Today was a little disastrous. There was an update to the 3DS firmware a day or so ago. It installed fine, but the eshop was apparently down because of Nintendo trying to combine the 3DS and WiiU services. Part of this included linking, or creating a matching account on your 3DS that could work for both systems. I don’t have a WiiU, but I might someday, so I went ahead and did it. There was no problem. Everything seemed fine.

This afternoon I passed by a Nintendo Zone location and stopped to see if there was anything I could download for my Animal Crossing town. Before I did that I checked the zone, even though it’s always stupid, and then went to the eshop from there. Then, for reasons unknown, the 3DS downloaded 3 things. Not games, just placeholders for apps I had deleted. Strangely however once they loaded all my downloaded games disappeared. That’s actually not uncommon, so I wasn’t worried. I deleted the weird things then restarted my 3DS. No games. I took out the sd card and tried again. No games.

Now things were scary.

I was on my way home anyway so I just left my 3DS off. Once I arrived I looked around the support site to see if there was a fix listed anyplace. As is typical with user based support forums there was nothing useful there. Just a bunch of fans telling people with problems that everything was fine, or offering up useless advice. I had already begun to accept the reality of what was happening, but I called the support line just to be sure.

When I got through it sounded like a warzone in the background. A harried sounding lady took my information, was stumped by my problem, and transferred me to another lady. They were playing the overworld music from Occarina Of Time on the hold. The new lady was only slightly less confused by my problem. She was trying to figure out if I had transferred the system or bought it used someplace. After a full explanation of what happened her supervisor was called in. I never actually heard this person, but they said my account still existed and it was connected to my 3DS serial number, so I could redownload my games for no charge. Which is fine, except the save files associated with those games are kind of important. Before I hung up I asked if my data was at all salvageable. After a long pause the lady said “We’re not sure.” in a way that clearly indicated they were, in fact, sure, and my files were lost. She then told me to have a nice day in a way that expressed her knowledge that I would not.

So that was that. Mario Kart fully unlocked with the golden wheels (Which I hated doing), Fire Emblem with a perfect team waiting to unlock the last 4 secret character, Pokémon Y with my modest team of monsters, and My day of release Animal Crossing town, which I visited every day, had tons of gems, house upgrades, and items that can’t be replaced, gone.

I copied the SD Card just in case, but it’s pretty much pointless. I tried my old SD card and it can’t read my game files either. The saves are no longer recognized as being from my account and are therefore locked off permanently, if not fully deleted. I tried to replace key files, but it doesn’t work. Basically, by buying my games from the eshop I got dicked over by Nintendo’s DRM. If I’d just bought a physical copy of these games, or kept one in the case of Mario Kart, this would all be a non issue. I only have myself to blame for wanting the convenience of not having to carry a box of games with me everyplace.

I was basically done with Fire Emblem, so that’s fine. I would have liked to have been able to go back to my game, but I did see the best ending already. I wasn’t very far in Pokémon, although I really liked my special Chimchar. I don’t know if you can still get them anymore. I liked his speed power though… Mario Kart is a hassle to recover, but I like racing, so it’s not so bad. I can do the regular stuff when I’m stuck places. Losing my Animal Crossing town though… that hurt. I couldn’t bear to let any of my villagers move away and then they were just gone.

I haven’t had such a heartbreaking data loss since I lost my entire pokemon collection back in the Ruby/Sapphire days. Pokémon from a couple of generations, ALL OF THEM. Each one specially named…

I recognize that this is kind of dumb, but don’t get all high and mighty with me. Everyone goes through this with something at some time. You get invested in these silly things and it’s traumatic to lose the work.

Anyway, the Ten wants me to watch bedtime TV with her, so I’m going to go do that… While I slowly rebuild my crumbled empire. T^T