I actually made money off of an exclusive back in the GameCube day. They did The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the GameCube that had both games released for the NES and Nintendo 64, with the former including revised texts fixing the original mistranslations, a demo of The Wind Waker, and various promotional videos.
It was going for 50-100$ on eBay. The only way to get it was to get a subscription to Nintendo Power during the promotion so... yeah.... I was getting a few dozen Nintendo Power magazines in the mail every month for a year and pocketing 20-70$ per subscription after the sub price and eBay/PayPal fees.
Funny thing was, if people messaged me and just asked how I got the copies I flat out told them "just go get a Nintendo Power subscription".
I can't remember how I got a copy of the Collector's Edition, because I don't think I had an NP subscription. Was it a pre-order bonus for Wind Waker as well?
In any case, I found it endlessly amusing when I would go to Gamestop and see used copies of the Collector's Edition marked for sale at $50 or so. Particularly with the giant "NOT FOR RESALE" text on the cover:
>In the United Kingdom, the Collector's Edition was available to GameCube owners who mailed Nintendo proof of purchase of one of several selected GameCube games, including The Wind Waker, F-Zero GX, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, 1080° Avalanche, Mario Party 5, and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Consumers could also send proof of purchase of two titles from the Player's Choice range to receive the game
Yes! I got this bonus disc as a pre-order bonus for wind-waker. The "harder" version of Ocarina was a new triple A game all by itself and is still included in the Nintendo virtual console versions of the game on Switch and Gameboy from what I understand.
It was going for 50-100$ on eBay. The only way to get it was to get a subscription to Nintendo Power during the promotion so... yeah.... I was getting a few dozen Nintendo Power magazines in the mail every month for a year and pocketing 20-70$ per subscription after the sub price and eBay/PayPal fees.
Funny thing was, if people messaged me and just asked how I got the copies I flat out told them "just go get a Nintendo Power subscription".