[CM30]

Fortunately there is a fan run project that's working on recreating the online services for these consoles/games, in the same way that Wiimmfi has gotten the DS and Wii's multiplayer functionality up and running. See the Pretendo project here:

https://pretendo.network/

It's not exactly feature perfect yet, but 2024 gives them time to fix up many of the features they haven't gotten working, and hopefully expand support to more games.

[raytopia]

I know it's not realistic but it'd be cool if pretendo made a e-shop replacement.

[linkpuff]

It is technically possible, but it will only hold homebrew at best, due to licensing nightmares. They published a video recently of a PoC of it happening in their discord

I think this could replace the likes of Universal Updater (3DS's main homebrew browser) if it gets to public. Not that UU is bad, it just lacks the tiny eshop dudes :)

[RockRobotRock]

You can just do illegal things and not give a shit.

[spicybright]

While for sure yes, and it could probably work for a while, Nintendo is notoriously trigger happy with shutting down fan projects.

Fan games using their IP are the main targets, but emulation and rom distribution is on their radar too.

Ex. Dophin emulator for gamecube/wii has to fight tooth and nail against nintendo to be able to stay up.

Even with courts agreeing nintendo can't do anything, they still try every so often to take legal action against the project. Most recently trying to shutdown offering the emulator on the steam deck.

I can't say for sure, but I imagine that has an effect on how many people are willing to develop around nintendo products.

[HoppyHaus]

There is something just like that for one of the largest 3ds piracy sites. I won't link to it, but it isn't hard to find

[kristofferR]

https://hshop.erista.me/ is basically that, it contains nearly all 3DS abandonware.