Loyal Nintendo Badge Arcade players on 3DS were shocked to find the game unplayable, and while this may be a temporary issue, indications seem to suggest that the impending shutdown of the eShop will spell the end of this strange game.
Nintendo Badge Arcade launched in 2015, at a time when the company was experimenting with increasingly bizarre microtransaction models for downloadable 3DS games. StreetPass Salesbunny(opens in a new tab) would give you tough sales pitches in the Mii Plaza side games, while Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball(opens in a new tab) had you listening to the sad tale of a down-on-his-luck dog dad in an effort to get actual discounts on bonus minigames.
With that kind of endeavor in mind, the Nintendo Badge Arcade concept seems almost corny. It’s basically a 2D crane game with spinning machines to shoot and hundreds of badges to collect. The idea, of course, is that you spend real in-game money to get the badges you want; There’s a reason we called this the most cynical Nintendo of 2015, but the daily free games have ensured that the game attracts an audience of people who like to sign up to slowly whittle down their collection one day at a time. .
But now those free games seem to be gone. There have been conflicting reports on the extent of all this, but many gamers (opens in a new tab) (opens in a new tab) are reporting (opens in a new tab) that their daily free games have suddenly disappeared. I was able to get a few extra free spins from the practice machine, although I’m not sure if that was just because I had some left over after not playing the game for years. None of the daily login bonuses showed up for me anyway.
Data miners have suggested that this this could all be due to a mislabeled server config file (opens in a new tab), causing all of this week’s daily bonuses to end a day earlier than the previous one suggested. It’s possible that a new, properly configured config file will land in a day or two and configure everything correctly, but I’m not holding my breath.
(Nintendo Badge Arcade) There are currently no free games or themes on Badge Arcade. This is most likely caused by a bug in a server-side configuration file. We’ll see if Nintendo updates it in time before the eShop closes (thanks @InternalLoss) https://t.co/GZHvyD0gg4March 24, 2023
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Nintendo Badge Arcade already has a built-in expiration eventuality, as an update years ago added an in-game prompt that will trigger when the game ends. You can see the full post on The Cutting Room Floor – opens in a new tab – but this excerpt will give you the gist: “We are sorry to inform you that this establishment has closed. Our sincere thanks to all for their support and sponsorship.”
Clearly, Nintendo is ready for the eventual closure of Badge Arcade, and it’s hard to imagine it continuing beyond the eShop itself. It’s already impossible to connect your credit card to the store, and with the store closing soon, you won’t even be able to use gift cards to circumvent this restriction. Will a game built almost exclusively to push microtransactions really outlast your ability to invest money in it?
Most Nintendo 3DS games you have downloaded will continue to work after shutdown and The Completionist recently embarked on a ridiculous quest to help historians legalize saving the remnant..