Today Nintendo announced that eShop support for Wii U and 3DS platforms will be discontinued as of March 2023. This will have a ripple effect throughout all Nintendo properties, but for Fire Emblem it will have several unfortunate consequences.

Thanks to Twitter user @GC1_5, for catching this; As of May 23, 2022, You will not be able to add funds using your credit or debit cards to your Nintendo eShop account for the Wii U or 3DS. Additionally, as of August 29, 2022, you will not be able to add funds using Nintendo eShop Cards to your Nintendo eShop account for the Wii U or 3DS.

As for everything specifically that will be lost to time, read below:

Fire Emblem Awakening will be losing it’s vast amounts of DLC content that kept going for not an insignificant amount of time, as well as it’s less valuable yet still appreciated free demo.

• Fire Emblem Awakening DLC Packs
  • All of these packs provided special units from past games with guest artists drawing them.
    • The Champions of Yore
    • Lost Bloodlines
    • Smash Brethren
    • Rogues and Redeemers
  • The EXP/Money/Regalia pack
    • This helps players power level.
  • The Challenge Pack
    • These included Est, Catria and Palla as recruitables for success.
  • The Scramble packs
    • These put characters in more comedic situations that allowed for more intercharacter dialog.
  • The Future Past
    • Serves as a look into Lucina’s dark future, which is pretty important for folks who love their lore.
  • Apotheosis.
    • The last DLC which challenges the most hardcore of players strongest units. Also allows you to obtain Katarina from FE12.

Fire Emblem Fates situation becomes incredibly awkward. The three routes all being distributed separately as they were. You should be able to find Birthright and Conquest physically easy enough. However Revelations was only put on a physical cartridge via the Special Edition release, which is incredibly rare. In theory, you’d have to buy all three routes individually instead of through the eShop. Fates DLC that will be lost includes:

• Before Awakening
  • Introduces a small Awakening crossover that also grants you items to promote characters to Great Lord & Lodestar.
• Boo Camp
  • The only Nohrian grinding map in the entire game.
• Beach Brawl
  • Provides special Noble Sibling art in swimwear for succeeding.
• Ghostly Gold and Museum Melee
  • The “easy money and super powerful equipment” respectively, DLCs.
• Royal Royale
  • This works similarly to Awakening’s Beach Brawl, but the rewards are a Dread Scroll and Ebon Wing, which are needed to change into a Dread Fighter or Dark Flier respectively.
• Hidden Truths
  • Explains how Severa, Inigo and Owain entered the world of Fire Emblem Fates.
• Vanguards Dawn
  • A big homage to Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn‘s Part 2 Endgame chapter, which includes the item to turn into Ike’s class (The Vanguard Brand), along with skill scrolls for all the Vanguard skills.
• Anna on the Run
  • Allows the player to recruit Anna.
• Ballistician Blitz
  • Allows access to the Ballistician and Witch classes via the Witches Mark and Anna’s Gift items, respectively.
• Another Gift from Anna
  • Provides you the Boots and Paragon items.
• The six Heirs of Fate storyline maps
  • Serves as a “What If” involving all the children units.

Furthermore, fans in Japan will be losing these as well.

• The Hoshidan and Norhian Festivals of Bonds
  • Both of which are like the Awakening Scramble maps in that they involve a lot of character bonding and interaction.
• Cipher cards that allowed you to get Minerva (From FE1/3/11/12), among other goodies.

Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia also has a decent amount of DLC to be aware of that will be lost to us as well.

• The Free Mila’s Bounty DLC
  • Included Boots, three Pitchforks (which allows free class change), a Taurus shard, Talisman and a Gold Purse.
• DLC Pack 1: Fledgling Warriors
  • Included three maps for items, Astral Shards, and easy grinding and money for early game
• DLC Pack 2: Undaunted Heroes
  • Similar to above but it’s for Mid/Late game.
• DLC Pack 3: Lost Altars
  • Allows characters to promote to an even higher class, the Overclasses.
• DLC Pack 4: Rise of Deliverance
  • A four map set showing what events led up to the start of the game.
• DLC Pack 5: Cipher Companions
  • The so far only crossover with Fire Emblem Cipher the Fire Emblem Trading Card Game.
  • On completion, gives the player four Cipher exclusive characters Emma, Randal, Shade and Yuzu.

Furthermore, in Japan, Echoes had a special bonus with the Echoes starter deck of Cipher in which you could get accessories in your game from it.

As far as other game’s features being removed;

• Japan loses access to Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Gaiden, Mystery of the Emblem, Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 via 3DS VC and those along with Binding Blade, Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones and Shadow Dragon on Wii U.
• Fire Emblem Blazing Sword and Sacred Stones which made their way onto the Wii U eShop, will no longer be accessible after this date. Those who got onto the 3DS with the Ambassador program should be fine in regards to their Sacred Stones copy.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, while it’s available on the Switch nowadays, some content that is ONLY on the Wii U will be lost which includes a Hot Spring DLC episode that wasn’t ported over.
• Super Smash Brothers For Wii U & 3DS contains several downloadable Fire Emblem characters. Will also be affected by this including the ability to buy Roy and Corrin in particular.
• Fire Emblem Warriors 3DS will be losing access to it’s DLC including characters and bonus History Mode maps

Aside from raw games, there are some other features being lost with the 2023 removal:

• Several 3DS themes for the Home menu
  • Although most of these were exclusive to Japan via Cipher, any Badges from Nintendo’s Badge Arcade will also be inaccessible after this point.
  • Five based on Fates: Birthright, Conquest, and Two Kingdoms; the other two feature some of the male and female cast of Fates.
  • Two based on Echoes: Alm’s Army and Celica’s Army, showcasing an array of characters from both sides.
  • The Monster Hunter series had a collaboration with Fire Emblem, resulting in Fire Emblem character armor sets being added to Monster Hunter Frontier G for the Wii U and Monster Hunter Generations for the 3DS. It features Armor Sets fashioned after Chrom (Male-only) and Lucina (Female-only), and features several of the more prolific weapons.

• Cipher distributed three different 3DS themes based on Fire Emblem’s 25th anniversary in 2015 that were attached to specific starter decks. The Birthright starter deck had male protagonists, the Conquest starter deck had female protagonists, and the Path of Radiance starter deck had a theme designed after the classic opera commercial of the first Fire Emblem, all in pixel style.