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With the death of the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShops this week, we had to scramble at the last minute to purchase the one remaining game that our daughter (currently Seven-Year-Old Gamer, previously Five-Year-Old Gamer, Baby Gamer, Baby Boogle etc etc) absolutely couldn't live without.

That game is The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS.

So, while everyone else was getting excited about Eiji Aonuma showing off ten minutes of unadulterated Tears of the Kingdom footage, we were all sat around the TV as a family, watching our daughter annotate some maps.

She REALLY likes annotating those maps. Apparently giving her the power to make notes on a game map is like giving her a full-time job - she has to explore every doorway and make note of which path leads where. It's very sweet.

It does beg the question: how are we going to do this all again now that the Wii U and 3DS eShops are gone?

Because, well, the Switch doesn't have a stylus. Nintendo's also hesitant to make many games only playable in handheld mode. The further away we get from Nintendo's dual screen era, the harder it's going to be for DS and 3DS games to get a re-release or remaster.

Plenty of Wii U games are also going to be difficult to port. Sure, things like Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, and even Breath of the Wild itself have come across fairly easily, but what about Nintendoland? Star Fox Zero?

...Maybe nobody's actually even all that bothered if gamepad-heavy games get a re-release. It still feels like a loss, though. Especially given just how much our daughter adores Wii U games, and given that Wii U consoles aren't going to last forever.

Lots of love,
BretonStripes and Kotor