Description: here's a real relic. and i know, i already hear you saying it. "mot, this is just Pikmin: New Play Control! for Wii, why does this deserve a spot on the Things page when you haven't even shown us your Marta tokens yet?" first of all, i'm gonna get to the Marta tokens, just give me a bit. second of all, this isn't just any copy of Pikmin: New Play Control!. take a closer look at that boxart. see that weird, red banner? yeah, that's not just some sticker on the case. that's baked directly onto the artwork. and it doesn't stop there, because usually the New Play Control line of Wii games came with reversable artwork. you see, the NPC line had this tacky border around the artwork telling you that yes, this is in fact a Gamecube game that they shoved motion controls into and then ported to the Wii. but some people like their games to look like actual videogames instead of a marketing tactic, so to make up for this Nintendo printed the original artwork on the other side of the inlay, and all you had to do was just flip the piece of paper and stick it back in the case.

and see? now it looks presentable. but for some completely unknown reason, my copy doesn't have this. it's just completely blank on the other side. now, i got this copy of the game from a Gamestop back in 2016, so the first thought is, "oh, it's just some generic artwork that Gamestop printed off and put into another case." but listen, i know how Gamestop does things, and they would not put as much effort as to get the proper glossy paper that the original boxart would be on, make a new template to signify it's refurbished, and put the original boxart on that template. "oh, well it's refurbished, so it must be something the warehouse does when they get a game sent in." that's another thought i had, but again that's not how they do things, at least not anymore. they usually just use the original case it was shipped in. there's a possibility they did it differently back in 2016, but search results are so muddied for any query with "gamestop" and "boxart" in it, since people are almost always talking about that old cartoon drawing of the mom with the bag of games that they used for their generic boxart back in the day.

so what the hell is this banner from, huh? well, upon typing this up for this very post, i finally figured it out. this means it's an official Nintendo refurbished game! so someone sent their copy of Pikmin: New Play Control to Nintendo, and they sent it back with this unique boxart. cool! i honestly dig these kind of unique oddities, they're such weird edge cases. reminds me of those Wii U systems that are white like the basic set, but have the big hard drive like the deluxe set ones, and you could only get them by getting Nintendo to refurbish your Wii U.