion Pack subscription services, though there’s a bunch of edge cases as well.

The Nintendo Switch is thankfully also home to a whole host of Wii U ports by Nintendo, so great games like Bayonetta 2, Pikmin 3 and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze aren’t trapped on the older machine. However, the Wii U’s unique gamepad led to a bunch of experimental games that were only possible on that console, with asymmetrical games like Nintendo Land, and bonus modes in games like New Super Mario