The gamer and content creator took on the daunting and expensive task of buying all available Nintendo eShop game for 3DS and Wii U before the end of the month. The player wasn’t alone in their task, as they and their colleagues pooled as many resources as possible to ensure they could accomplish their mission before the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops shut down on March 27th.
News of the closure of the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShop was first reported last summer, despite many efforts by gamers to convince Nintendo to reconsider the move. However, with the Wii Shop Channel being shut down years before, Nintendo decided to double down on its decision, with maintenance periods to shut down the eShops. As a result, the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops are now holding sales for gamers who want one last chance to pick up some games digitally. One gamer and his friends decided to pick up every game they could on the eShops, and in a video posted their efforts and the reasons why such a mission was undertaken.
Former G4 personality Jirard Khalil, also known as The Completionist on Twitch and YouTube, posted a YouTube video on March 18th after a months-long operation in which he and his colleagues collected 464 Nintendo eShop gift cards as a way to bypass their bank crunch. effort. The total amount Khalil and his colleagues spent on these cards was $22,791, and Khalil said the effort was funded by sponsorships in his videos and streams, as well as any revenue he earned from them through ads and Twitch subscriptions. In total, Khalil and his team bought 1,547 3DS games and 866 Wii U games, which took up 267GB and 1.2TB of data, respectively.
Khalil said that this effort has been hindered by Nintendo on multiple occasions, between Nintendo’s removal of traditional payment methods for the 3DS and Wii U eShops, as well as limits on what an eShop wallet can hold at any given time. Last August, Nintendo also stopped redeeming eShop codes, putting Khalil and his colleagues in a race against time. Khalil was also hampered by the technical limitations of downloading every single eShop game on both platforms, as the eShop clients on these consoles were slow compared to the Nintendo Switch eShop. Khalil also bought multiple microSD cards to store 3DS games and a 2TB external drive to store Wii U games.
Khalil said the main reason behind this major undertaking was to ensure the preservation of each game, and that these consoles and related storage methods will be donated to the Video Game History Foundation. With Nintendo turning its back on fan demands to save as many games as possible, it’s up to players like Khalil to make sure these games aren’t forgotten, no matter what the cost.
