The Wii and DSi digital shops have been seemingly turned off with no prior warning from Nintendo.

As reported by Eurogamer, both shopping channels have been down since March 16 with no indication whether it was done for maintenance or if Nintendo has taken them offline for good.

Players have been unable to purchase new items from the Wii shop since 2019 and DSi shop since 2017, but its current state of being down altogether means players who've already purchased games digitally on the platforms are unable to officially download them.

The main server, however, is allegedly still running, meaning games can still be downloaded via third party tools such as NUSDownloader, meaning it may just be the apps themselves that have been taken offline and not the overall service.

While it's not necessarily unusual for the stores to be taken offline at this stage, as the Wii was discontinued close to a decade ago in 2013 and the DSi in 2014, what is odd is that Nintendo didn't give any warning or explanation for it happening.

It announced in February, for example, that the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops would be discontinued in 2023, giving players plenty of warning to make any purchases or redeem any codes before it no longer became an option.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.

The Wii and DSi digital shops have been seemingly turned off with no prior warning from Nintendo.

As reported by Eurogamer, both shopping channels have been down since March 16 with no indication whether it was done for maintenance or if Nintendo has taken them offline for good.

Players have been unable to purchase new items from the Wii shop since 2019 and DSi shop since 2017, but its current state of being down altogether means players who've already purchased games digitally on the platforms are unable to officially download them.

The main server, however, is allegedly still running, meaning games can still be downloaded via third party tools such as NUSDownloader, meaning it may just be the apps themselves that have been taken offline and not the overall service.

While it's not necessarily unusual for the stores to be taken offline at this stage, as the Wii was discontinued close to a decade ago in 2013 and the DSi in 2014, what is odd is that Nintendo didn't give any warning or explanation for it happening.

It announced in February, for example, that the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops would be discontinued in 2023, giving players plenty of warning to make any purchases or redeem any codes before it no longer became an option.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.

After officially announcing their return to games last year, Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams are ready to show off their new project. Previously referred to as The Secret, it will be a "reimagining" of Colossal Cave Adventure — the seminal 1970's text adventure game credited with inspiring Zork, Rogue, and other formative PC games, as well as for laying the groundwork for the PC role-playing genre as a whole.

Titled Colossal Cave 3D Adventure, it is a first-person adventured designed in Unity for VR and PC. Like the original, the underlying concept is relatively simple: players explore a cave seeking treasure, encountering characters along the way including a troll, a bear, a snake and a pirate. The quest, apparently, is to "find all the treasure." The reimagined adventure will be challenging and will feature a "wide variety of puzzles to overcome" in a "completely immersive 3D world" with more than 143 locations.

According to Ken Williams, the creation of Colossal Cave 3D was spurred by the boredom of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"While locked down by the pandemic I wrote a book about the old Sierra days. Its success surprised me and brought back many memories of our days making games. This led me to investigating how modern games are made and I just started coding using the Unity game engine for fun," Ken Williams said in a statement.

"I was looking for something interesting to code when Roberta suggested Colossal Cave. Roberta started to work adapting it to 3D, and I assembled a team. As we dug deeper and deeper into the game we discovered layers of complexity that explain why the game became such an industry phenomena. It has action elements, humor, a scoring system, adventure elements, interesting characters, a huge world to explore and more. This is truly a game that will delight a new generation, and 100% different than anything I've seen in the market today."

Colossal Cave 3D Adventure will support VR via the standalone Quest 2 headset, which was suggested by one of the team's artists.

"At first, we thought it would be a simple effort but quickly realized that VR is not as simple as just running the same old game on a new platform. Major design changes were required, and all graphics had to be thrown away and started over. Was it worth it? YES! Anyone who plays the VR version will be blown away. It is really staggering when you enter the cave," the pair wrote.

It has been more than two decades since Ken and Roberta Williams last made a game, but their reputations remain legendary in the games industry. The couple married at 19 and went on to pioneering careers at Sierra On-line, where they were famous for their work on the King's Quest series and a host of other classic games, most of them point-and-click adventures. IGN ranked the pair among the 25 greatest game developers ever in 2009.

The pair announced their return to gaming last year, where they said they would be working on a "Sierra-flavored" game. Titled Cygnus Entertainment, the new studio is entirely self-funded.

Cygnus is planning to release Colossal Cave 3D this summer. It will be available on the Quest 2, PC, and Mac, with additional platforms also in consideration.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

After officially announcing their return to games last year, Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams are ready to show off their new project. Previously referred to as The Secret, it will be a "reimagining" of Colossal Cave Adventure — the seminal 1970's text adventure game credited with inspiring Zork, Rogue, and other formative PC games, as well as for laying the groundwork for the PC role-playing genre as a whole.

Titled Colossal Cave 3D Adventure, it is a first-person adventured designed in Unity for VR and PC. Like the original, the underlying concept is relatively simple: players explore a cave seeking treasure, encountering characters along the way including a troll, a bear, a snake and a pirate. The quest, apparently, is to "find all the treasure." The reimagined adventure will be challenging and will feature a "wide variety of puzzles to overcome" in a "completely immersive 3D world" with more than 143 locations.

According to Ken Williams, the creation of Colossal Cave 3D was spurred by the boredom of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"While locked down by the pandemic I wrote a book about the old Sierra days. Its success surprised me and brought back many memories of our days making games. This led me to investigating how modern games are made and I just started coding using the Unity game engine for fun," Ken Williams said in a statement.

"I was looking for something interesting to code when Roberta suggested Colossal Cave. Roberta started to work adapting it to 3D, and I assembled a team. As we dug deeper and deeper into the game we discovered layers of complexity that explain why the game became such an industry phenomena. It has action elements, humor, a scoring system, adventure elements, interesting characters, a huge world to explore and more. This is truly a game that will delight a new generation, and 100% different than anything I've seen in the market today."

Colossal Cave 3D Adventure will support VR via the standalone Quest 2 headset, which was suggested by one of the team's artists.

"At first, we thought it would be a simple effort but quickly realized that VR is not as simple as just running the same old game on a new platform. Major design changes were required, and all graphics had to be thrown away and started over. Was it worth it? YES! Anyone who plays the VR version will be blown away. It is really staggering when you enter the cave," the pair wrote.

It has been more than two decades since Ken and Roberta Williams last made a game, but their reputations remain legendary in the games industry. The couple married at 19 and went on to pioneering careers at Sierra On-line, where they were famous for their work on the King's Quest series and a host of other classic games, most of them point-and-click adventures. IGN ranked the pair among the 25 greatest game developers ever in 2009.

The pair announced their return to gaming last year, where they said they would be working on a "Sierra-flavored" game. Titled Cygnus Entertainment, the new studio is entirely self-funded.

Cygnus is planning to release Colossal Cave 3D this summer. It will be available on the Quest 2, PC, and Mac, with additional platforms also in consideration.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Marvel's Moon Knight is currently a single, six-episode series, which its stars say functions as a standalone story – but Ethan Hawke says it could potentially become an origin for other Moon Knight stories.

Speaking to Hawke – who plays the series' primary villain, Arthur Harrow – IGN asked if he and co-star Oscar Isaac has gone in treating this as a one-shot, or if they'd be open to returning to their roles beyond the finale. Hawke was equivocal in his answer:

"The good news is that it’s possibly both. It lives and breathes on its own merits, it functions as a limited series – and if people are engaged and excited by it then it could be the origin story of a larger thing."

It's not surprising that Marvel, and the big-name stars of its next series, would be open to further projects, but Moon Knight does stand somewhat alone in the public MCU line-up by not having any immediate connections to other shows or movies. Where Ms. Marvel will definitely appear in The Marvels, and She-Hulk makes for an obvious potential team-up with The Incredible Hulk, we currently don't have a set route for Moon Knight to head next.

There are possibilities, of course. Moon Knight originated in the Werewolf By Night comic – which itself is reportedly becoming an MCU Halloween special, potentially directed by composer Michael Giacchino. In the comics, Moon Knight has also been a part of the Midnight Sons team-up alongside Blade – who is due to get his own MCU solo debut in the next few years.

Complicating matters is the fact that the story of the MCU Moon Knight is somewhat disconnected from the wider Marvel multiverse, a fact that actually helped attract Isaac and Hawke to the project in the first place.

Moon Knight will debut on Disney+ on Wednesday, March 30. Marvel is promising a "brutal" show, which looks to differ wildly from the comics. The show stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector/ Moon Knight, Hawke as Arthur Harrow, May Calamawy as Layla, and F. Murray Abraham as the voice of Egyptian god Khonshu.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Moon Knight will feel fairly disconnected from the rest of the MCU – and it's that separation from the wider mythology that drew in stars Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke.

Speaking to IGN, Isaac said the plot's separation from the wider Marvel multiverse is 'definitely' what drew him to the role(s) of Steven Grant/Marc Spector/Moon Knight (the protagonist, who suffers from a multiple personality disorder, and is an Earthly avatar of an Egyptian god). Isaac made clear that, in part, it's because it reminded him of his favourite MCU movie:

"For me, my favorite Marvel film is still the first Iron Man. You know, it’s the one that feels like it’s breaking through in some way, and it has such an indelible performance, [where] Downey comes in and just owns every minute that he’s on screen. It also feels quite adult, and it’s messy, ‘cause it’s the first one, you know? So I like that a lot.

"[Moon Knight] was a similar approach, where we’re building this thing from the ground up. It’s still in the universe, but that’s not part of the plot, that’s not part of the story – it rests on its own terms, and it’s really an internal exploration of this person. So this person is not connected to any of his reality that is happening – that’s part of his problem, whether it’s Marvel or not. So it really just tries to get into the skin of this guy."

Ethan Hawke, who plays mysterious new villain Arthur Harrow, agreed that a standalone story was "absolutely the turn-on" for taking the role – and revealed one of his favorite MCU movies too:

"I love – you know, when you first see Iron Man, or when I first saw Black Panther – where I don’t know the origin story, I don’t know all the characters, I get to really be told a new legend. And I was so happy when we first talked about this that it was disconnected, because it gives us so much more freedom. And as an audience member it’s what I want, I want to not know what’s going to happen. [...] It gives it a little more originality, it gives us a chance."

Moon Knight isn't just disconnected from the MCU, but the oncreen version also feels distinct from the comic book version of the character – most notably turning British billionaire Steven Grant into a mild-mannered gift shop employee. Isaac said those changes are in their own way appropriate for a comic book character who's undergone multiple major changes over the decades.

"I did do a deep-dive into the comics, but the thing is when you look at the comics – you know, it’s been around since 1975 – and it has changed wildly from time to time," Isaac explained. "It’s the kind of character that, every time there’s a new writer, they just move their lens onto something that’s interesting to them: They add a whole new backstory, they add different powers, they take away certain powers, they give him a new costume. I feel like more than many of the ones that I’ve seen, he’s so mutable."

"And there’s no consistent villain," interjected Hawke. "So it was really free terrain for us to pick and choose – kind of like the writers do with the comics, we could pick and choose what we like about it: 'That’s too violent, that’s not violent enough.'"

This became part of the process not just for Moon Knight's TV writers, but the actors, who were searching for a brand new version of their charcaters, not just an adaptation.

"Jeremy Slater and his team of writers," continued Isaac, "they kind of cracked the structure of the whole thing. They said, “Alright, we know that we want to go with Steven Grant, that’s our way in, we’re not going to make him a billionaire playboy, like a Bruce Wayne clone, we’re gonna actually turn it on its head. And [the actors] inherited that and then, for us, it was the same process of, 'OK, well here’s the structure, now what do we find the most interesting and the most emotionally compelling, and let’s focus it all on that.'"

It will be interesting to see where Marvel takes this new Moon Knight, not just within the series, but beyond. While the show is listed as a single limited series – much like WandaVision before it – Hawke says that it has the potential to be "the origin story of a larger thing."

Moon Knight will debut on Disney+ on Wednesday, March 30. Marvel is promising a "brutal" show, which has been described as "Fight Club meets Indiana Jones." The show stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector/ Moon Knight, Hawke as Arthur Harrow, May Calamawy as Layla, and F. Murray Abraham as the voice of Egyptian god Khonshu.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Moon Knight will feel fairly disconnected from the rest of the MCU – and it's that separation from the wider mythology that drew in stars Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke.

Speaking to IGN, Isaac said the plot's separation from the wider Marvel multiverse is 'definitely' what drew him to the role(s) of Steven Grant/Marc Spector/Moon Knight (the protagonist, who suffers from a multiple personality disorder, and is an Earthly avatar of an Egyptian god). Isaac made clear that, in part, it's because it reminded him of his favourite MCU movie:

"For me, my favorite Marvel film is still the first Iron Man. You know, it’s the one that feels like it’s breaking through in some way, and it has such an indelible performance, [where] Downey comes in and just owns every minute that he’s on screen. It also feels quite adult, and it’s messy, ‘cause it’s the first one, you know? So I like that a lot.

"[Moon Knight] was a similar approach, where we’re building this thing from the ground up. It’s still in the universe, but that’s not part of the plot, that’s not part of the story – it rests on its own terms, and it’s really an internal exploration of this person. So this person is not connected to any of his reality that is happening – that’s part of his problem, whether it’s Marvel or not. So it really just tries to get into the skin of this guy."

Ethan Hawke, who plays mysterious new villain Arthur Harrow, agreed that a standalone story was "absolutely the turn-on" for taking the role – and revealed one of his favorite MCU movies too:

"I love – you know, when you first see Iron Man, or when I first saw Black Panther – where I don’t know the origin story, I don’t know all the characters, I get to really be told a new legend. And I was so happy when we first talked about this that it was disconnected, because it gives us so much more freedom. And as an audience member it’s what I want, I want to not know what’s going to happen. [...] It gives it a little more originality, it gives us a chance."

Moon Knight isn't just disconnected from the MCU, but the oncreen version also feels distinct from the comic book version of the character – most notably turning British billionaire Steven Grant into a mild-mannered gift shop employee. Isaac said those changes are in their own way appropriate for a comic book character who's undergone multiple major changes over the decades.

"I did do a deep-dive into the comics, but the thing is when you look at the comics – you know, it’s been around since 1975 – and it has changed wildly from time to time," Isaac explained. "It’s the kind of character that, every time there’s a new writer, they just move their lens onto something that’s interesting to them: They add a whole new backstory, they add different powers, they take away certain powers, they give him a new costume. I feel like more than many of the ones that I’ve seen, he’s so mutable."

"And there’s no consistent villain," interjected Hawke. "So it was really free terrain for us to pick and choose – kind of like the writers do with the comics, we could pick and choose what we like about it: 'That’s too violent, that’s not violent enough.'"

This became part of the process not just for Moon Knight's TV writers, but the actors, who were searching for a brand new version of their charcaters, not just an adaptation.

"Jeremy Slater and his team of writers," continued Isaac, "they kind of cracked the structure of the whole thing. They said, “Alright, we know that we want to go with Steven Grant, that’s our way in, we’re not going to make him a billionaire playboy, like a Bruce Wayne clone, we’re gonna actually turn it on its head. And [the actors] inherited that and then, for us, it was the same process of, 'OK, well here’s the structure, now what do we find the most interesting and the most emotionally compelling, and let’s focus it all on that.'"

It will be interesting to see where Marvel takes this new Moon Knight, not just within the series, but beyond. While the show is listed as a single limited series – much like WandaVision before it – Hawke says that it has the potential to be "the origin story of a larger thing."

Moon Knight will debut on Disney+ on Wednesday, March 30. Marvel is promising a "brutal" show, which has been described as "Fight Club meets Indiana Jones." The show stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector/ Moon Knight, Hawke as Arthur Harrow, May Calamawy as Layla, and F. Murray Abraham as the voice of Egyptian god Khonshu.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Marvel's Moon Knight is currently a single, six-episode series, which its stars say functions as a standalone story – but Ethan Hawke says it could potentially become an origin for other Moon Knight stories.

Speaking to Hawke – who plays the series' primary villain, Arthur Harrow – IGN asked if he and co-star Oscar Isaac has gone in treating this as a one-shot, or if they'd be open to returning to their roles beyond the finale. Hawke was equivocal in his answer:

"The good news is that it’s possibly both. It lives and breathes on its own merits, it functions as a limited series – and if people are engaged and excited by it then it could be the origin story of a larger thing."

It's not surprising that Marvel, and the big-name stars of its next series, would be open to further projects, but Moon Knight does stand somewhat alone in the public MCU line-up by not having any immediate connections to other shows or movies. Where Ms. Marvel will definitely appear in The Marvels, and She-Hulk makes for an obvious potential team-up with The Incredible Hulk, we currently don't have a set route for Moon Knight to head next.

There are possibilities, of course. Moon Knight originated in the Werewolf By Night comic – which itself is reportedly becoming an MCU Halloween special, potentially directed by composer Michael Giacchino. In the comics, Moon Knight has also been a part of the Midnight Sons team-up alongside Blade – who is due to get his own MCU solo debut in the next few years.

Complicating matters is the fact that the story of the MCU Moon Knight is somewhat disconnected from the wider Marvel multiverse, a fact that actually helped attract Isaac and Hawke to the project in the first place.

Moon Knight will debut on Disney+ on Wednesday, March 30. Marvel is promising a "brutal" show, which looks to differ wildly from the comics. The show stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector/ Moon Knight, Hawke as Arthur Harrow, May Calamawy as Layla, and F. Murray Abraham as the voice of Egyptian god Khonshu.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Someone has found one of The Witcher 3's final Easter eggs nearly seven years after it was released in May 2015.

YouTube user xLetalis discovered that Vivienne, a character that players can free from a curse at the risk of her dying in seven years, can actually be found dead after waiting that long in-game.

Vivienne is at the centre of the Blood and Wine expansion's The Warble of a Smitten Knight quest, where Geralt finds her half turned into a bird. He offers to lift the curse, though warns Vivienne that she may only live as long as the animal as a result.

Alright, here's the video - Vivienne found dead after 7 in-game years in Yennefer's room on Skellige: https://t.co/QpXLVX9w47 @CDPROJEKTRED @PaweSasko @PhiWeber @witchergame pic.twitter.com/Z9qPwveSJZ

— xLetalis (@xLetalis) March 20, 2022

She accepts, departs, and can later be found in Skellige. By meditating for seven years (more than 2,500 days), or by using console commands to otherwise speed up time, the player can find Vivienne dead in Yennefer's room at Kaer Trolde Harbour.

Philipp Weber, CD Projekt Red's acting lead quest designer, noted the irony of someone discovering the seven-year Easter egg nearly seven years after The Witcher 3 was released.

He told IGN: "I'm not sure if it's the last secret, but it for sure is pretty close. Everyone hid so many details during the last months of development that people are probably still going to find something new one day.

"For sure this is the Easter egg I hid the most out of all the ones I did, so it's quite impressive it was finally found."

While it's one of the final Easter eggs for now, a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series version of the game is on the way, giving CD Projekt Red plenty of opportunity to sprinkle in new secrets.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said "massive in size and meticulously detailed, The Witcher 3 ends Geralt's story on a high note," and we also ranked it highly in our list of top ten open world games of all time.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.

Someone has found one of The Witcher 3's final Easter Eggs nearly seven years after it was released in May 2015.

YouTube user xLetalis discovered that Vivienne, a character that players can free from a curse at the risk of her dying in seven years, can actually be found dead after waiting that long in-game.

Vivienne is at the centre of the Blood and Wine expansion's The Warble of a Smitten Knight quest, where Geralt finds her half turned into a bird. He offers to lift the curse, though warns Vivienne that she may only live as long as the animal as a result.

Alright, here's the video - Vivienne found dead after 7 in-game years in Yennefer's room on Skellige: https://t.co/QpXLVX9w47 @CDPROJEKTRED @PaweSasko @PhiWeber @witchergame pic.twitter.com/Z9qPwveSJZ

— xLetalis (@xLetalis) March 20, 2022

She accepts, departs, and can later be found in Skellige. By meditating for seven years (more than 2,500 days), or by using console commands to otherwise speed up time, the player can find Vivienne dead in Yennefer's room at Kaer Trolde Harbour.

Philipp Weber, CD Projekt Red's acting lead quest designer, noted the irony of someone discovering the seven-year Easter Egg nearly seven years after The Witcher 3 was released.

He told IGN: "I'm not sure if it's the last secret, but it for sure is pretty close. Everyone hid so many details during the last months of development that people are probably still going to find something new one day.

"For sure this is the Easter Egg I hid the most out of all the ones I did, so it's quite impressive it was finally found."

While it's one of the final Easter Eggs for now, a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series version of the game is on the way, giving CD Projekt Red plenty of opportunity to sprinkle in new secrets.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said "massive in size and meticulously detailed, The Witcher 3 ends Geralt's story on a high note," and we also ranked it highly in our list of top ten open world games of all time.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.