There is an old phrase that goes, “Out with the old, in with the new”. This sentiment may not have been behind Nintendo’s recent closure of the 3DS and Wii U eShops but alas, here we are. With said closure, “all the systems within the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U families will be affected, including the New Nintendo 3Ds, New Nintendo 3DS XL, New Nintendo 2DS XL, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL, Nintendo 2DS, Wii U Deluxe, and Wii U Basic”.

We thank you for supporting Nintendo eShop on Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.

Additionally, you may also look back on your time with them via various play statistics: https://t.co/YCkkVFaQ7i

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 16, 2022

Players have already begun to mourn and commemorate their years with the systems using Nintendo’s My Nintendo 3DS & Wii U Memories website. The site allows players to “view their Nintendo 3DS or Wii U play activity…see their total playtime on the console, the total number of titles played, and their top three most played games and favorite genres. Users can also select their most memorable game from their available game library and share their reviews on social media”. All this of reminiscing spans just under 10 years of play.

For the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) though, this is simply not enough. They care for more than just statistics and social shares. As an organization they are, “dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games”. Considering this, it only makes sense that the VGHF would have a less than positive reaction to the eShops going out of business when they took to Twitter to release their statement. While sympathetic to Nintendo’s business decision, the VGHF is not giving them a pass for their efforts that, “prevent even libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games”. Whatever Nintendo’s reason is for this push towards institutional inaccessibility, the VGHF went on to deem it,

actively destructive to video game history.

Our statement on the closure of Nintendo’s legacy digital shops. pic.twitter.com/mG5GzuGH4G

— Video Game History Foundation (@GameHistoryOrg) February 17, 2022

The founder of the Video Game History Foundation, Frank Cifaldi, even tweeted out a personal statement of his own. Cifaldi, a former game dev and producer, went beyond Nintendo and took aim at commerciality and the government at large in our struggle for the preservation of video game history.

The commercial industry is never going to offer full support of back catalog games, and our own federal government is making it all but impossible for even libraries to help with access. No one will save video game history but all of us, and that will never change.

— Frank Cifaldi (Unlicensed).nes (@frankcifaldi) February 16, 2022

To learn more about the foundation’s goals of making sure the old is never out, but forever in perpetuity, check out their website and brief video below.