In brief: Customer support horror stories are a dime a dozen but occasionally, you hear of one in which a company goes above and beyond to accommodate its customers. This is one of those rarities.
SoraNews24 points to a story published in the February 21 edition of Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's top national newspapers. Per the site's translation of this Twitter post, 70-year-old Kuniko Tsusaka recounts a time when her 95-year-old mother had fallen ill. The woman loved playing Tetris on the original Game Boy and as luck would have it, the handheld - the third original she had owned - stopped working just as she got sick.
After coming up empty-handed in their quest to find a replacement locally, Tsusaka's son suggested to his grandmother that he contact Nintendo customer support for help. She did just that, penning a hand-written letter and sending the broke Game Boy along with it.
Surprisingly enough, Nintendo responded, saying they couldn't repair her old Game Boy due to a lack of parts but did find a brand new one in their warehouse and sent it over along with the reply. According to Tsusaka, her mother lived for another four years before dying at age 99.
Nintendo launched the original Game Boy in 1989 and discontinued it after a lengthy run in 2003. To put that into perspective, Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 2 were already on the market by the time Nintendo finally stopped producing the original Game Boy.
The one key piece of information missing from the story (or perhaps, just the translation, as I can't read Japanese) is - when did this actually take place? We know that it was at least four years ago, but there is nothing I can find to confirm or deny that it didn't happen much earlier and that the story is only just now being told.
Also, why didn't they simply opt for a second-hand Game Boy, or turn to the Internet for some new old stock via eBay or similar auction sites?
Tetris courtesy Kraft74.