FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Games

Nintendo’s Miiverse Is Dead, But Someone’s Archived Everything

One of the company’s more interesting experiments isn’t fully gone.

So far, besides making it a pain in the ass to talk with friends while playing Splatoon 2 online, Nintendo hasn’t done much with online features on Switch. I’d hoped the company would refresh one of its most overlooked innovations on Wii U, the absurdist but lovable social network known as Miiverse, but instead, Nintendo shut down Miiverse on November 8. And though Miiverse is dead, its history (and the many strange, curious drawings) live on, thanks to a software developer who goes by Drastic Actions online. They’ve archived the Miiverse, and we are all better for it.

Advertisement

Archiverse contains roughly 17 terabytes (!!) of data grabbed by a group called Archive Team, an organization committed to backing up Internet curiosities and a guide for people who want to keep track of their own data. (You can help them in that mission.)

That 17 terabytes of data translates, according to Drastic Actions:

  • 216,901,986 Replies
  • 133,003,599 Posts
  • 75,955,135 Screenshots
  • 72,135,190 Drawings
  • 8,278,693 User Profiles

That’s a lot of delicious Miiverse!

At the moment, Archiverse is down; there’s a hosting bug preventing the website from working properly. It’s supposed to be up later today, allowing Miiverse to live again.

Technically, Nintendo allowed people to request an archive of their posting history, but that gives little insight into what Miiverse was and what its community accomplished.

The video game industry is terrible at archiving—at least, in a way that means the people who supported those companies can ever access it without resorting to hacks or piracy. That a random software developer was able to reconstruct Miiverse weeks after its closure suggest little prevented Nintendo from doing the same. Then again, Nintendo, like so many video game companies, often shows no interest in properly enshrining its past, outside of what video games they can charge you for again.

At least we’ve got people like Drastic Actions to pick up the slack.

Follow Patrick on Twitter. If you have a tip or a story idea, drop him an email: patrick.klepek@vice.com.

Have thoughts? Swing by Waypoints forums to share them!