Nintendoonce made a line of consoles so rare, many players had trouble believing they even existed - but more recent evidence suggests they do. Limited-edition consoles are nothing new: there was a time that every major console came out with multiple special editions during its service life, usually whenever there was a major release. Things like theHalo 4Xbox 360, or theFinal Fantasy 13PS3 used to be ubiquitous - but now, withjust a few exceptions, they’ve mostly become a thing of the past.
Nintendo especially, though, has always excelled at limited-edition consoles. Because so many of its games are first-party releases from its big four properties, and each of those has such a distinct, colorful aesthetic, it was really a match made in heaven. However,there’s one special Nintendo DS variant that’s so rare, only four people ever got their hands on them- and that rarity caused many players to believe they were a myth.
Nintendo Released 4 Animal Crossing Nintendo DS Consoles - & They Might Be The Rarest In Gaming History
What Makes The AC WW 3DS So Rare
Rumors of custom,Animal Crossing: Wild World-themed Nintendo DS consoleshave often surfaced online, but the consoles are so rare that many players have cast doubt on their legitimacy. The consoles, while often listed on fan sites among other official Nintendo merchandise, never appear to have been available for public sale. Only a handful of pictures are available of them, and we don’t even know where those came from.
The lack of information about theseWild WorldDS consoles led many players to dismiss them as fakes - impressive custom wraps made by talented fans, sure, but not official Nintendo merchandise. But as a matter of fact,theWild Worldconsoles were very real and very official. It’d just take several years to track them down.
A Dedicated YouTuber Has Tracked Down Two Of The Lost Consoles
However,YouTuberLSuperSonicQundertook a series of deep dives into the origin and fates of these consoles, and discovered that the rumors were true: they’re just so rare that only a very select few players were ever able to get their hands on them.
In 2006, to coincide with the upcoming EU release ofAnimal Crossing: Wild World, a Swedish gaming website calledGongave players an opportunity - they were instructed to design their ownAnimal Crossingcharacter. The winner of the design contest would receivea uniquely customized Nintendo DSfrom Bergsala, the company’s official distributor in Sweden, featuring a special outer case depicting two villagers standing in a colorfully decorated house. That winner was Simon Flesser, who had won the contest with his design for a whale sushi chef.
Flesser went on to co-found his own game studio, Simogo, helping to create games likeSayonara Wild HeartsandLorelei and the Laser Eyes- check outScreen Rant’s interview with him here.
LSuperSonicQ was able to contact Flesser, who confirmed he was the winner and had received the one-of-a-kind custom DS. Butthere was another rumored console remaining: the winter edition of the sameWild Worlddesign.LSuperSonicQquickly discovered that this was given away by Nintendo as part of a trivia contest, and, in a later video,was able to confirm the identity of the winner as Line Marki Jensen. However, no one’s since been able to contact Jensen, or confirm whether they still own the console.
These videos captured the attention of a retro game store employee, who identified themselves as Sondre. They explained thattheir store had received another custom console from Bergsala- a Nintendo DS with a fall-themedAnimal Crossing: Wild Worlddesign. But there’s also some evidence that a similar DS was given away to a fan in Denmark as part of a contest held byGamereactor.
Sondre has since sold the DS on eBay; the new owner has yet to resurface.
This led LSuperSonicQ to theorize that, first of all, these consoles were likely not created with the express purpose of being used as contest prizes: they were likely made by Nintendo and Bergsala as general promotional items, who then decided to distribute them as they saw fit. And secondly,there must have been a fourth console out there somewhere- with spring, winter, and fall found, there was almost sure to be a summer version of the design.
In a final video on the subject,LSuperSonicQwas able to find an image of the summer-themedWild WorldDS, depicting two villagers sharing an apple. Apparently, fans of previous videos on the subject contacted Bergsala directly to ask about the mysterious consoles. They reached an employee who shared photos of the console, claiming to have taken them himself. He also claimed this DS had also been given away in a contest, but thatthe company had no record of whom the winner had been.
SoLSuperSonicQ began to theorize that there were at least two different sets of these consoles in existence: one set that was given away in a series of contests, and another that was kept at Bergsala and (at least partially) distributed later to retro game stores. LSuperSonicQ noted that photos allegedly portraying the same console showed subtle differences in characters' facial features, which seems to confirm that theory.
The Missing Consoles May Be Lost To Time
We May Never Know What Happened To The Summer & Winter Consoles
So, while we know quite a bit more about these mystery consoles today than we did when they first surfaced online,we may never track down the final twoWild World-edition DSs. It’s quite likely that whoever won them lost interest in gaming over the years, and no longer owns them - they could be collecting dust in someone’s attic, or worse, lying at the bottom of a landfill.
And while the two-sets theory does hold some water, if Bergsala doesn’t have any kind of internal record of where the consoles wound up, it certainly doesn’t make these long-lost consoles easier to find. While LSuperSonicQ’s efforts were able to confirm the existence of these two ultra-rareNintendoconsoles, we’ll almost certainly never find out where they ended up.
