Forget Sony’s limited edition Spider-Man PS4 or the Taco Bell Xbox 360 or the any number of supposedly hard-to-find video game consoles. There is a Game Boy that is so rare, so elusive, that it might not exist. It’s so rare, in fact, that it has never been seen in real life, at least as far as we can tell. Does this mythical Game Boy actually exist? Was it an elaborate hoax, like being able to save Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, or unlocking Sonic the Hedgehog in the original Super Smash Bros.? Join me on today’s episode of The Dan Cave as I dive into the incredibly weird and mysterious case of Nintendo’s long-lost golden Game Boy.
The mythical console in question was announced back in 2004 as a tie-in promotion for the release of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap in the United Kingdom. To celebrate the game’s release, Nintendo produced 25,000 golden Game Boy Advance SPs emblazoned with the iconic Tri-Force logo. But those exist. You can easily find those on eBay. What you can’t find are the seven other consoles that Nintendo of Europe produced.
These mysterious Game Boys were plated with 24-karat gold and you could only get one by finding a Willy Wonka-style golden ticket in a limited edition game bundle that came packaged with the video game and the Game Boy Advance SP console. If you discovered a ticket in your box, you could trade it in for one of these ultra-rare gold-plated Game Boy Advance SPs.
According to what little intel we can find, there was a seventh console produced as a giveaway for a website called GamesTM, but the winner of that console has never been identified and all attempts to ask the site who won have led to dead ends. To this day, no one who has won one of these consoles has ever come forward and Nintendo has not made their identities public. There was a listing on a website called EStarLand, which is, of course, out of stock. YouTube sleuth LSuperSonicQ investigated the website and discovered that they apparently did have one in stock and sold it in 2013, but only for a measly $100.
The closest we have come to actually seeing one in real life is a post from a Spanish message board in which a user posted photographs of what he alleged was an authentic gold-plated Game Boy Advance SP that he won at auction for approximately $700. In the post, a user named Lintic claimed that he took the console to a gold shop, which confirmed that the case is indeed plated with gold. Adding further credibility to Lintic’s claim is the fact that the user purchased it on eBay UK. Given the fact that the only consoles produced were exclusive to the United Kingdom, it’s entirely possible that this is one of the coveted consoles. The price point, though, seems to indicate that perhaps the seller didn’t exactly realize what a goldmine they were sitting on.
Image: screenshot of ElOtroLado.net
Image: screenshot of ElOtroLado.net
Image: screenshot of ElOtroLado.net
As is the case with any rare antiquity, some people seem to think that this too is an elaborate hoax. Detractors have pointed to the fact that it is easy to paint a Game Boy or give it a custom plate. If you ask me, that is an awful lot of trouble to go to just to defraud a bunch of internet strangers on a Game Boy forum. But who knows? Maybe Lintic is that dedicated to trolling their fellow Nintendo nerds, or maybe it actually is one of the only specimens of its kind in existence. The truth may be buried deeper than those old E.T. games for the Atari 2600 that were buried in the New Mexico desert. Remember those? They were the Black Sarcophagus before the Black Sarcophagus.
But what do you think? Do you buy that these long-lost gold-plated Game Boy Advance SPs are still out there? What ultra rare video game console would you love to get your hands on? Let me know in the comments below.
Images: Nintendo
