The Completionist spent $22,000 purchasing every Wii U and 3DS game prior to eShop closure

On Monday, March 27th, Nintendo is sunsetting the eShop for the Wii U and 3DS. As part of Nintendo’s plan to shutter its marketplace, every game and DLC will no longer be available to purchase on either device. YouTuber ‘The Completionist’ took it upon himself to purchase every game available ahead of the shutdown.

In a recently published Youtube video, The Completionist claims to have purchased all 866 Wii U and 1,547 3DS games available in the eShop. This also includes DSi and Virtual Console titles and respective DLC. This entire ordeal cost over $22,791 USD (roughly $31,146 CAD). 

To compile a library of Nintendo games, The Completionist required three external hard drives for the Wii U and four micro SD cards for 3DS. The results came to a staggering 1.2TB of Wii U games and 267GB on 3DS. The latter translates to 2,136,689 blocks, which is the figure Nintendo uses to track storage on the handheld.

This journey of purchasing every Nintendo game on the brink of endangerment by way of the eShop’s closure was also a battle of time. Nintendo’s eShops on Wii U and 3DS are more archaic than the current version on the Switch. On Nintendo hardware, the marketplace runs slower and features less-than-ideal search functions. Additionally, funds pose a major hurdle. Because of this, it took The Completionist 328 days to finish this endeavour.

As shown in the video above, a lot of time was spent purchasing eShop gift cards. Limits on purchases are in place to prevent scams. Plus, the marketplace has a $250 USD cap. The Completionist also had to work around Nintendo’s limit of purchasing 10 games at a time prior to installing them. Throughout the video, he shows how even purchasing DLC for some games meant doing so in-game rather than in the eShop.

The Completionist concludes the video by emphasizing the importance of video game preservation. This idea that games can be fleeting and erased from existence is a very real concern within the industry. The Completionist states that all hard drives and SD cards loaded with the Wii U and 3DS titles are being donated to the Video Game History Foundation.

Image credit: Nintendo

Source: The Completionist Via: IGN