The Club Nintendo Controllers (2/2)

You can read part one here: The Club Nintendo Controllers (1/2)

Alright, we covered the Club Nintendo, Mario and Luigi GameCube controllers in the last post, but after the October 2004 N.O.M. (Nintendo Online Magazine) issue, three more were to be released; Gundam Char WaveBird, Club Nintendo WaveBird and Wario. Let’s dive into it!

The next in line was the Gundam Char WaveBird, as a followup on the partnership between Nintendo and Bandai that birthed the Char Customized Box, which featured a custom red GameCube and wired controller. This special WaveBird was released as a promotion for the game Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs Z Gundam. To receive this controller, you had to first enter the code that came with your copy of the game between December 9th 2004 and January 31st 2005, then you were automatically entered into a draw for one of 1000 Gundam Char WaveBird. The prizes were expected to be delivered in February 2005.

There was a rumour on Wikipedia that you had to redeem 1000 of your Club Nintendo points to purchase this controller, but it’s false. Here’s the original promotion, specifying it’s a lottery prize: https://web.archive.org/web/20041204085011/https://www.nintendo.co.jp/club/gvsz/index.html

Then, we had to wait almost a year for the last two controllers to be released. And because their announcement came very late into the GameCube’s life, and the Nintendo DS got announced around the same time, there are very few sources.

The best one I could find is this one from Insider Games, which states that they were both set to be released in early October 2005. No specific dates were given, but they cited their source, which is a direct announcement page from Nintendo (The cover picture for this article) with a bunch of other prizes to be released around the same time. This page was later updated in October, which can be seen on the Wayback Machine and states that the Club Nintendo WaveBird has been released, and that the Wario controller’s release date was pushed back to early November.

Sadly, the sources for those last two end here, I’ll probably never find the exact release dates for them, unless I get the word directly from Nintendo. However, those official sources gave me the chance to correct a lot of misconceptions I had about the late Club Nintendo controllers, which I can now share with you.

Controller Variant	Club Nintendo Release Date	Club Nintendo Price
Club Nintendo	December 9th 2003	500 points
Mario	July 20th 2004	500 points
Luigi	August 24th 2004	500 points
Gundam Char WaveBird	December 9th 2004 to January 31st 2005	Lottery prize
Club Nintendo WaveBird	Early October 2005	900 points
Wario	Early November 2005	500 points

While we never got any of those GameCube controllers through the US Club Nintendo, Europe had the chance to see both the Mario controller and the standard Grey WaveBird be offered through their Nintendo VIP 24:7 service. If you’re curious, here’s a previous blog post I wrote about it: The Nintendo VIP 24:7 Controllers

Once again, thanks to Shairn for helping me with the sources and the translations!