Hello, everybody, and welcome back
to another episode of “Michael Buys Expensive Things from Japan.”
In today's episode,
we're going to be unboxing this Japanese Nintendo GameCube.
But first,
let me give you a little backstory as to why even had to buy this thing
in the first place.
So there I was a few months ago, browsing on the electronicBay,
trying to find a Game Boy Player that I could use for an upcoming video project.
When I quickly realized that these things are not cheap,
especially the game disc that you need to have with the Game Boy Player itself,
to make the thing functional.
So I said, "Huh.
Let me check the Japanese auction websites."
I did.
I found this for less money, slightly less money than what it would have cost me
to get just the Game Boy player and that disc here in the U.S..
So when you think about it, this wasn't really that expensive at all
because I got all this other stuff
essentially for free.
But this was still a decent amount of money.
That's why I gotta thank today's video sponsor Skillshare
for giving me the skills to spend money on things that I otherwise wouldn't need.
Anyways, let's talk a little bit about this particular bundle right here
and what you would have got if you were in Japan back in 2004 when this came out.
And if you happen to have ¥19,800 to spend on this thing,
because that's how much this thing cost.
Inside of this box, not only do you get the GameCube itself,
But also these two controllers.
One of them is a special edition clear GameCube controller
that I did not know existed until I found out about this bundle.
This was only made available in Japan through this bundle.
So, this is quite the limited edition controller, at least at the time when it came out.
I have seen these on eBay in the U.S.
But again, anything that's a Japanese import
instantly makes the price go way up.
So this is pretty cool. We're gonna be checking that out.
I love clear plastic hardware.
Always find this stuff really cool.
The GameBoy Player,
obviously, that's the main reason I bought the thing,
with the disc.
There's no picture of the disc on the front here, but the seller did say
that it comes with the disc.
If it doesn't, we have a slight problem.
And then a 251 GameCube memory card.
One thing that's also worth mentioning is Nintendo did release other GameCube
colors in this bundle, but all of them excluded this clear plastic controller.
So without any further ado, let's go ahead and open this thing up
and take a look at what we've got.
So right here, it looks like we've got the...
Okay, this is looking like some documentation here.
So we've got...
Oh!
Interesting.
So was this was this imported-
Oh, maybe they were trying to sell this on eBay, perhaps.
And here's all of your hardware and safety instructions here.
This right here is the operations manual.
You've also got this stamp on the back here.
I guess this is the-
Is that the store that sold it perhaps?
Let's see here.
Yeah, that is the store this was purchased at and their telephone number.
So that's that's pretty neat.
I know that's not what you guys came here for.
Let's actually get to the hardware itself.
So here we've got the power adapter.
Definitely very important.
We'll set that aside.
We've got the Game Boy Player disc here.
Here we've got the clear translucent controller, which is just really cool
to see because like I said, this was a Japanese exclusive.
It was never released here in North America.
So very, very cool to look at.
You can see there's the the board on the inside.
Here is a view from the back
and even the connector here that goes to the GameCube is clear.
So that's really awesome.
And we'll set that aside here.
The other controller is not as exciting but I mean, hey, it's a GameCube controller.
So... the silver one that matches the console itself.
We've got the...
Game Boy Player.
Which, I've never owned one of these actually.
I always wondered, when I was younger,
what those ports on the bottom were used for.
And well,
one of the things you could use it for was hooking up a Game Boy Player.
So there you go.
And here is the main event: the Japanese GameCube itself.
Let's see if there's anything else in the box first.
I don't believe there is.
Aside from some bubble wrap, which is always much appreciated.
So we'll set the box aside there.
And yeah, it's a GameCube.
I mean, if you've ever owned one of these things here in the West,
I mean, there's
nothing really special about it other than everything is in Japanese.
And they can play Japanese games. I mean, I guess that is special.
If you were into collecting and importing Japanese games.
So there you go.
There's the model number: DOL-101(JPN)
Made in China.
You got your high speed port, serial port.
And I believe the high speed port is what the...
what the Game Boy Player plugs into.
So we'll take that off there.
And then we can take our Game Boy Player.
And....
There you go.
It's in.
And that's how it sits on your desk, or on your floor
or wherever you had your your GameCube set up.
And you would just plug your Game Boy games into there.
And yeah, I mean, that's pretty much all there is to it, guys.
So we are going to plug this thing in and power it on
for the first time since it has left Japan.
Which is just a really cool thought.
You know, this thing was in Japan for the majority of its life,
and this is the first time it's been plugged into a foreign power grid.
So let's go ahead and power this thing on.
And, oh, let me-
Let me get the controller here.
And plug that in. That would help, wouldn't it?
So we'll use our wonderful clear controller.
I still really like this thing.
This is super cool.
And we'll plug that into controller slot number one, or port number one.
So let's power it on here and see if it works, which I'm sure it does.
Yeah, there it is.
It's powering on...
we get that glorious start-up screen.
And...
Yeah, we don't have a game disc in here.
So, you know, not going to do anything.
So we can browse the menu here.
Of course, nothing on the memory card menu here.
We got nothing to put in. So there you go.
Let's go to the date here.
So, okay, so it looks like this was last regularly used
in November of 2017.
November 4th 2017.
So we can update this to the current date if we want to.
So let's go to-
What is it today?
I'm recording this on April 11th, so.
Oh my gosh.
It was set to-
(laughs)
It was set to...
2017-11-04
And...
it's April 11.
Wow. Okay.
That's kinda like...
"Oh my gosh, they know!"
This right here is your options menu, I believe.
Oh, what was this?
Let me pull out Google Translate here
because I don't remember exactly what this says.
So let's just pull up translate.
This is...
"Sound and Screen Horizontal Position."
I'm sure one of these is mono and stereo.
Let's see what this says...
Yeah, mono and this is stereo.
And then this down here...
is the screen position.
So you can modify that if you want.
So I will definitely set this to stereo.
and we'll go back here.
And we don't have a disc in here.
So let's change that.
Let's put in the Game Boy Player disc here.
So we'll open that up and we'll pop-
And actually, you know what?
First let me show you what happens-
If you were curious, and if you've never done this before,
let us put in an NTSC game
to an NTSC-J console
so you can see what happens because it is not going to work.
So we'll put in "Chibi-Robo!" here
one of the most underrated games of all time in my opinion.
and we'll let it do its thing...
It's loading, It's like
"oh yay, we're going to play a game, let's go!"
And then... guess what?
It's not going to read it.
And I believe this probably says...
It just outright says "could not read the disc."
It doesn't even come up with a...
"this is the wrong region"
It's like, "I don't even know what this is."
So yeah, there you go.
So let's go ahead and pop in the Game Boy Player's software disc here to the drive.
We'll close that up and now it will be able to read this.
And also something worth mentioning, the Game Boy Player hardware itself
technically is not region locked at all because you can plug this into
a North American GameCube or European GameCube,
but if you don't have the disc that matches your region,
you won't be able to use it because if you put this disc
into a North American console, it's going to do what it just did
with the North American game on the Japanese console here
and just say, "I can't read the disc."
So yeah, we'll go ahead and press start here to load the Game Boy Player
software, and it just jumps right into loading whatever's
in the slot, which is in this case, nothing because we got nothing in there.
But I believe if we hit...
Yeah, so you hit... what is that, Z?
It brings up this menu here.
And this is where you can modify a few settings.
I believe you can change the border here.
So yeah, you can change that.
You got all sorts of options here.
So let's set that to number 13
this here will change the size of the screen.
So if you want to make that
a little bit smaller there so you can see the full design.
Oh, this is cool.
This is a Tetris one.
Oh, I'm keeping that one on.
You can change your controls here.
So what everything's mapped to.
This here...
Ooh, what is this? Let's see. Let me pull out Google Translate
"Screen, normal"
And this other option here is "sharp."
And this here is probably, judging from that, a timer? Yep.
That's exactly what that is.
So this is your play timer there.
And this here.
Um, what is that?
Oh, that's to replace the cartridge.
Okay, that makes total sense.
So that's for, if you wanted to change games,
that essentially acts as turning off the Game Boy.
So you're not just yanking the cartridge out while you're in mid-game.
So that's what this is for.
So you would hit "A" here and then you would say yes,
and then it would "turn off" the Game Boy,
and then ask you to put it in the new cartridge.
And then you'd hit "A"
And then you would load into the new game.
And it starts up.
Now, unfortunately... I'm sure you guys are wondering
"Why hasn't he put a Game Boy game in yet?"
The reason is...
I don't have any!
Well... scratch that,
I do have plenty of Game Boy games.
They're just not easily accessible at the moment.
And that's because... Well...
I got a pretty big channel update for you guys.
But first I gotta tell you about today's video sponsor:
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And huge thanks again to Skillshare for making this video possible.
All right, so what's the big channel news?
And why wasn't there a video last week?
Well, I am in the process of moving.
Yeah, so things have been kinda hectic lately.
Things have been ramping up recently for sure.
But...
That's the short version of it, guys.
That's why there wasn't a video last week.
Though, I am going to make up for it.
I do have a lot of videos that I that I want to do, a couple that I'm working on
right now.
One of them is a vintage computer focused video,
kind of a retrospective, fully scripted, really excited about that.
I teased it over on Twitter.
You can see why that one's been taking so long because I got a lot of footage
to go through.
And the other video is, well, why I bought this entire thing in the first place.
I do have some Game Boy games on the way.
That... at least one of them,
is unlike any other Game Boy game that you've seen before.
Believe me when I say that I'm not exaggerating, it is like,
just one of the coolest ideas that I've seen in a while.
So yeah, that'll be coming soon.
Stay tuned for that.
And this whole setup here will be changing soon as well over the course
of the next couple of months.
That's going to be cool.
I'm very excited about it.
Just, yeah, a lot of awesome stuff happening, guys.
This is going to be a great year for the channel, so just stay tuned.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video
If you did, be sure to give it a thumbs up,
get subscribed,
notifications,
all that good stuff.
And as always,
I want to thank you all so much for watching and I will see you in the next video.
(outro music)