Nintendo usually doesn’t do the right thing, but they kept the wii shop working for around 15 years after the console released, which seems reasonable enough, though for how much hosting costs they should still be offering downloads. IIRC you could store downloaded games on an SD cars so you could make a backup.
Now the WiiU and 3DS, their online stuff shuttered too early. If I had bought Mariokart 8 digitally for my WiiU and wanted to redownload it, I would be unable, yet Nindendo still sells the same game on their newer switch store.
The only Nintendo games I can say I own are the ones decrypted on my NAS that work with FOSS emulators.
Nintendo usually doesn’t do the right thing, but they kept the wii shop working for around 15 years after the console released, which seems reasonable enough, though for how much hosting costs they should still be offering downloads. IIRC you could store downloaded games on an SD cars so you could make a backup. Now the WiiU and 3DS, their online stuff shuttered too early. If I had bought Mariokart 8 digitally for my WiiU and wanted to redownload it, I would be unable, yet Nindendo still sells the same game on their newer switch store. The only Nintendo games I can say I own are the ones decrypted on my NAS that work with FOSS emulators.
You can still buy and play snes games. Could you imagine if the Mona Lisa was gone because 15 years was a reasonable amount of time to keep it?