GAF, I need help on my friend's 3DS. He bought the Mario Kart 3DS XL which is US region, but set his NNID region in Canada because he didn't know any better back then. Now, he bought a US prepaid card which don't work in his account.
What's the best way here? Does unlinking the NNID screw his Mario Kart or other games? He haven't bought any digital games but played Pokemon online. Basically he just wanted to add the funds and buy games from the US eShop.
Edit: I guess the easier question is, will preinstalled games disappear if you delete NNID?
The pre-installed games are now part of the NNID so if you delete the NNID they are
permanently gone (as is the NNID itself). If you format the system you have to log back into that NNID to get the games associated with it back so they are
temporarily gone (the NNID is still linked to that system so won't work on others, system transfer is the only way to move a NNID from one 3DS to another).
Note: This is all laid out in the system settings and/or eShop operations guides (please read those I may have made mistakes in my understanding).
You
could access the US eShop by formatting the system but I'm not sure what happens if you were to log back into the NNID once money is spent (as NNID eats all foreign wallets) and country set back to Canada. I see two possibilities; those "orphan" purchases merge with the NNID like they allegedly do when you system transfer or they vanish into a void.
Remember that formatting means losing streetpasses & progress there, saves, friend code etc (from formatting) so I advise against doing this.
This messy situation is why I've avoided using NNID on my 3DS (doesn't help PAL systems are more fragmented with content so open borders are handy) since it is not manditory and hate how Nintendo keep spamming me about Steel Diver sub wars and Miiverse via spotpass about once a week.
tl;dr. Sell the US$ credit (as a return is unlikely at this point).
I don't know if anyone has ever succeeded in getting an NNID country swapped via support.
Edit:
Actually which region's eShop is Mario Kart tied to? US? I don't think it would delete Mario Kart if you delete the Canadian NNID in that case, but any games downloaded from the Canadian eShop would be toast. I'm not too sure about how this works though, no personal experience with the digital bundle games.
If you don't know which region Mario Kart is, then your friend could look through the Canadian download list and if it doesn't show up there, then it's probably a US eShop game.
Anyways, the Canadian eShop does accept international credit cards unlike the US shop, so if he has access to a credit card he should be okay.
Mario Kart is a game. Games are not tied to any country. If you are in a country where that game exists on the eShop you can download it. If not, you can't. For instance I have to connect to the Australian eShop to get Snapdots (only PAL country with the title available) or Germany for the German Link's Awakening DX but Mario & Luigi Dream Teams bros I can get from any eShop.
How the eShop works without an NNID (i.e. "orphan", maybe "ronin" would be better term) is each country has its own wallet but account history is shared between all.
When you make an NNID the account history fuses into that (it is "adopted"; you can see Wii U purchases, balance is added to Wii U one). However, NNID has a country associated with it and after creation you are locked from going into any other country. You also lose any remaining balance in the wallets of those. The upside is you can post in Miiverse, get free apps you could before NNID like demos and Youtube and enjoy f2p stuff...(carrot stick and all that).
The problem comes in that you can only have one NNID active on a 3DS at once rather the several you can have on a Wii U.
