It’s not uncommon to find gamers striving for perfection, to hit the maximum score, to beat the hardest level or to defeat all foes. That’s when I started wondering about the Wii Virtual Console. What if there was a gamer striving for shopping perfection? What if someone wanted to buy all the Wii Virtual Console games. How much would it cost?
I busted out my spreadsheet program and I began the mundane task of counting Wii Virtual Console games. Counting today’s additions, there are 190 games available on the U.S. version of the Virtual Console. Not all of the games are the same price. Depending on the system and the type of game, the price can range from 500 Wii Points to 1,200 Wii Points.
Generally, the prices of games look like this…
- NES – 500 Wii Points
- TurboGrafx 16 – 600 Wii Points
- SNES – 800 Wii Points
- Genesis – 800 Wii Points
- NEOGEO – 900 Wii Points
- N64 – 1,000 Wii Points
Import games and a few other games cost extra. But on average, a Virtual Console game is about $6.84 each. Where did I get that number? I added the price for all 190 Wii Virtual Console games and then I divided by the number of total games. For $1300, you could own all of the Virtual Console games.
One obvious problem – there’s not enough Wii System Memory to store all of these games at once. There are ways around that limitation. I deleted Alien’s Crush and then I was able to download the game again for zero Wii Points. I also copied Super Mario Bros. to an SD Card, deleted the channel, and then I restored channel from the SD Card. A single Wii could have unlocked access to the entire Virtual Console library.
If your weekend hobby is to purchase all of the new Virtual Console games, you might not notice how much money is being spent. This week, it would only cost $21 to pick up Bubble Bobble, Light Crusader and Top Hunter. Eh, what’s $21 if it makes you happy? If you’ve been doing that every week, from the beginning of the Virtual Console, you’d be down $1300. Such a scenario is not an impossibility. It’s not really that expensive, not when it’s compared to other hobbies. But me, I only have six Virtual Console games.
You can check the cart on the next page, to see if my math is correct. 