The Pretendo Network, an open-source Nintendo Network alternative, no longer requires a hacked Wii U console. With Nintendo’s servers for the obsolete console shutting down on Monday, the Pretendo Network shared a new workaround that provides (limited) access to its homebrew servers without jailbreaking your dusty old console.
An SSL (secure sockets layer) is a protocol that encrypts the connection between a device and its servers. The Wii U’s SSL exploit (branded as “SSSL”), discovered by the Pretendo Network’s shutterbug, lets you connect to the network with only a simple DNS change, which you can do on the stock firmware. “We’ve been holding on to this exploit for this day for quite some time, in case Nintendo decided to issue patches for it,” the network’s creators wrote in a blog post announcing the new workaround.
Not everything will work, though. The Pretendo Network team says third-party titles that use their own SSL libraries aren’t compatible. That includes Watch Dogs, the YouTube app and anything running an embedded browser (like TVii, the eShop and the Miiverse applet). However, the network creators stress that in-game Miiverse functionality still works.
The workaround requires a Wii U running at least firmware version 5.5.5. If yours has software lower than that, you should still be able to go online and install the latest update. Nintendo last pushed a Wii U firmware update in August 2022, when the current version (5.5.6) arrived.
Shutting down the Wii U and 3DS online servers doesn’t prevent Nintendo from providing new firmware updates to the consoles. Given Nintendo’s aversion to hacking its devices, the Mario maker could, at least in theory, update the 12-year-old Wii U to patch the DNS workaround.
We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t . Nintendo shut down the online servers for both the Wii U and 3DS today. This means the end of online multiplayer gaming for both consoles, turning Mario Kart 7 for 3DS and the original Splatoon for the Wii U into single player or couch co-op experiences. The first Super Mario Maker is also effectively dead, as there’s no way to browse for and download player-created levels.
Both consoles are relatively controversial. The 3DS was originally considered a , though it eventually . This was thanks to a glut of incredible titles, from Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds to more niche fare like Kid Icarus: Uprising and Fire Emblem Awakening. The portable console also had a robust lineup of online exclusive titles, like Pushmo and BoxBoy!.
The Wii U, on the other hand, never quite found a significant audience and is largely considered one of Nintendo’s biggest missteps. It was the next home console after the culture-defining Wii, so it had large shoes to fill. However, the company went with a name that was an absolute nightmare for the Wii’s core audience of casual gamers. Was it an accessory to the original Wii? A new console? A crappy iPad? Those of us glued to gaming media knew the answer, but the casuals never stood a chance.
There was also the console itself. The company never delivered a compelling use case for the “asymmetric gameplay” offered by the device. Simply put, the Wii U gave you two screens. There was the TV, of course, but also a touchscreen tablet. This was supposed to lead to unique gameplay mechanics that gave the person holding the tablet a different task than those holding traditional controllers, but only a few titles truly explored this concept.
Just like the 3DS, however, the Wii U was buoyed by a robust selection of first-party classics. I found the first-party offerings of the Wii era to be mostly underwhelming, with desperate attempts to shoehorn in finicky and gimmicky waggle. I still get panicked when remembering just how horrible it felt to fly Link around in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The Wii U, on the other hand, brought Nintendo back to a novel concept called “just make good games.”
The console brought us Mario Kart 8, which is still the gold standard for digital kart racing, and the underrated Super Mario 3D World. There was also Super Mario Maker, a great Super Smash Bros. title, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Pikmin 3 and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, among many others.
Even if you never owned a Wii U, you’ve probably played some of these games. Nintendo knew the console itself was a flop, but the games were good. This led to numerous re-releases on the Switch. It’s worth noting that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Also, it had Miiverse! Nintendo, for the love of Bowser, . It was the only pure social network.
Of course, there’s a strong case to be made that both the design of the Wii U and its failure led to the Switch. Both devices allow for portable play, but the Wii U required people to be tethered to a bulky console. The Switch, on the other hand, is the (not bulky) console. Nintendo’s smash hybrid , as of December. The Wii U sold under 14 million devices throughout its lifespan.
Nintendo already for the 3DS and Wii U last year, so this is the final goodbye. Luckily, speedrunners a Super Mario Maker level that was long thought to be impossible just a few days ago. Life always finds a way. Sleep well, my two old friends.
The Wii U was certainly not the most successful console Nintendo’s ever released, and while some may fondly remember it in 2023, at least one person actually bought a brand new Wii U from a store as if it was 2013 all over again.
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Launched in 2012, the Wii U was Nintendo’s follow up to its massively popular Wii console. While the Wii would go on to become one of the best-selling video game consoles of all time, things went much differently for the Wii U and its tablet controller. The console never came close to selling as well as the Wii, and by 2017 Nintendo had moved on to the Switch, which would go on to outstrip the Wii U’s lifetime sales in its first year. But we can now add one more Wii U sale to its total tally.
This odd stat comes from Mat Piscatella, executive director at Circana (formerly NPD) who posted on Twitter (X? Whatever) that one (1) new Wii U was sold in the United States in September. According to Piscatella, this is the first time a new Wii U has been sold in the U.S. since May 2022. Which is also very strange, now that I think about it.For those unaware, Circana tracks “individual store level sales data” to keep tabs on what people are buying and selling. They then sell that data to folks who care. What that also means is that this Wii U wasn’t a used one at GameStop or something like that. This was a “new,” sealed Wii U console that was finally sold a decade after launch.
How did this happen? We don’t know specifically, but as folks who have worked retail at big chains have explained in the comments below Piscatella’s tweet, this isn’t that uncommon. Speaking to some folks I know who have worked at stores like Walmart and Target, old shit can get buried in the back. Or maybe a Wii U had been sitting for the last decade on a store shelf in, like, Georgia or Montana and finally, after a decade, someone decided to buy it and play some Super Mario 3D World. I hope they enjoy it!
Also, Piscatella added that three new PS Vitas were purchased in November 2021. I’m glad these forgotten consoles, sealed up in boxes and buried in storerooms or lost inside decrepit Best Buys, are finding homes. Brings a tear to my eye.
Nintendo dropped its first quarter financial results on August 3, with the company revealing that it’s having a record-breaking year so far thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and The Super Marios Bros. Movie.
In the earnings report, the company detailed just how profitable its products have been as of late. Tears of the Kingdom, for example, the follow-up to 2017’s Breath of the Wild, sold 18.51 million units just between its May 12 launch and June 30, roughly a month and a half. That’s an impressive feat, and one Nintendo noted was largely driven by folks who had played Link’s 2017 outing. Tears of the Kingdom was so successful, in fact, that it not only propelled the company’s first-party sales to reach their “highest level ever” for a first quarter, but it also drove hardware sales. More on that in a bit, though.
“The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which was released on May 12, has made a major contribution to Q1 sales in the current environment, in which we see widespread adoption of Nintendo Switch hardware and continued play engagement by many consumers,” Nintendo said. “Sell-through of this one title constitutes approximately half of the first-party software sold this fiscal year. Consumers who played the previous entry, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have been the primary driver, but as the weeks have passed, we have seen that a growing percentage of purchases are being made by consumers who have not yet played that title.”
Moving on to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the company said 168.1 million people worldwide watched the animated film as of July 30 and its global box-office revenue raked in $1.349 billion. That’s wild. What’s wilder, however, is that the Universl Pictures-distributed film drove sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which added 1.67 million sales to the tens of millions it has already sold.
This brings us to hardware sales. The company noted that the entire Nintendo Switch family had an increased 13.9 percent sell-through rate year-on-year, with the OLED model carrying most of that weight, though the OG Switch and Switch Lite are still selling well despite a slight slowdown in recent months. In the end, the handheld-console hybrid sold 3.91 million units in this quarter alone. This is a mega-popular system, y’all, and its recent popularity is largely thanks to Tears of the Kingdom.
To cap all this off, the company said net sales for the first quarter of this fiscal year increased by 50 percent to 461.3 billion yen (or about $3.2 billion USD), increasing overall profits by 82.4 percent to 185.4 billion yen (or approximately $1.3 billion USD). So, yeah, Nintendo is absolutely killing it right now.
With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom dropping on May 12, Nintendo is looking back and sharing more details about its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. Those details include confirmation that the Wii U console held back the production of and content included in BotW.
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As part of the eighth generation of consoles (alongside the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One), the Wii U was Nintendo’s first attempt at bridging the gap between on-the-go and at-home systems. It wasn’t a success. Yeah, it had some great games, including Bayonetta 2, Splatoon, and Xenoblade Chronicles X, among others. But the confusion around how to actually use the console, coupled with the proximity with which the GamePad had to be to the Wii U itself, made it cumbersome and frustrating. Hell, I remember when it was revealed during E3 2010 and folks (myself included) thought it was some sort of add-on for the Wii.
Despite some heavy-hitter titles like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Maker, the Wii U was not the success Nintendo hoped it would be—or the success it’s used to. And although some of the better Wii U games are now on Nintendo Switch, the company’s home run handheld-console hybrid, Nintendo has admitted in a recent interview that BotW would have benefitted from being a Switch exclusive all along.
Some BotW features wouldn’t work on Wii U
Five Nintendo developers, including Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma, sat down to answer some questions about Tears of the Kingdom in a multi-part interview. In the latest segment, published on the official Nintendo website on May 10, the group was asked about how TotK has expanded in relation to its predecessor. Technical director Takuhiro Dohta explained that certain design elements couldn’t be implemented due to hardware limitations.
“Actually, the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was originally developed for Wii U, so there were restrictions in development,” Dohta said. “There were a lot of ideas we wanted to implement during its development, but we made clear decisions on what we wouldn’t do in that game. For example, we decided that it wouldn’t involve flying. Then Aonuma kept saying, ‘If flying is out of the question, I want to dig underground!’ And we’d respond, ‘Oh no! Please don’t make us develop that too!’”
Now that TotK is a Nintendo Switch exclusive, though, those concepts left on the cutting-room floor—like cliffside caves that should present new exploration opportunities—are making an appearance. This is largely because the team is reusing the BotW map to streamline development.
“For The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we began by compiling and implementing ideas we couldn’t include in the previous title,” Dohta said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do so had we made a completely new world, so developing in the same setting as the previous game was significant in this sense as well.”
Elsewhere in the interview, art director Satoru Takizawa confirmed that “traditional” Zelda dungeons are coming back as well. Although we learned this from the recent TotK leaks, it seems they will be more expansive than you saw in Link’s last outing.
“Making a ‘wide variety’ was pretty challenging,” Takizawa said. “The four Divine Beasts were the dungeons in [BotW], and they shared similar designs. This time, the dungeons are huge and each carry their own regional look and feel, just like traditional The Legend of Zelda games. We think they will provide a satisfying challenge for players. They were certainly a challenge to develop!”
Kotaku reached out to Nintendo for comment.
Tears of the Kingdom looks to be a huge expansion to Breath of the Wild, and not just because of the sky island you can explore above The Great Plateau. With Link’s plethora of new abilities, such as the Fuse skill that al mostly directly responds to weapon durability, it’ll be interesting to see what other ideas Nintendo has in store when Link’s latest adventure drops on May 12.
Like most people who require water to live, you probably like H20 a normal amount—but you definitely don’t like water as much as this famous Nintendo fan. They’re so well-known and beloved that they’ve even been featured in the official plumber website for the Super Mario Bros. movie.
Super Mario Bros. Plumbing is a website for a fake plumbing service where Mario and Luigi come to unclog your pipes. Not like that, you pervert. Anyway, the website is an elaborate movie marketing campaign that even features a real live van tour. If you look down at the carousel section of the website, you’ll see a review by someone named Pipe_Dreamz. “Amazing looking water courtesy of the brothers,” it says.
For the non-chronically online, Pipe_Dreamz is likely a reference to a Miiverse user named MARIO WiiU. They spent at least a couple of years commenting on the graphical quality of video game water on Nintendo’s official forums. Their bio describes them as “a hardcore Nintendo fan” who has been playing the publisher’s games since 1985. Despite being a Nintendo gamer since the Nintendo Entertainment System, they felt that the Wii U is “an amazing system.” You do you, buddy.
Since Miiverse was discontinued in November 2017, a new account claiming to be MARIO WiiU has appeared on Twitter. However, there isn’t a viable method to confirm that they’re the same person (A conundrum that they’ve addressed publicly). I have my doubts. The original water commentator had posts that were unrelated to water, and the new account only contains tweets about water. So the account is likely run by a fan of the water liker.
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This isn’t the first time that Nintendo of America recognized video game water’s biggest fan. Three years ago, the publisher tweeted “Nice water” alongside a clip of Paper Mario: The Origami King.
The Miiverse may be gone, but the spirit of MARIO WiiU lives on.
Mario Kart 8, a game that was first released ten years ago on the Wii U, is still not done. The 2017 Switch version of the game is currently in the midst of a run of downloadable content that is bringing not only new courses to the game, but new drivers as well.
Five more! Five mystery characters in a popular first-party Nintendo game! You know what that means, everyone. It means it’s time for speculation.
While the series previously liked to keep things in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario Kart 8’s updates have slowly introduced characters from other Nintendo franchises, ranging from Zelda to Splatoon. Meaning these five characters could, in true Smash Bros. fashion, be coming from anywhere.
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Maybe it’ll be someone new, but expected. Samus is an obvious choice here, especially as a car based on her ship would be such an obvious combo (and a Metroid-themed course would also kick ass).
Maybe it’ll be a different take on an existing character. There are multiple Marios here…is there room for a second Link? A Wind Waker Link, perhaps? If it’s good enough for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it’s good enough for Mario Kart 8.
It could, however, be someone else. Nintendo has a long, long history, after all. It’s a little weird that characters from F-Zero, a Nintendo series about racing cars, aren’t featured here in Mario Kart 8, a Nintendo game about racing cars. Captain Falcon would slot right in, especially since there’s already an F-Zero course (and vehicle!) in the game.
Maybe it’s time for some Pikmin? Punch-Out? Is Arms too obscure a reference in 2023? Maybe the space is being left for the movie versions of some famous Mario characters?
Maybe you should take over now. Nintendo-related speculation is hard work.
UPDATE: This might help narrow it down. Nintendo says in a press release accompanying today’s DLC that “Two upcoming waves of DLC are still to come, featuring more returning courses and characters from across the Mario Kart series”.
“Returning characters” certainly kills off some of the wilder suggestions above! And leaves us with possibilities like Petey Piranha and…Wiggler?
