866 Wii U and 1547 3DS games were purchased with 464 eShop cards.

April 1, 2023 10:00 AM

YouTuber bought EVERY Nintendo Wii U & 3DS game before the Nintendo eShop closes [YouTube] “Nintendo’s decision to close both the Wii U and 3DS eShops might make commercial sense for the company, but for fans and lovers of video game history it’s a disaster, as it’s feared many of the games being removed will disappear and never be seen or made available ever again. Loads of these games are tiny little indie things that probably haven’t been purchased or heard from for years, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth preserving! [...] In an effort to address this—or at least address it in a single place on as few consoles as possible—YouTuber The Completionist decided to sit down and spend almost a year of his life (328 days in total) buying his way through both libraries.” [via: Kotaku]

Here's a bit about why Khalil wanted to do this – revealing how all of the consoles and storage are being donated to the Video Game History Foundation so this digital library can "live on":

“"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 non-profits like the Video Game History Foundation and their efforts to support the preserveration 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 April 15th and 16th 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 preserveration."”

If you want to learn more about video game preservation, check out the Video Game History Foundation, and we'll see you at our charity event Preserved Play April 15 & 16, 2023. Check out the Video Game History Foundation: https://gamehistory.org/

posted by Fizz (12 comments total)

Piracy. That's how this data will live on. Is there any confusion about this? Yeah, the media can't say so.
posted by adept256 at 10:20 AM on April 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

🏴‍☠️ Fuck Nintendo for being one of the worst companies on the planet when it comes to preservation of their own fucking content. Long-live piracy. 🏴‍☠️
posted by Fizz at 10:24 AM on April 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Glad to see it! It's good work.

I decided a whole back to never buy a digital-only version of a video game when physical media is available. Wish I had done so sooner, eg my DS is kind of untouchable until I get around to backing up the games on it.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:37 AM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I decided a whole back to never buy a digital-only version of a video game when physical media is available.

This is a major reason why I have bought more Japanese import versions of console games this gen than any other (I love how multi-language support is so good these days!).
posted by May Kasahara at 10:44 AM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jirard (or Khalil, I guess, but who on the side of the original YouTubers goes by their surname?) has a podcast with a few other gaming YouTubers called Friends Per Second. You can find them talking about this project starting about 5:18 into episode nr. 17.

As this is non scripted, there are a few jokes that did not make it to the main video. The main video mentionshow they funded it all by sponsors on other content. The podcast has him say those were “really shitty mobile ad brand deals”.
posted by Martijn at 11:27 AM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I thought it was possible to just download all the wii u games off the official servers without paying. Like, you might need a key to make them work (which you either get by legitimately paying, or by owning a hacked wii u? Or using an emulator?)
posted by surlyben at 12:04 PM on April 1, 2023

"Just pirate it" is fine for enthusiasts but probably presents all sorts of problems for archives and research- it's not like the Video Game History Foundation can just take donations of ROMs without risking being sued by Nintendo.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:28 PM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Absolutely. It seems to me that there might be a gray area here, where an archivist could download the files nintendo made available on the open internet, and then *not apply the keys* until the distant future when the contents of those files become public domain.
It's probably about as legal as running MacOS in a VM (which is to say: not very legal at all, but so trivially easy that is hard not to do it accidentally)

But also, as a practical matter, it is likely there will instantly be complete pirated archives widely available.
posted by surlyben at 12:44 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Absolutely. It seems to me that there might be a gray area here, where an archivist could download the files nintendo made available on the open internet, and then *not apply the keys* until the distant future when the contents of those files become public domain.

I cannot pass up an opportunity to remind people that Nintendo has actually pirated its own games and sold them back to us.
posted by mhoye at 4:42 PM on April 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

So happy to see this discussed more! I watch The Completionist’s YT channel pretty often, and appreciate that he led his team in doing this. Also hoping that the video does well enough that he plays and spotlights some of the weirder games.
posted by itesser at 5:47 PM on April 1, 2023

Nintendo is very protective of their products (i.e. sue-happy), often to the point of nonsense, so good luck with that digital library.

Nintendo’s decision to close both the Wii U and 3DS eShops might make commercial sense for the company,

I know I'm being naive, but I fail to see how they cannot make money keeping this open. It is not like the digital storage and downloading is costing them any real money, so every on-line purchase is basically free money. Just hire an intern to keep the site up and running.

I can only guess that the site is very complicated to keep up. Maybe they should use one of those 'set up your own online shop' websites that we always see ads for that only needs one person part-time to keep up and running.
posted by eye of newt at 12:58 PM on April 2, 2023

Nintendo probably believes these shops are canabalizing sales that would other wise go to newer, more profitable game purchases. IE it's not that the shops aren't making money, they just aren't making as much as other competing shops.
posted by Mitheral at 9:50 PM on April 2, 2023