You won’t find a LEGO collection more unique (or obscure) than this

LEGO collections come in all shapes and sizes, but chances are you’ve never seen one quite as unique (or obscure) as this.

Some people collect LEGO models. Some people collect LEGO minifigures. Others pile up unbuilt, new-in-box sets in what’s presumably a vague attempt to recreate the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Those are the broad strokes of modern-day LEGO collections – but there are plenty of fans out there who revel in amassing very specific collections of products. Craig Smith is one such fan.

Picture this: a complete collection of LEGO Wii U video games. But not just one copy of each LEGO video game released on the Wii U. Instead, imagine a collection that includes one copy of every single variation of every single LEGO video game for the Wii U. Now you’re picturing Smith’s shelves. That includes not only international versions of each game, but even super-rare misprinted boxes.

“I got lucky on some of the most rarest ones early on in the process,” Smith wrote on reddit. “But the last one to arrive was a LEGO Movie misprint. The back of the box had an incorrect number on it and was fixed in subsequent prints.”

A self-professed Wii U collector first and foremost, Smith is currently on the hunt for an ‘all variants’ collection, and LEGO games make up many of the rarer examples. “Having already collected several of these titles, I decided to take the extra step and collect them all to finally close this chapter once and for all,” he explained. The result is a whopping 193 individual Wii U games.

Around 70% of the titles were found through publicly-available spreadsheets compiled by fellow collectors, but the remaining 30% required ‘raw personal research’. Through analysing listings on eBay and other online marketplaces, Smith and the Wii U collectors’ community turned up dozens more examples of rare misprints and variants, spending roughly 14 months on the project in total.

A complete collection of LEGO video games – variants, misprints and all – on any platform would be a rarity, but this is the Wii U we’re talking about. For context, Nintendo’s much-maligned successor to the insanely popular Wii sold fewer than 14 million units during its lifetime (compared to the Wii’s 101 million), and languishes behind almost every other major console in the all-time sales charts.

That may make a complete collection of LEGO video games a slightly more attainable prospect – a greater number of titles (and variants thereof) were surely released for the PS3, Xbox 360, PS4 or Xbox One, for example – but it also makes it even more obscure. Quite possibly the most obscure LEGO collection of all time, in fact…

Featured image: Craig Smith

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