YouTuber buys every Wii U and 3DS eShop game before shutdown

YouTuber Jiraid Khalil, known as The Completionist, has bought every single title available on the 3DS and Wii U eShops before they close down at the end of the month.

The mission, which was motivated by video game preservation, saw Khalil purchase 866 Wii and 1,547 3DS games, using 464 eShop cards. These libraries took up 1.2 TB on the Wii U and 267 GB on 3DS (or 2,136,689 blocks on the handheld console).

The money for these purchases was raised by donors to The Completionist, and amounted to $22,791 worth of games.

Many of the games will no longer be legally and/or commercially available once the eShops shut down on 27 March, hence The Completionist’s desire to preserve them for the future.

Khalil says that he intends to donate everything he has downloaded to the Video Game History Foundation. However, there are question marks raised over whether the organisation can actually accept the donations – it has traditionally only dealt with physical media, and there are legal challenges regarding the status of digital games.

He said: “Lost media is very real as far as video games preservation is concerned, since the industry started, we run a daily risk of losing games forever, that’s why this matters. And that’s why I’ve been a long-time supporter of non-profits like the Video Game History Foundation and their efforts to support the preservation of video games code, print media and more.”

“In fact we started out own charity event Preserved Play, which is an annual charity event to raise money for them, and that’s happening this year on 15 and 16 April on my Twitch channel and I will be donating these consoles and all the storage to Video Game History Foundation in the very end so that all these games can live on.”

“So that’s it, it’s done – every available game on the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS has been saved – it cost far too much time and way too much money, but it was absolutely worth it for the sake of game preservation.”