Animal Crossing: Eshop Is Closing Soon!

This is your 30 day reminder that the eShop is shutting down. And unfortunately, we are less than a month away from losing several Animal Crossing games and applications probably forever. 

On March 27th, so literally in 30 days’ time, Nintendo is shutting down the eShop on both the 3DS and Wii-U family of consoles. Of course, this is bad news for fans of many franchises, but it actually affects a huge Animal Crossing Library of content that will no-longer be accessible once the eShop closes. 

Animal Crossing Wild World

The most notable is, of course, Animal Crossing Wild World for Nintendo DS, which can be purchased on the Wii-U’s virtual console. This one will hurt the most, because it’s a fully fledged, complete, mainline Animal Crossing game. And honestly, this is a game that introduced many features we know and love to the Animal Crossing series for the first time. 

Currently, as things stand, once the eShop shuts down this time next month, the ability to play Wild World digitally, and in an unscaled resolution, on a TV, will be gone. So, if you own a Wii-U, and you think you might be interested in playing Animal Crossing Wild World one day in the future, make sure you download it now, just in case. 

The good news is, the e-Shop shutting down on the Wii-U doesn’t seem to affect Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival, because it’s not available digitally, and you can pick physical copies up pretty cheaply. 

Other Animal Crossing Content

Moving on, the eShop closing on March 27th also affects a lot of Animal Crossing content on the 3DS. Digital versions of Animal Crossing New Leaf and Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer will, of course, be removed from sale. 

From this time next month, we will no-longer can download these games digitally, and tie them to our Nintendo Accounts. 

Again, another big hit to the Animal Crossing Library, but given we can still play these physically, it doesn’t hurt as much as the Animal Crossing applications that will be lost when the eShop shuts down forever. These include Photos with Animal Crossing, the Animal Crossing Clock and the Animal Crossing Calculator. 

Photos With Animal Crossing

Photos with Animal Crossing is an application that utilises the AR functionality of the 3DS and allows you to interact with Animal Crossing villages in the real world. You basically place some AR cards on the table, which can also be printed off a computer, and use your 3DS’s camera to bring in Animal Crossing villagers to take photos (one of the ACNH Items) with. This has kind of been replaced with the AR feature in Pocket Camp, but it’s still sad to know this will be removed forever when the 3DS eShop shuts down. 

Photos with Animal Crossing are free on Japanese consoles, so I highly recommend downloading while you can. Unfortunately, it’s not available in the US, but Download Codes were available for European users from various outlets, so it might be worth checking some old emails to see if you ever received one. Just search your inbox for photos with Animal Crossing. 

Animal Crossing Clock & Animal Crossing Calculator

The Animal Crossing Clock and Animal Crossing Calculator are two Nintendo DSi Ware applications that were released for the Nintendo DSi, but are still available on Nintendo 3DS. At least for 30 more days. 

They’re pretty self explanatory in terms of the features they offer, but they’re pretty significant titles in the Animal Crossing Library and again, once the eShop shuts down, they’ll be lost forever. And whilst there are always chance games like Wild World will one day make it to the Switch, these Animal Crossing-themed utilities will probably never be remade, or re-released.  

So, if you want a little piece of Animal Crossing history, make sure you download these before March 27th. Now, the only thing I haven’t really covered is Animal Crossing Plaza, and that’s because this community-based platform on the Wii-U is already discontinued.   

Unfortunately, the servers behind this application were shut down years ago. There is some good-news though, online functionality, like visiting friends in New Leaf, and the ability to download patches and updates for everything else, will continue to be available once the eShop shuts down. 

So, in short, whilst the games and applications will be lost forever in 30 days’ time, the ability to enjoy them, and use their online features will continue for some time.