Over half of the DSi library was temporarily delisted across North America [FINAL UPDATE]

[UPDATED 01/12/21] More titles have returned since Monday the 11th. Digger Dan is a known quantity leaving Word Searcher 3 as the outlier. It was available when I recorded the eShop in 2019 and all of the other Word Searcher titles are available so it seems like it should too, but for now I’m calling this the final update to this post.

[UPDATED 01/11/21] I’ve continued checking over the weekend and the only delisted titles that still have a page on the 3DS eShop that are flagged as unavailable are:

5 in 1 Solitaire
Digger Dan & Kaboom
Face Pilot: Fly With Your Nintendo DSi Camera!
Match Up!
Word Searcher 3

It’s odd because Face Pilot is a Nintendo release while three of these titles are from Digital Leisure whose other releases are still available on the eShop. Digger Dan is one we knew was previously delisted alongside all titles from Virtual Playground. So it seems all but Digger Dan should be coming back but these could be the titles that slipped through the cracks. It may be a while or it could be later today now that the weekend is over. I’ll continue to monitor.

[UDPATED 01/09/21] More titles have returned as of this morning. We’re now down to just 5 delisted games, including one from Nintendo so it seems that work might still be ongoing. Digger Dan is the only one that we know was delisted before this fiasco began and already have on the site.

5 in 1 Solitaire
Digger Dan & Kaboom
Face Pilot: Fly With Your Nintendo DSi Camera!
Match Up!
Word Searcher 3

[UPDATED 01/08/21] Even better news today! This short list comprises the only DSi titles NOT back up on the 3DS eShop in North America now. Some were previously delisted like Digger Dan and the Petz titles so those aren’t expected to come back but maybe a few more will pop up over the weekend? I’ll keep checking to see. Thanks again to Wakayama_PT for the update.

1001 Crystal Mazes Collection
5 in 1 Solitaire
Bird & Beans
Digger Dan & Kaboom
Dr. Mario Express
Face Pilot: Fly With Your Nintendo DSi Camera!
Looksley’s Line Up
Match Up!
Peg Solitaire
Petz Catz Family
Petz Dogz Family
Petz Hamsterz Family
Word Searcher 3

[UPDATED 01/08/21] Good-ish news! At some point on Jan 7th some of the delisted titles began returning. As of 9am EST on January 8th, these are the DSi titles that have returned to the North American 3DS eShop, as well as the five mentioned in the original post below. To my knowledge Nintendo has still not publicly addressed the delistings or relistings. Hopefully the majority of the missing titles return soon, including Nintendo’s own. Thanks to Wakayama_PT for pointing out the update.

101 MiniGolf World
Crazy Golf
Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ
myDiary
Plants vs Zombies
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge
Spot the Difference
Telegraph Crosswords
Telegraph Sudoku & Kakuro
Zenonia
Zoo Frenzy

[UPDATED 01/06/21] I had enough time this morning to record a quick video of every DSi title on the North American 3DS eShop. For those interested in just the delisted ones, they start on page 8, check the video for bookmarks. I will type out a list of the titles from this video and get them on our existing DSi Shop page soon.

Original Post January 06, 2021

We’re not off to a great start for 2021 in regards to delistings. It seems that beginning on January 1st, Nintendo of America delisted the majority of DSi titles that were only available through the Nintendo 3DS eShop. I’ve gone through the DSi category of the eShop and found that out of 448 titles displayed over 250 of them have been delisted. Some of these were pulled previously, with their store pages left behind, but the majority disappeared just a few days ago.

To be clear, this mass delisting has only affected North America (including Canada) so far. I’ve checked the European eShop and all 406 DSi titles are still available while others have confirmed that the same is true for DSi titles on the Japanese eShop. The cutoff for delistings seems to be mid-May of 2011 as any games older than that are gone. However, there are a handful of older titles that are still available in North America, either by oversight or exemption:

• Art Academy: First Semester – Sept 2009
• Art Academy: Second Semester – Sept 2009
• Game & Watch: Donkey Kong Jr – April 2010
• Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon – Oct 2009
• Sudoku (Electronic Arts) – Oct 2009

Unfortunately, Nintendo didn’t give us advanced warning of these delistings like they did when they announced the retirement of the Wii Shop Channel and DSi Shop in 2017. Given that the cutoff goes back to the release of the Nintendo 3DS handheld, my only guess is that all subsequent DSi releases were served from newer data centers, possibly sitting on the same servers as the 3DS eShop. Everything from before mid-May 2011 was possibly housed on older, separate servers and as a move towards cost-saving or data consolidation Nintendo of America made the decision to pull the plug. I suppose it’s also possible that these specific servers were somehow breached and the expense to fix them outweighed simply shutting them down. That’s just a baseless daydream so don’t put much stock in that theory.

I’m not counting on it but I’d love for Nintendo to at least give us an explanation over the coming days, especially if this is also going to happen across Europe, Japan, and the rest of the world. For now all we can do is reminisce about the lost titles and recommend some of the ones that are remaining. There’s already a good discussion going under the tweet from @comeoutpunching that tipped us off to this news but feel free to list your own favorites (dearly departed or not) in the comments below.

For now I’m going to update the current DSi Shop page on the site with this news, and possibly add a list of newly delisted titles down the line. I just don’t have the time or energy right now to make an individual page for every single one of those 250+ games. Thanks to @DPS_2004 and everyone who pointed out this disheartening news to the site.