This summer I bought my nephew Noah a used Nintendo64. He’s 4, and the cartridge format makes sense. Plus, the console is cheap and so are the games.
For Christmas I got him a copy of Mario Tennis off of eBay for about US$10 including shipping. Not bad when you consider it usually sells used for US$25 or so.
The game supports four players, and as my sisters are spending the holidays together with their families, I thought that the sons and fathers playing one another (David and Noah are the same age) or even a spouses doubles match after the kids went to bed might be fun. I couldn’t remember how many controllers I had bought for Noah, so I called Rachel and asked. She reminded me I had bought two, and when I told her I was going to buy two more to allow doubles play, she said, “If they have a purple one Noah would love that. It’s his favorite color.”
N64 controllers are usually gray or black. Nintendo made some color ones, but the only ones I have seen were red, yellow, blue and green. No purple. So I held out little hope.
Wednesday I went to three different used gaming stores. Two had no used controllers whatsoever, and one store only had a single used controller. New ones are like US$17. Blah.
Today, on a whim, I went to Goodwill. Not only did they have a few controllers, but they were US$2.99. Some were in great shape. One of the ones in great shape was … purple. Sweartagawd. Purple.
I must be doing something right. Thanks, universe.
P.S. I made the mistake of trying out Mario Power Tennis for the Gamecube while looking for controllers. Bad idea. I’m hooked. It’s on my wish list, if Santa reads this blog. 🙂