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The Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShops are closing next week, which means hundreds upon thousands of games will imminently be forever lost to the shutdown of the respective console's storefronts. Many here are aware of how important game preservation is, and with both the Wii U and 3DS being easy to put CFW and load backups on, it's a fairly simple task to obtain near-complete libraries of either. Of course, while backing up those games may be a legal grey area, playing them without owning them is unlawful, and audiences not tuned into the world of homebrew may not even know about such things to begin with.

Which is why YouTube personality The Completionist has decided to purchase every single available game on both the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii U eShops. This endeavor consisted of purchasing 866 Wii U digital titles, and 1,547 3DS games, including all DLC and Virtual Console releases, totaling at over $22,000. The video showcases the difficulties in legally compiling a complete backup of both the Wii U and 3DS, ranging from the problems arising from trying to obtain $18,000 worth of eShop cards, to trying to actually make purchases since you can only load $250 worth of eShop credit at a time, being locked out by Nintendo from making so many transactions at a time, slow downloads from Nintendo's servers, the limitations of the 3DS, and other obstacles.

The video is an important display of why video game preservation is so important, and the arduous process of backing up media so that it does not become lost forever.

 

[Noctosphere]

I am among those who wish that when a game is no longer available to purchase legally, we should be legally allowed to download it for free
In this case, we should be allowed to download for free wii u games since they shut down the only way to buy them
(I'm not considering the used market ofc)

 

[porkiewpyne]

Ayyy we got featured in the video too

 

[tech3475]

Out of curiosity, how big in gigabytes is each consoles library? Just asking....for a friend.

edit:

Funnily enough, I'm having issues with bad preservation right now, I can't find the latest stock rom update for my old semi-bricked XDA Exec. On one site it seemed like the wayback machine had archived everything except the ROM update.

 

[AshuraZro]

An entertaining video and challenge. I understand the idea behind the video but I feel a little cynical about the end result. Anyone can spend money as they like but it feels like a waste to me without additional steps taken on protecting end results.

All of the storage should have disk images taken and stored multiple times over across different media/locations. Even then they only presently would work with the particular Wii U and 3DS console. Decrypting the titles is likely out of scope but for preservation and archival sake, it’d be the next step.

 

[Ryab]

Ayyy we got featured in the video too

Yeah I saw that too. It was a very brief.

 

[SaulFabre]

I am among those who wish that when a game is no longer available to purchase legally, we should be legally allowed to download it for free

Same.
It should be legal to get (freely) a game which it's not avaliable anymore (in this case on Wii U's and Nintendo 3DS's eShop).
Same thing happened to the WiiWare, Virtual Console, and Wii channels of Wii Shop Channel.

 

[The Catboy]

And this is why piracy is always morally OK

 

[SaulFabre]

And this is why piracy is always morally OK

Exactly

 

[Dust2dust]

Just strange. All games released on a single console's lifespan are not meant to be owned by a single person. It's like a menu in a restaurant. You're not supposed to order everything on the menu and eat it. Besides, he will never have time to play everything he just bought. As for game preservation, most of these games are available to download with just a simple google search. There was no need to panic and buy everything.

 

[Noctosphere]

Ayyy we got featured in the video too

when? I didn'T hear it

 

[SaulFabre]

Also, i've saw that a major lawsuit is trying to censor and delete forever the Internet Archive

And the Internet Archive is so far the biggest archive of things that are so many years old that u can get and use them, including old software

 

[Sphaa]

This topic remained me of the torrent site underground-gamer. It was a site that focused on preserving old games, and they did a great job collecting, preserving and sharing older games. That was the place I found all rare games from my childhood, too bad they shut down.
Anyway, it's one thing to preserve games but it also must be accessible to the public in one way or another, and that is a problem with modern games. They are so big that it's problematic to find a place to store all of them and make them available to future generations.

 

[SaulFabre]

That was the place I found all rare games from my childhood, too bad they shut down.
Anyway, it's one thing to preserve games but it also must be accessible to the public in one way or another, and that is a problem with modern games. They are so big that it's problematic to find a place to store all of them and make them available to future generations.

Sad.

Internet Archive, also a good and big library of the Internet for storing and preserving many things from the past including software, will be in a terrible destiny if we don't do something...
https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/17/heres-how-to-participate-in-mondays-oral-arguments/

 

[NinStar]

Unnecessary waste of money and everyone else time, the only winner in this situation is Nintendo themselves.

I really don't get what is trying to been proven here, everyone already know how difficult preserving some medias can be, but people didn't start doing it yesterday, most of the Wii U and 3DS library are already preserved everywhere on the internet since forever.

 

[K3Nv2]

I recently watched a video where an entire GameCube collection could cost you around $20,000 so yeah tip your hat off to the people that put effort into preserving these.

 

[Sphaa]

Internet archive is a really cool place, and I admire the job they do. But Unfortunately, commercial game preservation will properly always be illegal and I doubt we ever will see any sites like that, totally open, sharing those old commercial games.

 

[The Catboy]

Unnecessary waste of money and everyone else time, the only winner in this situation is Nintendo themselves.

I really don't get what is trying to been proven here, everyone already know how difficult preserving some medias can be, but people didn't start doing it yesterday, most of the Wii U and 3DS library are already preserved everywhere on the internet since forever.

But how many people have documented how difficult this process is, then presented in an entertaining format?

 

[deSSy2724]

UPDATES..... he should download them all. Someone tell him....

 

[ZeroFX]

The things people do for views lol...