YouTuber The Completionist Bought Every Wii U And 3DS eShop Game Before Shutdown, And It Cost $23,000

If you're planning to grab a few Wii U and 3DS titles before the digital storefronts for those platforms are shut down on March 27, and you're wondering just how much it'll cost to purchase two generations of software in their entirety, then one YouTuber has done the expensive homework already. Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil has bought every game available on those systems, with the grand total for that collection being a whopping $22,791.

This worked out to $9,673 for 866 Wii U games and $13,118 for 1,547 3DS games, with the collections measuring in at 1.2TB and 267GB respectively. This massive haul includes DSiWare and Virtual Console games, as well as DLC for dozens of titles. As Khalil noted, the entire ordeal took him 328 days to accomplish, required 464 eShop cards, and was funded by various sponsorships.

"When a digital storefront shuts down or games get delisted, countless titles run that risk of being lost forever," Khalil said in his video breakdown. "What would it take to save all those Nintendo Wii U and 3DS games from being lost? Step one of many was to determine necessary costs and storage. Unfortunately, none of the comprehensive lists online that we found included prices or even file sizes, so we spent three days compiling all that data into a big spreadsheet. Once we had all that information, we were able to more easily march forward with our noble cause of preservation."

Khalil says that he'll now donate the collection of Nintendo classics--and Devil's Third--to the Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit organization that preserves the history of video games. Nintendo announced last year that it would be sunsetting the 3DS and Wii U eShops, and while it'll no longer be possible to buy games on that storefront from March 27--May 23 is the cutoff date for using credit cards to add funds--and games previously acquired through the storefronts can still be downloaded.

While the vast majority of 3DS and Wii U games are available physically, both systems are also home to a number of digital exclusives that'll be lost at the end of March. This list includes Dr Luigi, Pokemon Rumble U, and more on Wii U, while the 3DS has a much larger library of 3D-enhanced classic titles and digital-only games set to vanish in just a few days. Ahead of the stores shutting down, Pokemon games from the Game Boy and Game Boy Color era have been big sellers on 3DS. If you're looking for a few good games to grab before the shops close, check out the 3DS and Wii U games you should buy.