After 13,151 races in Mario Kart 7 tragically crashed one 3DS, the dying Nintendo Network servers are down to the final 4 players

Best 3DS games - Mario Kart 7
(Image credit: Nintendo)

The fight to stay online on 3DS and Wii U continues well over a month after the servers were supposed to shut down, but we're now down to the final four - all because one player's 3DS just crashed.

Just ahead of the planned Nintendo Network shutdown on April 8, two players called Fishguy6564 and Marioiscool246 set up a pair of bots in Mario Kart 7 to continually race against each other online. Those bots have been racing over and over again since that day. With the loss of the last Pokemon XY player on May 8, that left Fishguy6564 and Marioiscool246 as the only known 3DS players left online.

But yesterday, May 13, tragedy struck as Marioiscool246's 3DS froze, apparently on the Luigi's Mansion track. A total of 13,151 races were run, with 6495 won by Fishguy6564's bot and 6656 won by Marioiscool246's, according to the latter player's own estimate. I guess we now know how many races it takes to break Mario Kart 7. 

Fishguy6564 remains online, though now simply connected to an empty lobby. According to GaffsNotLaffs on Twitter, that leaves us with just four players on the Nintendo Network, counting the three other souls who are sitting on lonely Mario Maker, Splatoon, and Xenoblade Chronicles X connections. They've been dropping like flies in recent weeks though. As of May 5, eight final players remained, but that number's now already been halved. Godspeed to those who remain.

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Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.