Do you know what this is? It’s a Game Boy. An old handheld video game console made by Nintendo. It was released when I was in high school and brings back fond memories.

Thursday 29/02/2024 | 22:56 PM

This story recounts a woman’s experience with the Game Boy. Her soon to be 95-year-old mother loved playing Tetris on her Game Boy. Even when she reached 95, she continued to play, and received a new one when it broke, but finally the third one broke too.

However, they were no longer being manufactured so she couldn’t get a new one or repair it and gave up. But her son told her to write a letter directly to Nintendo and said,

“I would like my mother to enjoy playing the Game Boy one more time”.

Nintendo then replied,

“The parts to repair this model are no longer in production.”

But, to her surprise, included with the letter was a brand new first edition Game Boy. They unearthed it from a warehouse and sent it to her.

The grandmother continued enjoying playing it for 4 more years before passing away at the age of 99.

They come back good as new
Limited editions of Nintendo’s consoles sell well. This picture shows a limited-edition ‘Animal Crossing’ motif DS. The owner took good care of it, but his young daughter ended up breaking it.

The owner was prepared to accept that getting it repaired wouldn’t return it to the original design, but to his surprise it was. The repair was performed just before the end of the warranty for this old model. The parts were probably limited, so instead of replacing the broken part entirely, they seemed to have used the parts they could, and polished them up nicely.

Children often put stickers on their game consoles, and in this case, the repair people try to leave that part untouched when fixing them.

“The sticker contains the memories of the time it was put on”, he said.

This is a rather large and time-consuming task for customer support, but isn’t it wonderful to hear how much they care about their customers and their customers’ memories?

Nintendo has demonstrated the same level of customer support throughout other regions which has contributed to their sustained popularity throughout the world.

I think we can learn from them as well.

ABE KENGO