I have a Year of Luigi edition 3DS XL - it's served me well over a few years, and it's got a few battle scars but still works very well. Very recently however, something rather quirky began to happen - this strange occurence would later serve to infuriate me. While playing Super Smash Bros, a message popped up at a very unusual and unexpected time. At first, I shrugged it off because it did not severely impact standard day-to-day playing.
The message reads,
"Unable to connect. Please power off your system, and then try again. If the problem persists, contact your local customer support. Contact details can be found in the system's Operations Manual."
Now, I don't still have my Operations Manual - it could have ended up anywhere. Regardless, there are a few things that make this very bizarre.
- This issue first began to show when I entered single-player Smash matches on Super Smash Bros for the 3DS. Mind, in single player against AI, there is no need to "connect" to anything. I wasn't trying to do anything online, nor was I trying to connect to a friend's 3DS. Why it would show then of all times is extremely strange.
- I can still connect to everything you'd expect this error to apply to. I can still versus friends locally, I can still play Online, I can still buy DLC and I can still connect to everything in and outside of Smash Bros. The error message doesn't even appear when I try to connect to anything Wirelessly. The Wireless is working just fine.
- It won't let me use my new 3DS NFC Reader/Writer peripheral. Yeah, this odd and unusual error message that I managed to successfully ignore for the past several weeks is showing up at only one other time, and that is when I try to scan an amiibo into the game. The message shows up even if I don't -do- anything on the Amiibo screen. It's like it won't even try to scan for the reader I got, and just sits and takes a few seconds to decide that it "can't connect" to something.
- The error is -extremely- non-specific, and there is no error code. Literally the only thing it told me to do was try shutting on and off my 3DS, which I've done ad nauseum. When the message pops up in single player "Smash!", all I can do is push a button to make the message go away, but then I can play normally. When I try to make it read an amiibo, it immediately closes itself out and takes me back to the main menu.
- The issue occurs anywhere I take my game. It is not specific to my internet.
- The message displays even if I have the Wireless turned off. I don't know what it's having trouble connecting to, but it's not the WiFi.
The reason this error has suddenly gone from ignorable anomaly to infuriating is because it has more or less rendered my purchase of the NFC reader useless. I can't use my Ness amiibo at all unless I want to try and get a friend to let me use their WiiU.
Here are some other bits I should note.
- I have not ruled out the possibility this is a Smash Bros for 3DS specific issue. My copy of the game might just be corrupted or something. I don't have any other online-reliant games to test this out on. Fire Emblem: Awakening works fine. I get no such issues when I try Pokemon Y or Alpha Sapphire, because after all, I don't actually have any real issues connected via WiFi.
- The message does have me rather frightened that there may be damage done to the hardware within my 3DS XL. The only thing that's damaged enough to not quite work right is the switch for the toggle on/off wireless. But it still -WORKS-, it just needs to be pressed down on in a certain way to actually make go on or off.
- I have tried googling this in a lot of different word combinations and I have yet to find record of this issue happening -anywhere-. The closest issue to it that I could find was a matter with an error code"018-0515". Mind, I am not actually getting this error code, and I can still connect to things.
I don't know if there is anything I can do to fix this. I'm really hoping I don't need to buy a new 3DS XL though. If anyone can give me some advice or anything, I'd so much appreciate it.