Nintendo’s Miiverse is dead. Long live the Miiverse archive

Remember that one time Nintendo tried to build its own social network? Unless you had a Wii U, you probably don"t -- but it was called Miiverse, and it was weird, awkward and kind of wonderful.

The odd social platform let users take screenshots in most Wii U and 3DS games (a feature otherwise missing from many of Nintendo"s consoles, yet common on other platforms), chat about games with other users and draw fan art. But it wasn"t long for this world. Late last year, Nintendo shuttered Miiverse -- but a group called Team Archive has backed up a whopping 17 terabytes of the Miiverse.

Introducing Archiverse -- a huge, searchable cache of Nintendo"s now defunct social network. It seems like an odd thing to want to back up, but Miiverse was actually a pretty big part of the Nintendo community during the past generation.

Nintendo made announcements on Miiverse, and following each Nintendo Direct game reveal, the community would be flush with fan art and speculation. The social network even became a key part of some multiplayer experiences, embedding posts and drawings in the background of Super Smash Bros. levels or in the lobby of Splatoon (in fact, a basic version of Miiverse"s art sharing feature lives on in the game"s Nintendo Switch sequel, Splatoon 2).

It even had its own memes. You may have heard of the gamer who couldn"t figure out why Samus -- who was mistakenly named "Metroid" in the post -- couldn"t crawl?

Or how about the Miiverse account dedicated to reviewing the water in every game?

Unfortunately, neither of those memes are actually in the archive. Despite collecting a whopping 17 terabytes of data (including over 70 million drawings, 75 million screenshots and 133 million posts across 5,128 communities), some posts are missing, or presented without screenshots or images once stored on Nintendo servers.

On the other hand, the archive has managed to save some things we thought were lost -- not just posts and memes, but whole communities, like temporary Miiverse pages created for special events like E3. It preserves the heartfelt farewell Miiverse users gave to former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, too.


Today, Nintendo openly embraces mainstream social networks, allowing Nintendo Switch owners to share screenshots and gameplay clips directly to Twitter and Facebook.

It"s an objectively better option for the majority of gamers -- but if you"re feeling nostalgic, and want to relive that one time Nintendo tried to build its own social platform, Archiverse is there. Go check it out!